Interviews

Interview: Sanco talks us through Mobile Club Manager's changing landscape

One year on, we find out about those new signings we were promised

Interview: Sanco talks us through Mobile Club Manager's changing landscape
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| Mobile Club Manager

When we reviewed Mobile Club Manager back in August of last year, we were left quietly impressed at the potential of Sanco's massively multiplayer casual footy management experiment.

The handsome chap on reviewing duty at the time concluded that, while it was clearly rough around the edges and a definite work in progress, “it could be challenging in the top half of the table with a few quality signings”.

Seven months on, we thought we’d check back in with MCM designer Emdad Rashid and find out how things have progressed, what his plans are for the future of the game, and what he thinks of the current state of the mobile games industry.

Pocket Gamer: How has MCM developed since our review back in August?

Emdad Rashid: The main changes we’ve made are the new training games. We realised that the main training games we did have - graphically they were not up to standard. So we went and got a different game developer to actually redo the images for us. We redid the games, and we think the games now are much better than the ones we launched with.

We’ve also introduced the 1-on-1 Friendlies, whereby you can play outside the fixtures with anyone else in the game. And we’ve found that to be really successful.

We found that a lot of users are playing that, and playing it quite a few times, because they know the person they are playing against and they don’t just have to just play the person they’re set to play on a given Saturday.

Does the game keep a record of your friendly wins?

What we’ve done in the friendlies is we’ve created a win ratio table - it’s kind of like a conker system. In the new friendly system, people might be playing the game just to increase their win ratio - I know I was!

We found that to be a really fun part of the game. People might find that more interesting than the actual league.

So I’ve had quite a few matches with different people who have been inviting me, and I’m taking my win ratio on the website – I’m quite high up on the table!

How’s the transfer element coming along?

The transfers are going well - I don’t think the version you reviewed had them in. That’s a really interesting part of the game. You can get alerts at any time of the day saying so-and-so wants to buy your player. You’re actually buying and selling from a real person, you're bartering with them.

What are your plans for MCM in the immediate future?

Now we’re putting forward our changes for the new season, for the '09/10 version. Building on the friendlies success, we’re going to build in friendly cup competitions where you can actually set up cup competitions with your mates. We’re also looking to build in friendly leagues so you can actually invite anyone else to join a league.

Another change we’re looking to make is that before, when you joined, if you didn’t do it at the beginning of the season, you wouldn’t play the full 38 fixtures.

What we’re doing now, with the feedback from the users saying that you might feel a bit left out if you came in a bit later on in the season, we’re building in that everyone who joins up to a certain cut-off point will pay the full 38 games.

For example, if they joined after ten games they’ll play the remaining 28 games on that schedule, but the ten games that they missed will be scheduled in mid-week until they catch up with everyone else in the league.

So what you choose to develop next is dictated by user feedback?

That’s right. We actually got our customer services to call up our users and ask them what they thought of the game and what they’d like to see in the game, which I think is quite rare in mobile gaming.

Looking at the website, it’s had quite an overhaul since we last checked in

Oh yeah, we redid the whole website as well. It was a learning curve for us, launching such a unique game. We learned a lot from the mistakes we made, so we’ve changed the website and changed the registration process.

For example, we did a lot of research into how customers can select their mobile phone - from an image rather than from a dropdown list. We think we have one of the best mobile phone selections on the internet - you might beg to differ!

Also we’ve changed our WAP registration process so it’s much more streamlined. There are just a couple of questions now that are asked.

I see you’ve added a shooting training game to the original three. What have you got planned next for training?

We spent a lot of time (initially) building the platform and building the architecture, we wanted to make sure that was right before we started to put extra features such as more training games in.

We’ve actually got another three training games close to completion: tackling, heading and reaction, which is like piggie in the middle - you’ve got four players around you and you have to judge where they’re going to play the ball and intercept it. We’ve also got Shot Power and Skills in the pipeline.

Has the tactical side been updated at all?

We haven’t actually updated the tactical side that much. We want to do that with caution because we don’t want to make it like Championship Manager and Football Manager, which are really daunting to new users. So we don’t want to overdo the tactical side, but we will include more options for managers in the future.

How are the results for 1-on-1 games figured out? Are tactics taken into account?

Well I’ll give you an example. The guy who is at the top of the win ratio league gave me a couple of matches. I actually beat him twice, then he beat me twice, I think, then I changed because I’m sure he was fiddling around with his team management, and that’s why he started beating me.

So I changed my team, moving from 4-4-2, and I beat him the next couple of games. It shows that the changes I made to my team affected the results.

It also depends on the team you’re playing against. It might be that your formation, just like in the real world, works against a particular team but against another team it won’t work.

Any other ambitions for expanding the MCM universe?

We’re almost ready to go Europe-wide. When we do, we’re looking to have MCM Europe competitions, where MCM managers will get to have cup competitions with managers in France, Spain and Italy for example.

Do you have any plans to bring MCM across to iPhone?

The iPhone is just another handset to us. One of the developers we went to to redo MCM does iPhone games and they said they’d love to do this for the iPhone, they’re really confident that it would be a massive success. The iPhone’s connectivity is brilliant, the marriage would be excellent.

And how about Android?

Sure, it’s just another platform for us.

Where do you think MCM stands in the current mobile gaming climate?

We have created something unique in mobile gaming. Mobile gaming is having problems at the moment with the iPhone and developers going over to it. Games have never really taken off on mobile, we’ve never really had unique games for it.

Mobile gaming has been stifled by the big players looking at the mobile space as “my little back yard” and really exploiting it. That’s why I think mobile gaming never took off.

But we really feel that we can create some unique games that cannot be played on any other platform - true massively multiplayer games that are always with you. There’s no other platform that will allow a game to be with your wherever you are.

Thanks to Emdad for taking the time to talk to us. MCM is available now from the official website.
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.