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The release plan

Unfortunately there isn’t much to share with you guys at the moment. We’re currently working on the player animations and converting a lot of the designer sketches (haircuts, kits etc) to the unity engine. As I get screenshots that I can share, I’ll be uploading them to our Instagram page so make sure you follow that!

Dates to look out for

Something I can share with you is our high level release plan with some rough dates:

Mid November
Over the next few weeks we’ll be creating the assets to use for the Steam direct application. Steam direct (previously called Steam greenlight) is a platform that all new Steam games go on. The public can see upcoming games and vote/comment on games they like the look of. The most popular games are approved by Valve, so that’s when we need your help to get as many positive votes/comments on our page as possible! Don’t worry I’ll be spamming you guys when the time comes, so you won’t miss it.

Early December
The core functionality of the game will be complete at this point and we’ll be looking to create a press release, if we have been approved in Steam direct. There is a small chance we might be able to package it up and let you guys have a play around with it, but I’ll have to confirm nearer the time.

Mid January
Early access launch! This is dependant on the Steam direct approval, but we should be code complete by this point. Again we’ll need your help to spread the word and share with your friends. Once we do go live, we’ll start organising some tournaments on the forums for you to get involved in.

 

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Concept art sneak peek

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but don’t worry I come with gifts! Firstly, I’ll just give a quick update on what has been going on since the last blog post. As expected with a new team, we had some teething problems while getting everyone up to speed. Fast forward a few weeks and the team have really stepped up their game and you’ll be able to see the high quality art work they’re producing. We’ve got JIRA set up to track the development progress and the project milestones have been set!

So as the title suggests, I’d like to share some of the concept art with you guys. As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you provide and hope you like it! Some tweaks are still being made so these aren’t the final designs, but it should give you an idea of what to expect.

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Development kicks off

In my last blog post I announced the design document had been completed and shared some visuals. Since then, I’ve been working closely with two development companies on the implementation of these designs. Within a few days I received quotes from both companies and this is when things got tricky. It probably comes to you as no surprise that the first thing I looked at was the price. However, it’s important to look at more than just the cost. I’ve listed below the key points I reviewed before deciding which company to go forward with.

Cost | Importance: High

For a small start-up company, funds are limited and have to be used smartly. If we blow all our money on the development, our marketing will suck and we could have the best product but no-one will know about it! If both companies were equal on all other points, then we would obviously select the cheaper option.

Portfolio | Importance: High

Having a healthy portfolio of previous projects is really important to attract new clients. I think this applies to almost every industry, doesn’t it? As a client, it gives me much more confidence if they’ve “been there, done that”. With each game in their portfolios, I’m looking at 3 keys components:

  1. Look and feel. Mobile games are very popular at the moment, so it came as no surprise that both portfolios were very mobile heavy. From a design perspective, all of the games were visually appealing and had a professional finish. I felt both companies adequately proved they would be able to meet our design requirements.
  2. Multiplayer functionality. For me, this was the most important component. Having a framework to be able to support a large number of concurrent users is critical to Super Club Soccer. Every game will approach it slightly differently, but again I felt both companies were able to prove they could handle our requirements given their previous projects.
  3. Complexity. This is probably the hardest thing to validate, without actually playing the games they made. Our match engine is going to be complex, with calculations happening all over the place. Rather than spending days/weeks playing these games to understand them, I decided to spend some time reviewing customer feedback. If they’d only developed boring or repetitive games, people are definitely going to complain about it! Luckily this wasn’t the case and some of the games had over a million downloads. Panic over.

Understanding of the task | Importance: Medium

So you’ve managed to get a really low quote from a company with a great portfolio – happy days! But what if they’ve massively underestimated the task? Making sure the developers & designers are on the same page as you is crucial, so they structure the code correctly and you don’t have any additional charges during the project. It’s unrealistic to expect them to understand everything about your game before the project starts. However, you want to have confidence that they at least understand all the high level components of the game before handing over some money. To prove their understanding of the game components, both companies were happy to produce some documents.

Subject knowledge | Importance: Low

I think the importance of this varies depending on the genre of the game and the subject knowledge of the product owner (me). As I have been following football for 15+ years, I’m not so concerned if the developers aren’t that familiar. We will need to have suitable processes in place for me to review any football logic implemented, but that’s pretty normal for a product owner. As football is a “mainstream” sport, I’d expect some of the developers to be familiar with it anyway.

 

 

The final verdict

Given the points raised above, I’ve decided to partner with Juego Studios to develop the early access version of Super Club Soccer. They’re based in Bangalore, so we may be making a trip to South India at the end of the year! We’ll be aiming to complete development in early 2018, but look out for info on the prototype and alpha/beta releases later this year.

 

As always, you can reach me on the forums, Facebook or via email!

Forum site: forum.superclubsoccer.com

Facebook page: facebook.com/superclubsoccer

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Game design document

What is a game design document?

I’m not a game designer, but I’ll try to explain the purpose of the design document as best as I can! At a high level, it is basically a requirements document for the game you are trying to build. However, the document should also outline the “story” of the game, as well as unique selling points and concept art. In theory, a team of developers could pick up the GDD and build a complete game from it. In reality, the GDD may be updated multiple times during the development phase for a variety of reasons. This could be due to a lack of funding, new technology available or maybe missed requirements.

Something you probably won’t find in a GDD is exact values for lower level details (e.g. how many experience points a character gets for training his character). It would significantly increase the length of the document without adding much value. During the development phase, the dev team can work on exact values with guidance from the game designer and product owner.

What is the current status of our GDD?

It’s done! It took a little longer than anticipated, but we felt it was better to take our time and get it right now. Some small game companies are probably guilty of starting development too soon before the architecture of the game is decided, which could lead to major problems down the line. I am really happy with the documents produced and zGames have added a lot of value to the discussions. They actually delivered more than I expected, so we have some pretty pictures to show you rather than a wall of text!

Note: The images and icons in the visuals below are just examples and being used as placeholders.

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The forums

“The customer is always right! Well… most of the time.”

Why have a forum?

Having a public forum is a great way to communicate with past, present and future customers, especially in the eSports industry. If a large percentage of your user-base is complaining about the same thing, then you should probably listen to them. Even if it means a temporary price reduction or investing money into feature enhancements. Keeping your loyal user-base happy will pay off in the long run. However, having a forum can really backfire if you neglect the opinion of your customers. What was once a place for well thought out comments can quickly turn into complaints with no constructive feedback. The negativity quickly spreads and customers feel they have no voice to shape the game they spent so much time and money on.

The SCS Forums

For us, we have the luxury of getting customer feedback before the prototype is even built! As most of our users have come from Football Identity, they already have a clear idea of the game concept. By sharing their experiences of Football Identity with us, we can identify good and bad bits about their journey. Everyone’s journey was unique; How they joined, how they learnt the mechanics of the game and their interactions with other players in the game.

Each week we have a new forum topic in the feature suggestion section to keep users engaged and build some hype around the game! At the moment the forum is fairly quiet as we don’t really have anything to show for the last 5/6 months of work. Once we start building the prototype, then we’ll have more cool stuff to share!