The multiplayer soccer game Rematch was a surprise departure for developer Sloclap, previously best known for the martial arts actioners Absolver and Sifu. But it turned out to be really good, and a genuine hit to boot: Currently there are 37,000 people playing Rematch on Steam alone.
What’s also a little surprising, Sloclap CEO Pierre Tarno said in an interview with Eurogamer, is that it’s not necessarily die-hard soccer fans who are driving those numbers. “We see via data, currently the core audience of Rematch lean towards those who play online competitive games rather than those who are fans of football,” Tarno told the site, using the preferred European term for the game.
That soccer-indifference extends to Rematch developers too. “Loads of people in the team don’t really care about football at all,” Tarno said. “But quite early on in the project, teammates who weren’t super convinced by it—when we ran internal tournaments—told me, ‘I get it now. I don’t give a shit about football, but this really struck something in me.’ The dynamics, the team play, I think those are what make it interesting for players even if they don’t like or play football games.”
That actually makes sense to me. The first time I saw Rematch, in a pre-announcement preview, I thought it looked like Rocket League without the cars, and putting it politely, had doubts about whether it would resonate with soccer fans.
Rematch certainly doesn’t aim to perfectly recreate soccer, though, but rather to capture the feeling of soccer—teamwork, coordination, strategy, flopping—in a fast, free-flowing environment. There’s enough of a soccer sheen to make it immediately attractive to fans of the sport, but it’s also sufficiently videogame to be accessible to a wider audience.
Tarno does expect more sports-first fans will find their way to Rematch but said it will take time for that to happen because “the main portion of our untapped audience are players who are not as savvy about games,” and so are behind the curve compared to core gamers.
“They play FIFA, but they don’t read Eurogamer,” Tarno said. “Maybe they play FIFA and Call of Duty! But they’re just waiting for their annual release. To reach them it’s about word of mouth, continuing to communicate, and keep rolling out updates.”
For now, though, it’s core videogamers leading the way. That’s working out very well for Sloclap so far, but it’s not entirely without headaches: Some gamers, it seems, are still struggling with the concept of team sports.
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