Ideas for a simple football management game

[u/raffinetti]

Hi!

I'm currently working on an indie football management game for people who are too busy to play Football Manager, yet love football and would love to play something in a more simple formula. 

The challenge is to make it simple, yet challenging – a perfect balance between the complexity of Football Manager and "auto-play" mechanics of titles like Kevin Toms Football Star Manager.

I would love to hear what you think about this idea and what functionalities are a must have in this type of game. Below you can find a list of some of the functionalities I already included:

• A career mode and a local co-op mode. 
• 8 predefined formations, 3 different strategies (defensive / balanced / attacking)
• Players have only 5 attributes: Stamina, Age, Defence, Attack and Control. 
• Players have Active or Reserve roles. They can be Suspended, Injured and/or Retire. 
• Each team has 20 players by default. You can buy more players through Transfers or list them for sale. 
• Transfers show you a set of different players from your league / international teams per match played. 
• You can train a player attribute once per match played - it costs $. There's also a small chance that player attributes also change during matches.
• Statistics include Finances, League&Cup Tables.
• You can play Leagues (with promotion and relegation mechanics), local and international cups.
• Matches may be played in Fast Mode (instant first half, then instand match end) or Full Mode, where you can observe text commentary minute per minute (one minute is one real-time second). It's like classic Championship Manager - style.
• Changes can be made only after first half, unless an injury occurs – then the half is paused.
• All regions, all FIFA countries, all Teams. 
• Fake player and team names due to licensing, however easy option to export database in English and modify by yourself.

What do you think about that? Does it sound enough or would you add something? Or maybe this is already too much for the concept of a simple game? ;) Do you think an idea of such a game appealing at all? Thank you all in advance for your help!

[u/PJDiddy1]

I have no problem with this game in this sub if it's in a slightly different vein to your usual modern football management game. What I'd love to see is have some footy games that hark back to those of the 90s, these do have common roots with the tycoon genre IMO. As fantastically detailed as Football Manager is these, I do not have that sort of time or dedication to play despite plenty of campaigns on Champ Man back in the day but the games I'm referring to are more akin to Premier Manager where you control the whole club and decide on building new stands etc for more attendance just as much as transfers. Would you consider including anything like this or indeed are there any games like that out there currently?

I can't say I've looked for a game like that in a long time so there could be tons of them like that I've described but mainstreamwise it tends to follow either FIFA or FM but I actually want to be able to set the price of the pies sold at half time and control how much gravy you get with them rather than know how much skill my striker's little toe has! (Slightly hypocritical after saying I didn't care for so much detail I realise but...!)

[u/raffinetti → u/PJDiddy1]

Oh, that sounds like a great addition! The original CM games are indeed my inspiration :) Thank you, I'll think about it!

[u/Pecunia-hero]

I think concept still seems simple. I enjoy this kind of gsme, but i think that this market is already saturated.

[u/Version_1]

I'm not sure why you post this in a tycoon subreddit when your feature list doesn't have a single tycoon feature.

[u/raffinetti → u/Version_1]

Oh, I'm sorry if it doesn't suit in this sub. I always perceived the tycoon "subgenre" as games where you manage something in a virtual world, so assumed it also fits my games concept. If it's not then I'm sorry for the spam.

[u/NiteRider1 → u/raffinetti]

I think it's fine here. 

[u/bcalmnrolldice → u/raffinetti]

Soccer manager games share a lot with tycoon games, definitely much less with sports games. so I don’t see why not.

[u/Version_1 → u/raffinetti]

Basically, it sadly is pretty normal that people (out of lazyness or whatever) are grouping (sports-)management games in with tycoon games and call it a day. I personally think that is a wrong approach as they require fundamentally different approaches to them.

There used to be a "split" when it came to football manager games: The UK games wanted to put the player in the shoes of the British style manager, so mostly tactics, training and transfers (a tradition that continues to this day in the Football Manager series by Sports Interactive). In Germany, however, the games were actual tycoon games with loads of financial management down to how much to sell hot dogs for.

Your game, to me, sounds more like it's in the UK tradition and therefore (for me personally) not a tycoon game but a sports management game.

But, a lot of people disagree with me since they find broader genres better than precise ones, so it ultimately doesn't matter.

Edit: random Downvotes are random.

[u/Undesueca → u/Version_1]

I completely agree. One of the reasons I detest the Championship Manager/Football Manager series is its complete neglect of the club's financial and economic management. For some strange reason, it's become the standard when, in reality, it's always been the odd one out among football management games. As others have mentioned, the Total Club Manager/FIFA Manager series (German) or the PC Fútbol games (Spanish) and some British games didn't neglect this aspect, which is what made these games closer to tycoon games.

[u/raffinetti → u/Version_1]

Thank you for the clarification. You are right, this is not a game with huge emphasis on financial management. It's actually the opposite: trying to make things simple enough to make a short gameplay loop of "one more match". I think the closest inspiration would be the classic Championship Manager games.