Would you play a new online footie manager sim?

Post by **cs4mps** » 23 Mar 2009, 17:26

Hi.

I was just wondering if there's still room on the net for new footie manager sim type games? I've been wanting to write my own sim and create a site for years but just never really got anywhere with it. I've started messing around with it again lately but just wondered if it will be worth all the work, in other words, would people actually play it?!

I don't know just how many there are out there at the moment, or all the features they offer, but I've got a few ideas I think will make the new game good, and hopefully stand out.

Any feedback appreciated!

Cheers.
C

Post by **Surprised** » 23 Mar 2009, 17:55

You are probably entering a pretty saturated market which makes iy tough to break in.
You will need to know all the best selling and most popular sim games there are (both online, PC and console) and know what makes them succeed, what makes them stand out. Then you need to know what key feature they are missing that would make them even better. These guys spend fortunes on R and D and market research to make their games a success. I'm sure there are features you can add that will take a game to the next level but I don't know what they could be.
What you need are patience, dedication, an understanding that all your work could count for nothing if a developer is ahead of you......and a lot of luck.
If it is your dream then go for it but don't expect quick success.

Post by **cs4mps** » 23 Mar 2009, 19:43

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not really talking about competing against all the big names, more of a hobby for me to run a league and develop my sim and site, but of course to do that I'd need people to sign up and participate! This would be free to play.

I'm not looking to implement all the features I can think of right off the bat, I'd like to get the basic features/functions in good shape and start from there, then build on it as I a go along, hopefully also building a community of players along the way.

A second question, something I've been thinking about, is whether I can/should use real team and player names? Like I said this will be more of a hobby site for me (to begin with at least), but I'm not sure whether I would be legally allowed to use real team and player names. I was thinking of maybe real team names (or slightly altered real team names?) and then create made up players. Is this something that puts people off when playing this kind of game online?

One of the reasons I was thinking of made up teams and players is that then it's kind of new and different, so you wouldn't have the usual suspects winning everything like they do in real life!

Anyway, just some thoughts going through my head at the moment, any suggestions/advice would be very welcome!

Thanks.
C

Post by **bloggie** » 24 Mar 2009, 07:42

Hattrick is the biggest sim football game on the net(next to the actual Footballl Manager) and has over 900,000 people playing from all over the world (Obviously your aim atm the moment is merely sub 100) plus they use made up names so there must be a legal block in using the real names.Plus the site users choose their own team name.You can pay a smallish fee to get some extra features but they add nothing to the gameplay so my team performs just aswell without paying that as oppose to its offspring Battrick,a cricket sim that I don't mind paying the small subscription to as there's a quite large community spirit built up there and it seems to maintain interest throughout though even there your team can still perform the same without paying.There's also Sunday League but you have to pay to get your team any good which puts a lot of players off considering they already have extensive advertising revenues.Trophy Manager is another that probably has the best looking interface of all of them but is dwarfed in playability terms by Hattrick.
As for features maybe less is more as the core method of play is what seems to maintain interest so I'd suggest a constant but fairly slow ability to improve the skills of your players and results to reflect the skills of aforementioned players.Also a transfer market seems to be a key attraction.Trophy Manager has the ability for very detailed stadium improvements but this seems rather unnecessary and rather disconnects you from your own team.Of course your one may be a very simple layout at first but as I said a constant slow linear team improvement ability seems to be the main attraction in these things plus results that resemble the skills acquired by the team rather than over random results that don't reflect the effort you have put in.All of them seem to have a dedicated forum also.You could out punch them by having a moving graphic of the actual matchplay but that would be quite a task and as you say you're only looking at the hobby aspect atm.

Post by **cs4mps** » 24 Mar 2009, 11:17

You're absolutely right, at the moment I'm thinking of one league with 4 divisions of 20 teams, so 80 teams to start with, and if it gets popular then maybe adding more leagues etc.

I absolutely agree with getting the core features right, and I will be working hard to get the match sim engine to really reflect the abilities of the players, the formations, tactics etc. I will also be starting with some kind of system for player development. As well as that I'm aiming to have a transfer market working, be able to do contract negotiations with players and maybe some other bits and pieces. I don't know yet about match graphics (I assumed you mean like a 2d type thing showing the pitch, players and ball?), that might be a little out of my reach at the moment, but what I am going to try and do is to have "live" matches, in that the matches will be simulated over 90 real time minutes, say at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. As well as having match reports (basically commentary of key match events), player and team stats etc.

I think that would be a good start, then I could build from there.

I wondered about allowing people to choose their own team names, but not sure how it would work if I want to start with 80 teams at first and allow people to apply for the managers job. Would I allow just the first manager to choose the team name? Seems a bit stupid to let each successive manager of one team change the name. Or would a manager sign up to the game, choose a team name and the players will be generated, so this would be a new team in the league? This way I would start off with no teams and would have to wait until 80 teams were registered before I could start the first season. What I'm thinking is to have 80 teams setup, once the league starts any team with no manager will be controlled by the computer (choosing formation, lineup etc.).

Well, for now I reckon I'll continue working on it, I've got most of my database structure up, written a fixture list generator and halfway through a random player generator. Once I've got something useful for anyone to see I'll post it up here.

Cheers!
Chris

FISO