Footium Second Half 2023 Update

Summary of the last few months

The Footium Team has been hard at work since we released the Half-Time 2023 Update in Mid-July. In that time we have:

• Made significant progress on tackling the backend difficulties outlined in the Half-Time Update article
• Hosted 2 playtests with 180 users (the second having absolutely zero match crashes for the first time ever!)
• Received great feedback through these playtests and made adjustments to UI/UX, changed the game’s balancing (ongoing!) and fixed a bunch of bugs based on the feedback received
• Redesigned, built and are currently testing Team Mentality
• Rearchitected the web3 elements of Footium to make them more standardised and secure following Audit feedback
• Improved our own testing infrastructure and processes, allowing us to iterate much faster
• Outlined the necessary work in order to get Footium in a launchable state

Detailed Updates from each area of the Development Team

Update from our Back-end Lead, Nick:

“We are excited to share significant progress from the backend team as part of our ongoing development journey. Since June we’ve worked hard to enhance stability, scalability and security. We have faced numerous challenges, including general stability issues, match simulation limitations and API scalability concerns. We’ve focused on these critical areas and we are pleased with our progress towards our objective of a stable and scalable game platform.

Most notably, we’ve undertaken an overhaul of the match simulation architecture, equipping it with the tools it needs to scale more effectively. That’s not all though as we are currently addressing the areas of concern in the API along with other facets that impact the overall scalability, stability and security of our backend. Furthermore, we’ve streamlined our developer workflow and tools to accelerate issue resolution and product development velocity. Your continued support and feedback are invaluable in our effort to create a great football gaming experience.”

Update from our Lead Game Developer, Archie:

“The exciting part of the last few months for us has been getting the game back in the hands of users — It’s always very rewarding and motivating as a development team to start to see the excitement people have to get their hands on your work! Despite initial confidence in balancing during internal testing, the playtests revealed differing opinions within the community. These tests not only spotlighted balance issues but also unearthed system bugs and errors, such as condition decay and incorrect statistics which are all being worked on.

Our current simulation handles 55 unique match events, all with their own outcomes and handing, we support 23 formations with 14 player positions. A full start-to-finish simulation of the match takes 12 seconds and yields a full 90 min experience, which we accelerate to display to you within 30 minutes. We now have more complex set pieces, we have a referee who manages procedures and makes decisions about when it’s valid for substitutions to occur or stoppages in play. We’ve also been establishing a more robust test framework, allowing for more detailed and complex. We’re reintroducing features like “Mentality” and experimenting with the user interface to better support managerial decisions. The focus is on helping managers make the correct decision rather than telling them what the correct decision is; the data from the playtest indicated to us quite clearly that even the most active users were frequently making decisions that reduced their chances in a match rather than improved them.”

Update on Front-end & Web3 from our Front-end Lead, Jasper:

“At the outset, our team was composed of three dedicated frontend developers. However, recognising the evolving needs of our game project, we strategically reallocated some of our members to lend their expertise to other crucial areas. But rest assured, this hasn’t meant any stagnation on the frontend side. After conducting a playtest of the new live match page, we received your feedback loud and clear. It became evident that a solely text-based interface wasn’t meeting expectations. In response, we undertook a comprehensive overhaul to ensure users could easily interpret and engage with the content. The revamped design received a notably positive reception, which spurred us on to refine it even more in the weeks that followed.

Additionally, we noticed a recurring theme in your feedback: the need for a fluid and user-friendly mobile experience. Acknowledging this, we channelled a significant portion of our resources into enhancing the game’s mobile interface. Our goal has been to ensure not just an aesthetically pleasing design but also guarantee swift load times and peak performance, catering to users who wish to engage with the game while on the move.

Our work in the web3 sector primarily focused on two main areas. First, an external review identified some potential vulnerabilities, which we promptly addressed. A follow-up review is imminent to guarantee the utmost safety of your assets and rewards.

Additionally, as previously noted, we chose not to develop our own transfer marketplace. This necessitated a shift in our asset management strategy. Previously, there were “escrow” contracts that held your Player NFTs rather than them being in your wallet. We’re transitioning away from this, ensuring that both Club and Player NFTs are directly held in your wallet. This move has streamlined our smart contracts, making them more standardized and minimising the potential for.”

Team Reductions

Over the last few months, we have let go of a few members of the Footium Team. This difficult decision was made to give ourselves the strongest financial footing possible in the difficult fundraising environment we are facing right now.

We have a really strong vision for what Footium can become, and it is clear that our investors and community really want that vision to come to life. In order to achieve this, we need to put ourselves in the best possible situation to succeed in delivering this vision.

Our eternal thanks and gratitude goes to Simon (Design), Akin (Front End Developer), Manfredas (QA), Matthew (3D Artist) and Samesh (Backend Developer), all of whom have helped shape Footium into what it is today. We wish you all of the best for the future and hope to see you on the pitch for Footium’s first season!

Footium’s First Official Season

Time to look towards the future — We are closer than ever to all Footium Clubs receiving their squads and the first season of Footium kicking off!

There are still some integral parts of the game that still need to be developed before we would be ready to take that step, which are summarised below:

Whilst we are rounding out the final work before the first official season, we’ll continue testing the game and getting user feedback through Playtests like the recent Uruguay and Italy ones.

In future playtests, we will likely continue changing the formats, size and speed of these playtest in order to get targeted feedback in certain areas that is most valuable for us. We appreciate everyone who has participated in the recent playtests and given feedback and raised bugs, it is incredibly valuable for us as a team!

In terms of when the First Official Season of Footium will kick off, it is difficult for us to give exact timelines due to the complex nature of the product and unpredictable nature of game development. Additionally, the list of tasks above outlines what we see as necessary for the game to be in a ‘launchable state’. If we get to this point, and user feedback + data point towards needing X feature or Y technical improvement to enable a good first season, we would need to make a decision on including this in the product prior to the first season beginning.

We appreciate that this kind of information isn’t very helpful for you as users, however in the past we ambitiously committed to timelines which weren’t achieved for various reasons, and is a mistake we don’t wish to make again.

What we can give you more visibility on is what we are working on currently, what is up next and how we are reacting to your feedback, as we have done above and will continue to do through bi-weekly dev updates and twitter spaces answering your questions and updating on progress!

Post-First Season

As mentioned above, our vision for Footium is very strong, and goes far beyond what the first season of Footium will begin with. Think of the first season of the game as the foundations for what Footium will become in future. Our primary focus following the first season will be delivering new features to the game, alongside fixing any major bugs and technical issues.

Our original goal was to get to a feature set we believe to be good enough to begin the game with, kick it off, and continually improve the game + add more features indefinitely. This is still our plan, and we are all very excited to get the game going so we can move onto some of the fantastic ideas for features we have had internally, as well as gathered from community feedback!

When adding new features after the game has kicked off, we will ensure that these are communicated with good notice in advance of a season beginning, as well as testing any new features/balance changes rigorously before they go to the live game.

It is likely we will even continue doing playtests for particularly large changes, to ensure that users think it is a positive addition that works well and gives them value!

Playtest

Looking shorter term, our current plan for the next playtest is to:

• Continue working on the match experience to try and find a sweet spot of control which marries vision with user experience. Areas we are considering are:
• Inclusion of mentality (selecting from Ultra Defensive to Ultra Attacking) for its first public test
• Update the UI to assist managers in making better decisions
• Continue iterating on the game’s balancing across variance and condition impact
• Fix all major bugs that were identified during the last playtest, as well as some more minor bugs
• Keep the desires of testing clear & not distract the important feedback we need through things like prizes

A Few Final Things

API Changes

First up, a huge shoutout to all of the incredible builders within the Footium community! Your creativity and drive add so much to the Footium ecosystem, some of the tools including deeper analytical tools into squads and goal notifiers have been amazing to see alongside playtests. Alongside the scalability development, we have been doing load tests and security tests, with a keen focus on our API.

**Through these tests, we have identified certain areas that require attention and improvements to ensure the safety and stability of our platform — this means there will be some changes in how the API is structured and accessed. While our aim with these changes is to boost security and stability, we will also aim to empower builders again in the future and continue to build on top of Footium, as we have seen so far! We’re all ears and looking forward to navigating these changes together, ensuring our community remains as tight-knit as ever.

Layer 2 Migration

Over the last few months we have been in discussions with several Layer 2 blockchains (scaling solutions on top of Ethereum Mainnet, where Footium Clubs are currently located). We have always intended to launch Footium on a Layer 2 due to the faster transaction times and lower fees for on-chain actions, making the game more seamless for our users!

We have now made a decision on which Layer 2 blockchain we will be launching Footium on! In the coming weeks we’ll be communicating more around this, including where we will be moving, why we have made that decision, and what it means for you as users (but don’t worry, there’s nothing you need to do as users!).

Transfer Market

Whilst we originally had planned to build our own transfer market specifically to our own requirements, we’ve recently decided that this is an unnecessary undertaking for now given the availability of great marketplaces throughout the web3 space. For at least the first seasons of Footium, we will be integrating with an external marketplace (to be announced!) to enable us to begin the first season of Footium as soon as possible.

In terms of a change to the user experience, this will mean that when looking to purchase a player on Footium, you will then be redirected to that player’s page on our integrated marketplace, where you can place a bid. You’ll also be able to list players for sale on the marketplace.

Player Attributes

Another decision we have recently made is to remove player attributes that aren’t utilised in the match engine from the game (meaning most of the current player attributes, such as shooting, passing, ball control etc.). It became clear through the playtests that these attributes that weren’t directly impacting the match engine were a source of confusion to users.

Player attributes were in the game for a few reasons:

• Player generation (player’s rating in certain positions was defined by their attributes)
• Player growth (player growth currently works based on individual attributes increasing through age and experience, but has not been in public playtests thus far)
• A future intention to make them impactful in the game engine as well

As the inclusion of individual attributes impacting specific events within the match engine is not something we will have for the first seasons of Footium, we’ve decided it makes sense to remove them for now in order to save confusion for existing and new users.

Message from the Co-Founders; Jordan, James & George

First up, a straightforward ‘thank you so much’. We recognise things have taken a bit longer than anyone wanted, including ourselves! Our goal has always been clear: to create a football management game that resonates with true fans. We’re not just designing a game; we’re crafting an experience we’d love to play ourselves.

Your input, your suggestions, and your genuine enthusiasm have been invaluable. You’ve been more than just players to us; you’re collaborators in this journey. Your feedback has often served as a guide, ensuring we stay true to our vision and to what the football community wants. This community is truly one of Footium’s strongest assets and we couldn’t do it without you! We’re absolutely committed to delivering a genre-defining game that we and you can all be proud of.

Thank you for your continued support & passion for Footium.

Final Words & AMA Tomorrow!

Thank you for sticking with us through this comprehensive piece. Given its depth, you may understandably have a number of questions and thoughts, so we’ve scheduled an AMA session tomorrow at 6pm UK Time on our official Twitter, featuring members of the Footium team.

We encourage you to channel your questions to the newly-opened AMA channel on our Discord server. For those who can’t make it live, rest assured, the AMA will be recorded for later viewing. As always, the whole Footium team remains extremely dedicated to keep moving forward with this game, pushing boundaries and elevating Football Management Gaming to unprecedented heights. Stay tuned and thanks for sticking with us on this journey!