If you've ever seen children play soccer you can easily understand why the sport is known as the World Game. The barrier for entry to play football is nearly non-existent — many of the smallest children don't even kick the ball, instead simply colliding with it as they run around the pitch. It's the first experience with team sports that many people worldwide will have, and it sticks. At some level everyone understands soccer, because reduced to its simplest level soccer is just a series of collisions between legs and a big ball.

Rocket League taps into this elementary concept from its outset, and it's one of the keys to its massive success — even if it actually better resembles Ice Hockey.The superficial similarities to soccer are deliberate. The giant ball, the grassy fields and the giant goals all lend to the game's basic principle — to play Rocket League, all you need to do is smash your car into the ball to make it move. The skill floor is spectacularly low. Once a player understands how to make the car move, they can make the ball move as well. Games with new players always remind me of those children's soccer games, as players careen into the giant ball, happy enough to make it move without really caring exactly where the ball goes.

As the skill level increases, however, the game shifts away from its similarities to football and closer to Ice Hockey. With few players available on the field in Rocket League — most professional games feature teams of three — high level play focuses nearly as much on attacking opposing players as it does on the ball. Pros use the walls to their advantage, they take out defensive players to create a path to the goal and it's often shots that will just barely 'miss' the goal that are more dangerous than those on target, as the best players one-time a ball mid-flight after defenders have already committed to a save.

It speaks to the high skill ceiling the game has — the idea that a game should be easy to learn and difficult to master is a familiar idea, but with Rocket League it's demonstrably true. Where the skill floor has players just colliding with a ball, at the ceiling pros spend as much time in the air as they do on the ground. Anyone can make their car jump by engaging the rocket boosters that power their car. But the ability to make fine adjustments to your course while in the air acts as a massive skill differentiator, because while your rocket car might be simple to control on the ground, in the air it's another beast entirely.

The best players are able to exhibit as much control over their cars in the air as they do on the ground, and they can use that to create opportunities for goals that their less skilled opponents can't deal with.

For an esport it's a veritable slam dunk — almost anyone can understand the fundamentals of playing the game, and as a result they can recognise the finesse and skill involved in playing at a pro level. It's aspirational, because there's the sense that with time and effort you too could play at that level. It's the sort of thing other esports can lack sometimes. I watched all of The International 7 (as I do every year), beat all of my friends in the embedded Fantasy League, nailed just shy of half of my predictions (I thought Sand King would be picked more than Earth Shaker) and was heavily engaged in the tournament as a spectator. But I don't watch The International and think "I could do that". I would need to have played hundreds of hours of Dota to get to a point where I could even entertain such a notion.

And bear in mind, this doesn't rule out Dota 2 as a 'good' esport. Far from it — I will similarly never be able to dunk a basketball, but I buy an NBA League Pass every year. Dota 2 draws in spectators because it is constructed in a way that makes it utterly compelling, but even Valve recognises there is an inherent barrier to entry, implementing its Newcomer Stream to try to soften the transition.

I bring up Dota 2 because esports are in their (relative) infancy, and Dota 2 will continue being successful because spectators endeavour to make it so. Just as they have for League of Legends - which I also voraciously consume, even though I don't entertain the notion of my entering the OPL, let alone the World Championships. Rocket League, on the other hand, has a chance to attain mainstream success beyond that of its longer established contemporaries thanks to the aspirational qualities its skill floor and ceiling lend it.Another big part of its potential is its viewability. Those same elements that make it superficially easy to play make it simple to understand as a spectator, which can't be overlooked. It's a hurdle many games have encountered — one regularly overcome through fantastic commentary. The Overwatch World Cup used its panel of casters and analysts to explain the ins-and-outs of the basic gameplay and broad strategy involved in finding a path to victory, and they did it exceedingly well. Stalling out enemies might seem counter-intuitive in the moment, but a quick explanation of how it staggers the respawn timing of the enemy team — thereby buying time for the defenders — clearly illuminates clever tactics for viewers.

Rocket League doesn't need this — although it has fantastic casters around the world. It's easy to recognise what's going on in a game of Rocket League because its roots are deep in conventional sports concepts. The team with more goals is winning, and outside of that, the team with control of the ball has the advantage. Without the burden of needing to explain the basics, casters can instead highlight spectacular moments during games themselves. Thanks to the fine aerial control pros are capable of, these moments happen regularly. Players soar through the air, combine deft touches with great smashes and often construct goals out of what is best described as an alley-oop — a pitch-perfect pass across the map to a soaring attacker who volleys the ball into the back of the goal. Instead of trying to explain what Creep Score (CS) means or how it indicates advantage, casters can focus instead on the excitement of the game itself. Again, this doesn't make Rocket League a 'better' game, but it creates an advantage for the game in terms of mainstream accessibility which is hard to beat.

One disadvantage the ease of access might herald is a degree of staleness. Those core elements which make Rocket League so perfect might lead to a situation where the game feels repetitive to both players and spectators. This is inherent to esports — where regular sports see fatigue come through extended physical exertion, esports see fatigue come through boredom. And because esports don't feature a great deal of physical fatigue, it's possible to play dozens of rounds in a day — like a hyperbolic time chamber for the meta of the game. Whereas soccer might see grand tactical shifts every few years or so, Rocket League can see a similar number of professional level games occur inside of a week, and the evolution of the game speeds up accordingly.

It's a common complaint about esports — if you're not a fan of whatever the current on-meta play is, you will not enjoy watching it competitively until it shifts. Overwatch wasn't something I enjoyed watching during the "Three Tank" meta, but I like the "Dive" meta by comparison. And because Rocket League is fairly rigidly defined in its functions, if the meta evolves in a way which is boring to watch — or if it just fails to evolve beyond a certain point — Psyonix will have a hard time making balancing changes which affect the meta without impacting the broader nature of the game.

It's unlikely this will happen to Rocket League though. Metas evolve because they create a recognisable and implementable advantage within the competitive scene, and at most Rocket League's meta has so far involved changing car body types for a minute advantage — the equivalent of advances in basketball shoes over time. Team tactics, cohesion and communication combined with individual skill mean Rocket League will always be played differently from player to player and from team to team.

Thanks to a spectacularly low barrier for entry and a deceptively high threshold for mastery, Rocket League bears more mainstream potential than almost every other big name esport around to day. That doesn't make it better than other games, but it does make it one to keep an eye on as more teams like Team EnVyUs — or the Chiefs Esports Club here in Australia — acquire team rosters and move into the space.