Rocket League doesn't have a story but we made Psyonix explain it anyway

At PAX West over the weekend, Steven got a chance to speak with Rocket League design director Corey Davis about something that's been bugging us for a couple years now: how'd a bunch of cars end up playing soccer?

In Rocket League, rocket-powered vehicles play a sort of hockey-soccer hybrid in futuristic arenas, and there's no clear explanation for any of it. We don't even know if there are people in the cars, or if the cars are autonomous, or maybe even sentient. And where do these matches take place? Who's in the crowd?

Steven did his best to get answers, but was ultimately stifled by unexpected tenderness. Watch that in the video above, and, spoilers, here's what Davis confirmed:

Rocket League "possibly" takes place on Earth.
It also takes place in "a galaxy far far away."
The people in the audience are not alive.
But they aren't ghosts.
Though they are the ghosts of our former selves.
They can feel "sometimes."
But they cannot touch.

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.