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The next big game update

Rasmus Rønn Nielsen, The Dudes 22 May 2012, 11:44

Every now and then it is wise to stop and reflect on whether your current activity is the right one. We did that a couple of months ago. At that time, we were focusing on making an mobile app prototype (read more about how we do prototypes in last week's blog post). Should we continue working on this prototype, or could we spend our time on something more worthwhile?

Based on our own intuition and the feedback we've gotten from you guys via the proposals page, we set up a list of the most interesting ideas for future improvements:

  • Mobil app
  • Stadium editor, version 2
  • New match simulator
  • Youth academy

I'd like to tell you about how we decided which of these projects to work on.

Mobile app

The advantages of having a Virtual Manager app is pretty obvious. We use our smart phones more than ever. It'd be cool with a version of Virtual Manager designed exclusively for this format.

From working with our app prototype, we learned that it would require an enourmous effort to make a good Virtual Manager app. All features of the game would have to be visually redesigned and reimplemented. And preferably, we should make one implementation for each mobile platform (Android, iPhone, etc.).

We did some experiments with a mobile web app that could run on almost all smart phones. As expected, the product was not as good as it would have been had it been "a real app".

We considered hiring a consultancy company to make the app for us. We're actually still considering this. But we are hesitant because we know, that they'd never make the app with the same love and passion we would. And this would shine through in the final product.

We really want to make an app. But taking the enormous effort required into account, we suspect our time is spent better on other projects.

Stadium editor version 2

For us, it was obvious that a lot of people liked the visual update we did to the stadium system 4-5 months ago. We'd planned an improved version in which it would be possible to add roads, vegetation and a lot of other things. We received a lot of feedback on this idea on the forums and that made us doubt the idea. Some users, with good reason, said that the game would turn into a "building game".

We still want to do a version 2 of the stadium editor, but we have realized the benefits in term of increased gameplay isn't as great as initially anticipated.

Youth academy

Looking at the proposals page there is one clear favorite: the youth academy. We too believe that a youth academy would be a really cool addition to the game. But we haven't yet found a good design for this feature. There are several good suggestions on how to this in our Ideas/development forum but we don't think they are quite good enough.

The youth academy as a concept sounds like a really great idea. But if you don't have a concrete design which is fun an exciting, that doesn't matter. For this reason, we're still pondering how the youth academy should be.

New match simulator

Our current match simulator have been criticized by many. It has many shortcomings and we need a new and improved version. And considering that the simulator is possibly the most central part of the game, we really should prioritize this problem.

We're sure a new match simulator would make it more fun and interesting to observe matches in Virtual Manager.

Also, a new match simulator would eventually allow for more exicting potential features:

  • National tournaments (European Championship, World Cup, etc.)
  • Dramatically improved tactics system ("Change to formation B in 67th minute if we're trailing by two goals")
  • Live tactic changes

The current match simulator is programmed in a way that makes it relatively hard to make ongoing improvements. With a new modern simulator it'll be much easier to improve on a regular basis.

Making a new simulator would be a demanding task, but we think it is possible to do within a fair amount of time.

And the winner is...

It is never easy to choose what to focus on. Often, there are many exciting things to work on. In the above, we're just talking about a few of the things we have taken into account.

We decided to focus on making a new awesome match simulator.

This blog post is already too long, so'll stop here. I hope to write a blog post about our visions for the upcoming match simulator soon :-)