Pong Toss! Frat Party Games - Development

Development

Pong Toss! Frat Party Games was originally announced on May 21, 2008 as Frat Party Games: Beer Pong, and was intended to be based on the drinking game beer pong. It was developed by JV Games and directed by its Vice President, Jag Jaeger, and was released for the Wii's WiiWare download service on July 28, 2008 in North America and February 27, 2009 in Europe. The game was put on WiiWare due to the lessened development time, risk, cost, and the low size of the game. It was the first video game created in their Frat Party Games brand due to the drinking game's popularity. The purpose of the game was to allow people to play beer pong without having to invest hours into it. Jaeger noted additional advantages, which included a lack of disease and not having to set up or clean up the game.

The developers followed a common set of rules from beer pong while designing the gameplay. While the designers considered mapping the controls to a traditional game controller, they felt that it would be no fun if not developed with the Wii Remote in mind. They designed the game to not require the use of any buttons to play. One of the challenges was that beer pong players had a different throwing style, and that they had to find a "happy medium" to ensure that they did not have to add another level of complexity. To accomplish this, they conducted a study to analyze the throwing habits of more than 15 beer pong players to fix this problem.