Success of Trials Evolution due to player competitiveness, track ranking bug fixed

RedLynx managing director Tero Virtala feels Trials Evolution sold over 100,000 copies on Xbox Live Arcade day-one was due to the game's competitiveness instead of the "masochism" of trial-and-error gameplay.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Virtala said: "In almost all RedLynx games, if you strip away the outside elements and look at the absolute heart of the game, it boils down to a combination of a few key elements.

"It's like in real life when you start practicing something very physics-based, like tennis or billiards, there is no limit how far you can develop your skills. In Trials, it's also about your own true skill, not the skill of your avatar or game character.

"The game is always showing you your friends' times, and that is incentive for you to immediately get back into the game and try and beat those scores," he said. "This time around, we even have your friends' runs showing in the game as dots bobbing ahead of you. It's amazing what a little competition can do as an incentive to keep people playing."

Competitiveness aside, the physics-based game contains "very little limitations," and with goodies such as multiplayer and the Pro Editor allowing for player-created content keeping folks interested, it's no wonder game sales are approaching 500,000 units.

Meanwhile, a Track Central fix addressing an issue with "user-rating balance for player-created tracks," has been fixed.

"Now the rating scheme better takes into account the number of votes given and therefore those tracks with lots of excellent ratings given will appear higher than those with only a few," the firm told Eurogamer. "We'll continue to work on this and other issues."

Other fixes will be addressed with the game's first title update.