I’m a big fan of sports management games; even for
sports I wouldn’t normally be interested in.
With that in mind I was very interested to see a new game on Kickstarter
– Sportball Manager – a sports
management sim based on a futuristic and fictional sport. I was luck enough to speak to the developers
of the game – Paralux – and got their
thoughts on the game, as well as advice for other indie developers out there.
Q. Tell us all
about your game
Sportball
Manager is a sports management sim that's based on
a futuristic, fictional sport. You take charge of a team from the bottom of the
league, build it into a championship contender by acquiring awesome players,
and try to stay alive (avoid being fired) for as long as you can.
Each franchise has different bonuses, like leaders
from Civilization, and you’ll have to
decide what kind of team to build. Do you want to min-max by specializing in small/quick
or big/bruising lineups? Or do you want something a bit more balanced?
You’ll build that team through familiar sports
concepts: free agency, trades, and an amateur draft. We've put twists on all of
those systems to make them more fun (and less like a plain simulation). In the
“draft”, you’ll actually be moving scouts across different regions of the
world, trying to sign prospects before your opponents. The free agency period
is condensed so it’s more strategic and doesn't drag on, and trading is much
more straightforward (rather than having a prolonged back-and-forth
negotiation.)
Along the way, your players and your franchise level
up, and you’ll add new skills and abilities that help you on and off the field.
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| Players Earning XP |
By creating a fake sport, we’re able to focus on
making the gameplay as fun as possible, rather than being tied to the rules of
a “real-life” sport. People can focus on building their teams and watching
their players grow into superstars, and not administrating tedious business details.
There’s more info on the systems and gameplay on our
Kickstarter page, so if you’re interested, check it out at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paralux/sportball-manager
Q. What inspired
you to make the game?
We’re big fans of the genre, and we wanted to make
something that focused on what we thought was the fun stuff, as opposed to
being hamstrung by having to mimic a real-life sport.
If you think about it, sports are basically the first
RPGs people ever created. You have a team of players (your characters) that
have to gain skills (level up) in order to win (complete quests.) Along the way
you have to overcome challenges, make strategic decisions, and decide on your
tactics, as well, in terms of what kind of team you want to have.
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| Skill Trees for the Team |
By the end, you have a story to tell about how you
finally vanquished your nemesis, or, conversely, how your plan was an epic
fail. But the best part of sports is that the story isn't linear, it's
cyclical. There are always new chapters as teams rise, fall, and then rise again.
There's nothing quite like finding an awesome prospect, watching him develop
into a superstar, and then having him ride off into the sunset and eventually
be inducted into a hall of fame.
Capturing all of that, along with a love of sports,
was our inspiration.
Q. How long has
the game been in development?
A little over a year.
Q. Have there been
any particular highs or lows in development?
Oh yes. There have been plenty of both.
Like a lot of indies, we've been living off savings. I
think that means the peaks and the valleys are both magnified. When you have a
setback, it can really feel disastrous. And when things are clicking into
place, and you feel like you're going to succeed in spite of the difficulties,
the temporary relief from that pressure makes everything feel that much better.
One example of a high was when we came up with the
idea for the "grace period," which is basically a failure condition. I was really excited. It helped the entire game design fall
into place, and that was a big kind of "A-ha!" moment. That lasted a
couple days before the grind set back in.
As for a low, there have been a couple times where I
thought we had a system design somewhat finalized, only to realize that it
wasn't going to work. I think we've redone the culture tree two or three times,
trying to find the right structure and progression. That one has been
particularly tough, and each time through has been harder, mentally, than
before.
Q. Do you have any
advice for other indie studios?
- Game development is a hard process. It's a journey. Try not to get too high or too low, because swinging between the two can be exhausting.
- If you've been slogging away in your office for a long time and feel down, come up for some air to help get re-motivated. Show what you have at the IndieCade East Show-and-Tell. Email other developers. Get feedback on some pre-alpha art or systems. Get active on Twitter. Anything. My impulse was to keep my head down and try to work as hard as possible, because there was always so much to do, but I think mixing it up would have ultimately been much better.
- Start doing your community building at least 6 months in advance of whatever launch you have planned (Kickstarter, straight to a full release, a Greenlight campaign, etc.)
I think that's the single most important thing I can
recommend. I've heard developers regret design decisions, launch decisions,
rushed planning, etc. I've never, ever heard a developer say they spent TOO
much time on community building and getting a bunch of followers.
There are a lot of people and sites in the indie scene
that promote first-pass art, rough screenshots, and things like that. Use them.
Talk to people. Build interest. Get as many fans as you can. People will start
to follow you, and you can build up from there.
Q. What are your
plans for the future?
In the immediate future, we'll be on Twitch.tv at PAX
East on Sunday from 11:45-12:00 to talk about the game. I'm really looking
forward to that.
For longer-term plans, realistically, we just have to
see how our Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns go, along with our launch. Those
are such big variables that it's hard to know what our next step will be. We've
talked about potential DLC and have a backlog of features we'd love to add, so
if there's enough demand we'd love to go down that path. If not, we might try
our hand at another game entirely, we might try to bring Sportball Manager, as it is, to iOS, or we might have to go back
into the corporate world to rebuild our savings, and try this again later. The
future is wide open.
That's both exhilarating and a bit scary.
Further Info
If you like the sound/look of Sportball Manager check out their:
