OlliOlli almost never happened. It was only a kick under the table from Studio Director Tom Hegarty that pushed Creative Director John Ribbins into taking the prototype out of his pocket in our first meeting with PlayStation. Shahid Ahmad at Strategic Content signed the game there and then and the rest, as they say, is history.
The game has since been a runaway hit on PS Vita, topping the charts, getting a GOTM, and sitting alongside AAA monsters in top game lists for 2014.
However, in hindsight celebrations on January 21st were a little more mixed at Roll7 HQ in Deptford, London. As the team sat together on launch of the game, news of a bug was already circulating with a handful of journalists — there was a genuine worry that the bug might affect a significant user base. We kept an eye online from the moment that the game hit and thankfully it appeared that only a few small number of users were affected.
Roll7 Team wrap party is interrupted by the news of the game getting GOTM!
The team was due to start work on an as-of-yet unannounced project, however we never questioned getting the bug fixed at all costs. Possibly it was naivety on our part, possibly it was stupidity — but we put off our new project for 6 weeks trying to fix a bug which was only effecting about 0.5% of users. Possibly it was seeing the odd Tweet or forum post saying that people loved the game, but it just kept crashing — we wanted those guys to get the same experience as everyone else!
Lead Programmer Nikos and that pesky bug, hiding somewhere in the code…
The second major fix to the game was something that was muted by forums almost the instance that OlliOlli hit PlayStation Store — how could a high score chasing game like OlliOlli NOT have proper leaderboards? In all honesty, as a small studio we can put our hands up and say “Doh, yeah of course, how did we miss that?” I guess it was an oversight during the somewhat chaotic production process during 2013. Possibly our modesty had lead us to believe that only a handful of people might ever play the game, and therefore proper leaderboards wouldn’t matter. When tens of thousands of people grabbed the game within the first month, we saw the error of our ways, and agreed to make amends.
Cheeky team cigarette at the back of the bike shed discussing leaderboards and lack thereof.
Again, our good friends at BlitWorks jumped in here, adding leaderboards to ALL versions of the game. We have held the Vita leaderboards back for technical reasons — but skaters will now be able to see where they place in the world, and more importantly against their friends on ALL Career Levels, Spots, and Daily Grind.
It really makes the tough work worthwhile seeing PlayStation gamers react so strongly to the announcements that the bug would be fixed, that we would add leaderboards, that the game would be cross buy and cross save on other PlayStation platforms. Its what keeps us going on those long, pizza fuelled days!
OlliOlli is out on PS4 and PS3 today. The game is 10% off (and 20% off for PS Plus users) for the first week.
Go get your grind on…
Sweet!
Cool, now less blog posts and more working to secure your network. I knew I should have bought TWD on PC instead. Twice within 72 hours your network has fallen victim to some pissy kids with nothing better to do. Hire some professionals FFS.
Great game that I plowed through on Vita despite encountering the infamous bug a handful of times. I knocked out everything except Rad mode. =[
Were any adjustments made to the timing of grinding/landing for the PS3/PS4 versions? I can imagine some adjustments was necessary since you don’t know what displays players are using and most TVs have a bit of lag (where as I imagine the Vita has virtually none). Excited to play this some on PS4!
I don’t think the crash is affecting such a small number of us, there were a lot of complaints upon release, and in the months and months that have passed since. I am one of the “0.5%” of users who had the crash happen almost every time the game loaded and I got underway playing. When it worked, for whatever amount of time that was, it was great and I had a blast. I got a lot less play time than I’d have liked or than the purchase was worth due to the fact that I just gave up on playing after a while. I appreciate the fix, but I would have appreciated it a helluva a lot more a matter of days or weeks from the release date, and not 8 months down the road.
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Will it be cross-buy? If so, that’d be awesome and would almost make up for seriously dropping the ball with the late update. If not, don’t think I’ll be dropping anymore money on a game that I just frankly do not trust or paying any more money to a developer that I have felt so publicly abandoned by. I appreciate the transparency with the bug and the problems- I read several blog posts where you acknowledged said bug (while also still marketing the game to new users)- but I was looking for action. I was expecting basic effing stability in a title I paid for, or at least a quick resolution if a problem was found. You let me down, roll7. You took my money and then you left me hanging.
Is there going to be a demo?
I also experienced the bug a couple of times, but fortunately not enough to make me want to give up on the game. Still, great game and thanks for bringing it to us (and the vita especially). I loved it and got all trophies in about a week and a half (not sure if I’m determined enough to do so again on 2 more consoles lol). That said, is it cross-buy?
Awesome. I don’t know why this wasn’t mentioned in “The Drop”. I bought OlliOlli for Vita, but never got around to playing it because I’m always playing on my PS4. Now maybe I’ll get to it sooner.
Congratulations on all of your success. I expect your success will be much greater now that your game is available to a much broader audience.
@Letters2Kay, I don’t think you really care about this game or if it’s cross-buy, or you would have read the post and found that out for yourself. Why should Mr. Bennett answer the same question numerous times for people when he’s already given a public answer?
When will the leaderboards be out for the vita? And are they cross platform?
I adore this game.
I played OlliOlli so much that I ruined the left joystick on my Vita to the point that it was impossible to consistently do certain tricks. I’m looking forward to finally finishing the game on PS4.
Can you confirm this is cross-buy and cross-save?
Awesome! Loved this game on Vita. I am also wondering if this will be a cross-buy title?
will it be cross-buy??
To everyone asking if this will be cross- buy: the blog post blatantly answers this in plain and simple English above. Frankly, if you’re too lazy or disrespectful to spend a few seconds reading or even scanning the article, you don’t deserve for someone to jump into the comments and answer it for you again.
OP:Thanks for taking the time to write this up, and it’s always nice to get some insight into development. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t horribly disappointing that it took over eight months to patch your game, but I’ll be happy to take it for a spin on the big screen later today (and redownload the Vita version now that it works properly). Is there any new setting to accommodate for the inherent lag with virtually everyone’s tv?
OlliOlli!! I can’t wait to dive back in and rage because I can’t get #1 scores anymore. :)
@Rockefellow. This post says it would be, not that it is, but whatever, continue being butthurt over nothing.
When do you plan on fixing the Vita version? Adding friend leaderboards?
I will not support this until you make good with the people you already screwed over.
The game crashed so much for me on Vita, it was UNPLAYABLE.
Buyer beware – This dev likes to release broken games.
Nice one.
Putting that old post at the top of the page to try and deflect the negativity it’s receiving from these comments.
Since it’s an old post, no comments are allowed on it. Pretty shady, also just goes to show that the PS3 and PS4 versions will probably be plagued with the same issues the Vita version has.
This game should have never happened in the first place. You released a broken product.
AWESOME, so that means we should see it in SCEE sometime next year then… ?
@MakoSoul: My apologies. I didn’t really account for people lacking basic reading comprehension.
Potential sequel name: OlliOlli 2: Ollier Than Thou.
According to the PS store, I no longer own OlliOlli for Vita. You guys better have this fixed by the time the store is officially updated.
I am glad to see this finally come to the PS4 on the psn store it still shows that I have to pay for this but this is supposed to be cross-buy since I bought this awhile ago for my PS Vita. I’ll wait a few and check back in the store later.
Hey there all, sorry to hear that some of you had issues on Vita! Just to let you all know, the game was patched and the bug was squashed in June and rolled out soon after. As mentioned in the post, we did everything in our powers to fix it before handing to BlitWorks! The leaderboards patch should come out today – so that will be oarsome for everyone. Re Cross Buy, this is handled by Sony (not us) – it should be working, as it says in the copy on the PS4 store, the game is Cross Buy – so it should work! See you all on the leaderboards folks!
Yeah, having the same problem as people above me. I mean, I like it just fine on my Vita, and I can do without a home console version, but it would still be pretty nice to play on my big TV, as long as I don’t have to buy the game again.
@23 Thanks for answering. I’m sure everything will be working okay as soon as the store finishes updating later today.
Roll7 made it clear that this game will be cross-buy as far back as June.
It’s one of the reasons I bought it back when it was on sale during the Summer Game Blast sales.
https://www.facebook.com/roll7olliolli/photos/a.571848542846468.1073741827.565976253433697/781884318509555/?type=1
Cross – buy not working? , I have the Vita version and when I try to download the PS4 version it wants to charge me again.
I own this game on Vita but I can’t download it from the PSN store without purchasing it again. =\
some of the most fun i’ve had on my vita. i’ll be keeping an eye out for not a hero for sure
though it was cross buy tells me to buy for 10.34 wth
^ It won’t even let current owners of the game download on PSN for Vita without re-purchasing it. >.<
This is such a huge difference from last week, where I could download Hotline Miami for PS4 at 10am PST. If only the cross-save actually worked….
I own it for the Vita but I can’t get it on my PS4 with the Cross-Buy feature, yikes. Hopefully this is fixed.
I own it on vita also. Cross buy isnt letting me download for free. Please fix.
I’m gonna give this a try again on PS4, since I already own it on Vita, but if it has the same control scheme, I’m not gonna get very far. My brain gets really mixed up, having “grind” and “land” be different buttons, but those buttons be the same as “preload trick” and “push” respectively. If grind and push could be placed on different buttons (like triangle and square for example), it would really help me have a lot more fun with the game, while still having a challenge. I understand the game was designed with this difficulty in mind, but even if leaderboards were disabled for people that wanted to customize their controls, I for one, would greatly appreciate it.
I read that the game is 20% off to plus users but it still displays 10% off only, was this a typo or is just not corrected on the store. Also I hope its cross buy.
CROSS-SAVE DOESN’T WORK
I want this AMAZING SOUNDTRACK on my player! Where I can get it?