Transfers Keeping Managers Closer

Posted by: Mateusz Mucha on Tue, 08 March 2005 23:04:32 (1761 Reads)

What's the most noticeable aspect of massively multiplayer online games? The answer is as obvious and dumb as possible: many, many people co-exist in the same "world". While it's a great thing, it can also bring issues that are not really desired by developers and players. For example, with so many people around most of other players become simply anonymous providers of service. When you interact with them, you don't really treat them as real people, neither you feel a desire to know them better. They just buy a sword from you, sell a player to you, etc. Same happens to "in-game objects" (swords or players). They're like thousands of others identical or very similar swords and players. You got that particular one just because it was a good deal or it was on the market when you needed it. IT. Not "my beloved sword", not "Frank Bowman, my cool goalkeeper", but IT, this object that let's me hit a monster for 23-47 HP. Read this article to see how we're trying to change that.

Let's set "in-game objects" part of the problem aside for a while (I'll devote another article to it, possibly the next one) and concentrate on the "let's interact more" part. In comparison to mmorpg's, online football management games have one rather big disadvantage: most of interactive elements don't lie in the core of the game. You play the core on your own, meaning you don't interact with other people while performing team-orientated tasks (setting training, match tactics, etc.). You may even play the game without talking to anyone at all (given that you don't read and post on community forums, don't participate in various associations, etc.).

We strongly believe that a colorful community and frequent interactions are very important, thus everywhere we can, we try to encourage such behaviors. Transfer market is one of those areas where we can do it. Quick problem description: in all online football games that we've seen, when you want to acquire a new player, you click on different variations of transfer search engines, specify who you need ("show me players younger than X years old, with skill Y on at least Z level", and so on). It doesn't matter, who you buy from, who this player is and how long you're going to keep this. And what about solutions? Keep reading!

Direct transfers

To start, we treat search-based transfer market as some kind of a commercial organization - a middleman that connects sellers and buyers. That organization takes a certain amount of money on two occasions - when you place a player on an auction and when you actually sell him. Also, you need to pay some external fees when a player sells (let's call it "a player's and his manager's cut"). Imagine eBay - it works in exactly the same way. Buyer pays what he thinks the product is worth for him. Seller pays eBay's insertion and final value fees and shipping costs (he may require buyer to cover them, but that doesn't interest us right now).

"OK, sweet comparison, but how the heck is it different from other games?" you may ask. Wait a second, we're going in that direction. What would happen if we skipped eBay and made a deal directly with the seller? Of course no middleman would ask for his cut and - at least in theory - both sides would gain. And that's exactly what's new in our game. Having more money is one of the factors that make your team better than others. You will have more money if you choose to skip the market agency and look around for a suitable player. You need to talk to other managers, ask them for player's details (they're hidden to non-owners, but owners might choose to reveal certain player's details to a certain manager) and negotiate the price.

Let's assume that you reached an agreement with Mark, who is willing to sell you Frank Bowman for 500,000 €. Mark (who is the seller) clicks on "accept" and... we're not done yet! Here comes a tricky part. Some sad creatures find it funny and fulfilling to cheat in online games - they could create two teams and sell all players from one team to another for peanuts. So right after Mark accepts your offer, Mr. Bowman goes to the transfer organization's list with an asking price of 500,000 € + agency's provision. Let's assume it's 550,000. Now, if that's less than a fair price would be, someone will bid on that player, that's for sure. If someone bids for that player, a seller will get more than he would get if no-one bidded (550,000 + something more that bidder offered - agency's cut). If no-one places a bid, you buy that player and the seller only pays "player's and manager's cut".

It's a win-win situation. You pay less. Seller probably gets more money (because you don't want to risk being outbidded in the "auction" part of the process). You guys enrich game environment by interacting (looking around, asking, negotiating) and we, developers, are happy because our game becomes cooler :)