Logging in and off to “our” precious Powersoccer website, I couldn’t help but notice that the number of new teams created AND the number of games played are increasing exponentially. Here are just some observations from yesterday’s growth:
00:02 : 3 new users
00:38 : 438 new users
10:00 : 3874 new users
13:00 : 5678 new users
15:00: 7890 new users
17:00 : 9143 new users
19:00 : 10956 new users
21:00 : 13531 new users
23:00 : 17654 new users

The correlation between the number of games played and the news teams is, even without a statistically based analysis, clear. More teams are created, leading to more played games. A quick browse through the forum and a quick browse through the gamerooms, the latter strictly speaking against my religion – for a substantiated article, I am prepared to go at great length – I however notice that most of the players there are not the new players but mostly the old members, who have been around for weeks, months and in some cases even years. Could we conclude that the retention of new users is high, even too high?
Surely it cannot be linked to appalling gameplay because that is not the case. It can not even be linked to the fact that you only have a 24 hour “free trial” period, because the basics of this game are completely free, at all times. Perhaps an explanation is that users are perhaps overwhelmed by the beauty of the game but feel a bit lost: nobody to talk to, just all alone in a room. If that were the case, the following recommendations could help:

1)    Create a “new user” forum section
It is hard for new users to immediately jump in the forum of the big boys. Some are probably scared by the details of the discussion or unaware of all the events that preceded their arrival and they hastily conclude: this is not me! This is not where I belong!
In nearly all of these cases they are probably right. It must not be joyful if you, as a new member, have to engage in discussions you basically have no clue what they are about. Who on earth is Sipwell? And why is everybody happy that Powdersnow returned? What is a token and why is everybody so fixated on badges?
You might be seen as a noob, a fool even and quickly abandon the game altogether.

A solution might be to have a “new user” forum section – albeit with a more appealing name – which would be limited to all the low levels. No big boy should enter their secret kingdom (apart from Forum Admins obviously), where they can exchange experiences about their first days here, ask questions to new users or look for new friends. There is nothing more fun then growing in level with somebody else. All of us have, in the strife to be level 99, had different competitions to reach level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, … up to level 99 (cf. infra). I lost my race to be the first Belgian level 99 with only a few weeks yet I had beaten that particular user in our race to level 80 and 90 (I was the first Belgian to accomplish that).

A “new user” forum section could create a sense of belonging and an important impetus to stay and to spend tokens on this fabulous game

2)    Who are my peers?
Looking for friends in an environment where you cannot have personal contact at first is rather scary. How do you go about? What do you do? Do you step up to someone and start to talk? But who? And why him and not that other user? So far the community fails to foster “relationships”. All of us had to find our own way into this game… and most of us ended up talking to an admin and becoming friends with one (no surprise, then, that admins have the largest collection of friends). It takes some dedication and something nerve to make friends here in this game… Perhaps only the real “pushers” stay and those naturally a bit shy – yet completely into the game – leave.

Why not create a low level pool of users where you can see who also recently joined this game and who might interest you? Based on location (country), age and team name. If you have changed your team name to “Chelsea”, it would be nice to see who else has named his team “Chelsea” and who is fairly close to your own level. You at least have one opening line: “It was a good game of Chelsea, the other day, wasn’t it? My name is John, by the way.” It would be nice to see which countrymen also joined and perhaps start talking in your mother tongue about the game…

The internet is abundant with fora on one specific theme or a general one. Friendship is fostered there. People who only have met online start to engage more frequently with each other, start to feel at home… and want to stay and enjoy all the perks of this game. Powersoccer should take that step too.

3)    Races
Building on that idea: why not creating a pool of users (of the same country or region) to start a race to a specific target? Be it level 20, 100 goals or 15 victories. No strings – or prizes – attached but just giving users the possibility to engage with somebody they did not know before. Friendship might come to be established or it might not. At least the users have set their first footsteps in this game accompanied by someone else. It surely leads to friendly competition and is less distant than the current official matches where you are paired up with a for you unknown user.
If we are somewhere new, we are looking for easy markers and things we feel at home in immediately. Something distant, neutral and impersonal – although it becomes very attractive and very personal later on in the game – as official matches probably aren’t the best way to keep users here. You don’t ask from little babies to run a marathon minutes after they set their first steps, do you?
The idea of races, where you are paired with a fixed (or perhaps a number of fixed) users – not that you necessarily only can play games against him or her, but that you can keep track of that user during your first days around – might be a more starter-friendly deal. The career mode has so far proven its absolute qualities and it is a fabulous way to adapt to the game. The official matches however plunge you into a reality you aren’t adjusted to at first.

These came out of the top of my head. Probably there is more but duty calls

I think of myself as a butterfly. Not only because I am extremely elegant and have bright colours that astonish everybody, but mainly because I never stay in one place for long. I fly around with a clear goal – live my life in the best way possible – just like butterflies go from flower to flower to live their lives in the best way… If I review my life so far, I see that I have done many things (completed few) and that a long engagement was fairly uncommon. True, I have worked in the same place for the last 4 years but then again: my job consists of change on a daily basis. Repetition didn’t happen often and every day posed new threats, challenges and opportunities.
My engagement with Powersoccer has however put a series of question marks behind the “butterfly thesis”. Today I celebrate my second year as a member of the Powersoccer community. If all goes well – and I don’t see why not – I will celebrate my second anniversary as Master Assistant of this game March 1 2010. Am I turning into a bee? How else can we interpret the fact that for the past two years I have been returning to the Powersoccer colony? How else can we interpret the fact that I spent time, energy and above all brain cells to make the community stronger? Isn’t that the behaviour of a honey bee who flies out to collect nectar in order to produce honey at home, in the colony?

I guess it is. Then again, I don’t regret being turned into a honeybee. Those are social creatures who live and die in a friendly and communal society. I guess it explains why I am hooked. It also explains why I am willing to buy tokens to gear up my players, to hire coaches and to go wild on a hairstyle or a good-looking cleat. Powersoccer has brought me more than “fast fun”. I haven’t walked the path from excitement to boredom. I have invested time and energy and I have been given much more in return: friends, unforeseen experiences, laughter and above all the feeling that I am part of something special, a fabulous online community.

A famous dictum says “Standing still is moving backwards”. If a system does not evolve, it will disappear. Think of Soviet Russia. Research has shown that it did not disappear because the magic worked out (the revolution was made not by the people but by the power), it disappeared because there was no magic left. The system got stuck in the late seventies and didn’t evolve anymore (Ironically the Soviet Union was brought down with a fax; the system itself was too late to respond to that “novelty”). The dictum also explains (partially) why Chinese communism seems to survive. Throughout its recent history, the Chinese government has radically rethought its goals and its ambitions. China will have a system of high speed trains in the next years and is already, both secretly and openly, researching tools to block climate change. Most Chinese companies think ahead, only those who manufactured goods for the West – cuddle bears, clothes and other commodities – perished in the recent global crisis (the possibility to adapt is also the reason why the West fears China nowadays: not because it has the largest number of people on this planet but precisely because technological evolution is a clear ambition of the Chinese government).

Of course, a national system is not a game or an internet page… But is the dictum correct for these too?
For sure. The internet has seen in the past many bubble programs which were a huge hit at first – Second Life probably being a case in prime – but burst quite soon afterwards. Mostly the cause was… standing still. Currently we see some “walking dead” online: the aforementioned Second Life is now a deserted place. Hardly anyone – apart from some die hard fans – still owns an avatar or walks around. Second Life looks like all the cities around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor: there is proof of a past society (houses, goods, …) but everything is abandoned. Websites like myspace or twitter are equally doomed. Although the idea in essence is good, it leaves limited margin for “revolution”. Some features can be added, some inherent problems can be fixed but the “been there, done that” is always luring around the corner. People will get bored with the quazillionst twitter message from their absolute hero – you should try it: it is tremendously boring after a while – and they will look for new ways to express themselves. Somewhere in a backroom a tech geek is preparing the next revolution… to die out 5 years later.

Our beloved game does not fall into the “standing still” trap. Every five months or so a major update is launched. Quite amusingly, every update screen never fails to mention: “The most significant game update in our history is almost here.” They kept promise every time. Site radically changed. The gameplay radically changed. The forum radically changed. Features were expanded (from leagues over clans to now the career mode). It is almost as if you aren’t allowed to get bored. Once you get used to something (and you develop patterns of playing and certain stereotypes), it changes. The comparison with real life football is striking. Although there is a certain order in the quality of teams – Real Madrid will never demote – every new league start is a fresh start: new players, new opportunities and new threats. Powersoccer is just the same. Every update is a new start.
In the past couple of hours, I have been exclaiming “ooooooooh” and “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” all the time. Couldn’t get any work done. Curiosity forced me to be in Powersoccer. I honestly think I would have given a finger if somebody told me “give me your finger or I will pull the plug”. The website got an extreme make-over, gameplay got a radical update – making some actions less comical – and a new career mode was launched. We are given some months to adjust and then probably another radical change will be our part again.

The system evolves, the system survives and more than one hundred thousand people can continue to live the dream.

The development blog seems to be abandoned. The last blog post was one by me. You could interpret that as a very bad sign, namely that crew couldn’t care less about blogging about its endeavours and above all ‘parties’. You could (and should) however interpret that as a very positive sign and you should know the story behind the absence of blog posts. And that is what you are about to read.

In early summer when Sweden is hitting its peak 15° C/58° F and the rain goes from heavy rain to moderate rain, many crew members take their holidays to lose all the fat they gained in the months of sitting behind their computer screen making this game better and better. It is stated in their contract that if they have on July 1 an weight increase of 12 percent they have to start working out in order to become healthy again. Yes, dear readers, the owners of Powersoccer are well aware of all the scientific literature on the correlation between overweight and productivity. Thus, all crew members – with the exception of the ever slim shaolinda – need to lose a certain percentage before they can re-enter the Powersoccer premises: a guard by the door has a specially designed weight scale to calculate how many “fat” – thus not weight in itself – they lost. If it is not sufficient, the crew member is sent back home with a specially designed work out program. Rumour has it that our good friend Powdersnow, who is known for his exuberant dinners– he got kicked out of a “all you can eat” diner when touring the United States of America with his band Surreal last spring – is still busy with his weight loss program and has his exam on Monday the 17th of August. Hence the complete absence of activity on this blog on their part.

As for me, I just was too busy working in my real life job. I have A-grades in procrastinating, slacking but also in making deadlines with work that blows you of your feet. And that is just what I did. I worked hard, all day and all of the night…

… wait a minute! Wait a minute! I just recalled that some of the crew members are so slim that you could pull them through a key hole! No way they could reach the 12 percentage of weight gained level! What have these guys been up to then? Our slim heroes?

The answer is very simple, dear readers: they have been working all day and all of the night on an improved – and that is the right word for this change – version of Powersoccer. I am so glad my deadline is over (and that I met it) because Powersoccer will be where you can find me… all day and all of the night!

Attentive readers of my and shaolinda’s posts on this blog have probably noticed from time to time a mainly played animosity towards a certain character named Powdersnow. That animosity – but especially the show especially the Marx Brothers are giving – has its root in old stories and long forgotten battles. Unfortunately for the named Powdersnow, I have a horse’s memory. We can forgive but we will never forget. If you are interested why Powdersnow nowadays is known as Dodo Pow or want to know why Shaolinda is a Goddess with her own high-priests and followers (Frogodo, the latest crew member, always washes her feet when she enters the office), I suggest you browse to the Marx Brothers blog and read up. Twenty people devote time and energy to write the greatest fabrications, exaggerations and PS-related stories. This official blog will not be used to say anything bad about Surreal*, the “who the hell?” clan Powdersnow was presiding and still mentally leads. I want, briefly, to discuss clans in itself: their goal, purpose and reason of existence.

Clans are in my view institutional oddities. They were created long before Powersoccer embraced them – crew members luckily have plenty of moments of vision – officially as independent, unofficial gatherings of people. If you were to command or create a clan, you needed to create a blog, have four members and write “we exist” in a specific thread in the best place on earth: the powersoccer forum.
It was only in November last year when clans were created in Powersoccer itself. Clans were bands of brothers fighting for clan ranking points and the overall honour of their clan (one could state: “as Surreal hardly played clan cups, they hardly had an honour”). As clans became official and gained a purpose (to be the best, the loudest or the most solicited, the least active), they became a tool for creating a sense of belonging as well. You prided yourself on being in a specific clan and you prided yourself on your clan mates. You upheld their honour in one on one’s clan cups and got to know each other better through the secret clan fora. Or you could do none of those things at all and call yourself an active clan, Surreal as that may sound.

Powersoccer becomes – and this is the main point of this article (yes, I have a clue) – through its institutional oddities ‘familiar’. You start to know all the household names. You start to like their characteristics (or dislike them). After a while, you get used to in real life absurd sentences like “Marx Brothers Clan is one hell of a great bunch of guys. Boy, did they kick Surreals’ ass – sorry for the word – badly” and you start to feel at home. Powersoccer becomes a family, a nation even, where there is shared belonging. We all talk Powersoccerian by now. We all talk about clans, tokens, MAs, PSE and many more things. We all know ATG, Imperium, Colony of Slippermen, Marx Brothers, TVST (and a tiny minority also vaguely recalls something called Surreal – please don’t shoot me if I misspelled the name). As this is a game played by thousands and thousands of people, that is one great achievement.

* A big thanks to Bigdaddyat for retrieving the link to their clan page. It was a bit dusty but we cleaned it and post it here.

Belgium is known for many things. Chocolate, beer, fries (mistakenly called French becomes they were served in British noble houses by French cooks and not seen before), pretty women (sometimes after a couple of the before-mentioned beers), sprouts and waffles but we are also quite successful in the art of movie making (the brothers Dardenne who occasionally win the Golden Palm of Cannes Filmm Festival) AND we are rather successful at surrealism in all its forms. The running joke is that Belgium, politically speaking, is actually something surreal… as you are probably all ignorant or uninterested creatures, I will not dwell on that… but you all heard of René Magritte, the world most important painter if you scrap the odd-500 top painters out. (the fact that a realist like Powdersnow actually chose that for his clan is “surreal” from our point of view (cuckoo as we might define it) but completely illogical from his point of view but that is a totally different discussion).

As always, I needed a rather long introduction to get to a basic point: the following video. When you are currently not able to play powersoccer to make you feel a bit better in these dark and lonely days, just watch the following video. It was made by a Belgian and it will give you a smile (and in some cases laughter) and an overall feeling of joy. Yes, we Belgians tend to bring joy and laugher in your pessimistic and boring life. That is why we are so adored!

Enjoy:

watch?v=jedd2FiZTqM

Note: the movie was shot in the tram of Sipwell. I take that tram to work and back home every day. It does happen the tram is laughing at something, so the film has, although dramatized, a real core.

Note 2: yes, I am the typical Belgian. Where ever there is fun to be made, there you can find sipwell

Ladies and gentlemen,

take a look around you. Collect some friends and family around you to face the last Ordeal. The End is near. Very near. When I logged in this afternoon on the Powersoccer website, I was astonished, shocked even, to see the following image:

Shaolinda was playing a game. That must be her fourth or fifth game ever, although she was registered in April 2007. Is there any reasonable explanation… or is my gut feeling right? Is the end of the world near?

By the way: it does not surprise me though that she plays the latest patched version of Powersoccer… as it is simply brilliant, fantastic and superb. I spoke to an old chum in the game (we are both active for almost 2 years) and we both had the same feeling: this version is without discussion the best ever! The Best Ever! I will quit my daytime job just to play this game forever! I just need an internet connection and some water… a roof over my head, food, real life friends: I don’t need them anymore!

“Short, brutish and nasty” to rephrase the words of one famous philosopher of political thought. I have made a list in my brain of all the entries on the development blog I still need to write. I came to an astonishing 22. The community of Powersoccer is such a wide and diverse happening that so many things can be said about it. For instance: I was happy to see that PSE, the journalist outlet of Powersoccer, has started to act as an independent and critical force under the authorship of fcrathnaconeen. He challenges ideas, standardized practices and old (bad) habits of us all. It is a refreshing read and could lead to a blog entry on the necessity for every game community to have a critical mass present at all times. No time to write it.
Another interesting topic to devote a series of blog entries on is the radical expansion of the forum: the forum button has made it easier for new people to participate in the forum. The users with less than 10 posts in total have been booming in recent weeks. Some are here to stay, others are on a “search and find answer” mission which is in essence why it exists.
I have been thinking about writing a piece on the series of patches that have been launched. Every program, whether it is only online or also available on a disk, comes with flaws: some are bad, some are worse, some are to be ignored. Powersoccer is in that respect one of the many: it was also confronted with some unforeseen unpleasantness. The speed however within witch patches were launched was incredible. At a rate of one patch per week, many of the minor and major problems of the game are being dealt with. What makes it ever greater is that the concerns and the interests of the community itself are being dealt with! This is not ivory tower work: it seems crew has lowered the bridge that gives entrance to its castle and has, through the use of gatekeepers, collected the major issues at stake. After each patch, the general happiness moves up a notch. What will it be in a couple of days, weeks? Will Powersoccer be the most happy place on the world wide web?

You see, readers of this blog, many things to write about in depth yet a lack of time from my part. I could blog from morning till midnight if I had the chance, but my day time job takes on much effort lately as do the tasks of a Master Assistant in the game of Powersoccer. But don’t despair: in some time I will be back to inform you on the who’s, the why’s and the how’s of the place where you make friends for life, Powersoccer.

A couple of months ago, Powersoccer (and later on Managerzone too) decided to expand the personalization possibilities every player had. Before that time, only the colours of your kit could be changed and you could give your players nicknames which would show on the field. Many player copied the colours of their favourite team and nicknamed their players as the line up of their favourite 11. You can’t believe how many times I tackled “Ronaldo” or beat “Reina” in a one on one. It made me wonder whether they actually are the class players everybody says they are, but that is another discussion.
The new personalization went much further and was, in my opinion, a much bigger success than the previous one. Not only could you know change the hairstyle of your players, you could also turn them into real man with tattoos, male goal gestures… and a pair of colourful cleats.

Cleats… in different colours? Why?

Only a small print of the selection you have. And they keep on developing new types!

That’s a question that puzzled me for quite some time. Why on earth would we need to change the cleats of our players? In the old days, all cleats were black. Once in a while, a company decided to be extravagant with their label – yellow instead of white – but in the end all shoes basically remained black…
I think David Beckham changed it all. All men had to be metrosexual in order to survive in this man-eating world. We have to enjoy colourful outfits, labelled t-shirts and have to be very correct in the colour of cleats we select. You cannot have yellow shoes under a red outfit, can you? To actually prove we are considerate about the choice of our cleats, we have to discuss it with colleague players and designer experts in the game. And then you have the following discussion:
User A: Nice cleats! They really fit well with the outfit.
User B: Thanks! I wasn’t sure whether to buy the red shoes, so it was a gamble!
User A: Well, your guess was right. I was thinking about buying a pair of those golden shoes for my striker, but that would mean I would have to change the colour of my socks. White and Gold don’t match that well, what do you think?
User B: No, White and Gold are a horrible combination. I have seen a player like that in one of my league games and I really had to laugh very hard. You can’t take that serious, can you?
User A: My thoughts exactly. It’s a hard choice though: these shoes are really cool and they are limited! Only 500 pairs.
User B: I know. I bought some as a back up, if I ever were to change my outfit.
User A: Would you do that? But your outfit is so cool. One of the nicest I have seen around here! Don’t change it!
User B: Thanks. Got to go now.
User A: See you. And I also bought those golden cleats, as you did, for a foreseeable future. I am about to change my outfit. I don’t like it anymore.
User B: Good luck! Bye!

This game is more than just football. All men are being trained to become designer experts. Their future wives are so lucky! They will have men who actually will give honest opinions about new clothes or will assist their lady friends in buying them. All thanks to Powersoccer. Perhaps we should open a “thank you” bank account and ask for donations?

The Fashionably incorrect Sipwell outfit

Personally, I am still trying to resist to the appeal of “correct outfit” and I buy cleats that do not match. Then again, I read in Vogue the other day that colours that do not match are a statement in itself, so I guess I have fallen for trendiness myself!If you can excuse me now, I just heard that the new shirts of my favourite brand have arrived in the store.

Visa Card: check

fashionable sun glasses: check

fashionably correct pair of jeans and matching t-shirt: check.

Signing off.

sipwell

Today I stumbled across something odd. You have many very strong players in powersoccer, players I have difficulties with to beat in normal circumstances (or not to lose, phrased perhaps more ad rem and for sure more MarxBrotherian). Belfue for instance, with his impregnable defence; denmark212 with his splitting passes who leave the whole of your defense exposed; Airfix_9 with his horribly efficient style of playing (1 shot on goal equals 1 shot in goal) and many others. I only list those I play regularly, yet I could add quite a few others as well.
But then, all of a sudden, I become nearly invincible. Impossible to get through my defense, my passing becomes world class with high success ratios and my efficiency is so high it hurts your eyes. I almost become a machine: steal the ball, pass, pass, score. Steal the ball, pass, pass, score. Nothing that can be done, as Belfue was confronted with today.

It should make me happy and then again it does not. As it implies – and here comes what will be known as the  Law of Sipwell - that a new version, an update of the game is imminent. The moment I start to play really, really good is one day less of a new version. I have no clue when the new version will be implemented, but as my gameplay (and ultimately my results) improves the number of days to wait is shortened yet again. A new update always involves learning to understand the game again, grasping with new tackles, new passing and new ways to score (or see your shot blocked). It always involves new tactical styles, new structures to be build up as your old ones do not work anymore…
Don’t understand me wrong: I like those new updates. They seem to refresh this game on a very regular basis. You get a complete new package for no extra fee (isn’t that superb, dear Pro Evolution and Fifasoccer makers?)… but the only thing that puzzles me is: why do out of all those thousands of users I have to be the weathercock? Why does that responsibility fall on my shoulders? Can I for once be exempted from that task? Please?