Chapter 8: The Football Underworld Launch Contest

"The best player over the first 3 weeks will win themselves a GoPro Hero3 camera, with 2nd earning a Razer Kraken Pro Gaming Headset and 3rd-5th netting themselves iPod Shuffles"

These were the prizes of our Football Underworld launch contest we held back in April of last year and in such a short time we've come such a long way. Back then we had a user base of little over 100 users and of those I would estimate only about 40-60 were fully active. In fairness, before that point a lot of the features you see when you play now had been still in development (if you don't know the features I'm talking about because you don't play now, then you can download it on iOS or Android, or play it on Facebook).

So we set up a launch contest which ran from 12th April to 4th May, 3 weeks in which whoever could chalk up the most points in the Hall of Fame would take the top prize - a GoPro. Simultaneously we ran a series called 'Tycoon Tips', which were aimed at helping users to make the most out of their gaming - we still give occasional tips today!

The great thing about the launch contest was that it was the first time we were properly able to see how real users in a real, live environment would interact with our newborn system. Straight off the bat we had a good amount of interest from users who were keen to be the winners of the contest - after just 24 hours one of my friends, Tom Upton, was leading the contest with 3,017 points but being closely followed by a few others including Paul Abel. The following day we released a few a stats which included that 450 exhibition matches had already been played over those first two days - this was amazing to us at the time but to put it into perspective, 6,000 exhibition matches are currently played per day on average. As the contest progressed, Tom made a big decision to buy a large amount of gold bars from us giving him an edge in the days following. This was met by some backlash from one user in particular who had been keeping up with him, but we deemed that while Tom was getting a boost from buying gold bars it was in no way a "pay to win" mechanic - that is one thing we have sworn against from day 1 of development. 

By the end of the first week, Tom had accrued 12,738 points and was pulling away from the rest of the table, for which the rest top 5 had completely switched (aside from Paul, who had dropped to 5th). Tom was also revealed to have had over 3x the amount of visits to the Prison of anyone else in just that first week - it was clear he was determined. An interesting thing, however, was that over the following week another of our users (Gonça Pinarbaşi) had overtaken Tom in League A despite his ranking dominance - this really showed us how open the contest could still be, as league success would bring a number of resources which could help catch Tom.

Entering into the last week, we released the updated top list of Prison visitors - Tom was on top still, but quickly being caught by a his recent rivals plus a new addition: Daniel Valentine. This didn't look to affect the outcome, however, as with 3 days remaining Tom was ahead of 2nd place by a massive 10,547 points. These standings ended up carrying over the end of the contest, and the final 5 were (in ranking order): Tom Upton, Gonça Pinarbaşi, Chris Beale, Michele Swalens and Lukas Amstutz.

We are definitely considering another contest in the future and who knows what this could bring?

Chapter 7: We're not here on business, we promise

"When the guards at customs ask you if you're travelling for business or pleasure - don't say business."

Back in August of 2013 the team decided to meet up in Shavei Zion, Israel (being that a few of the team lived in or around that area anyway). This was the first time that we'd all (minus Gozza) met up with each other in person - not to mention that it was a great excuse for the English members of the team to take a holiday to somewhere where the sun actually shines. The thing we had to remember going through the airport, though, was not to say we were travelling on business. Being that we were young white males we could apparently have been assumed to be travelling in order to protest at the Palestinian border so we made sure to say we were staying with friends - when the guards are carrying guns, you don't really want to get on their bad side.

Not only would this provide an enjoyable time away for the western members of the team, but it allowed us all to work locally for a short period of time. I would highly recommend regular meet-ups for any remote companies as it really does add something to the productivity of your work. Being able to have everyone working on the same project in the same room (just like a normal company) was really helpful and especially productive - we'd got used to generating a regular level of productivity when remote, so being able to pull 8, 9 and even sometimes 11 hour shifts helped us take that to the next level. I would go so far as to say that the two weeks of work we did there were worth about a month's worth of remote work. Obviously every company is different in their routines but ours rather followed the format of, effectively, a live-in office.

For me, things didn't get off to the best of starts - between the airline I was using and the airport I was setting off from, the gate ended up being closed too early. While I'm sure this prompt departure was a treat for the passengers actually on board, this left me having to book another flight for the next day and arriving a day after the rest of the team. On that day, they had visited the beach and Adi had managed to injure his foot to the point he couldn't properly walk, so his desk for the 2 weeks became an armchair with extendable footrest - a luxury that the rest of us sitting at the kitchen table didn't quite experience. But still we managed pretty well to get up bright and early every morning to begin our work and to still have chance to relax, discuss the day's (and the next day's) work and even some nights sample the local intoxicants... although personally I think the drinks could have been stronger!

Of course, it wasn't all work and no play. Being that we poured all we could into our work days, we made sure to take a few out to go and see the sights of the land of milk and honey. On our travels we managed to visit Acre, explore the Golan Heights (and be fascinated at signs warning of tanks being present), the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem, which included the City of David. The one culture shock that we experienced (especially me) was the vegetarian diet of our colleagues - I always welcome trying new foods, but there were a couple times during the weeks I had to give in to my carnivorous cravings.

All in all it was amazing to see a completely different culture than our own and we're expecting to return the favour soon. This trip was in 2013 and unfortunately we weren't able to organise a meet last year, but we're hoping to repeat the process this year.

Chapter 6: Drawing the Line

"What's the use in having a game that you can't see?"

More and more these days, there's a lot to be said about the graphics on display in a game. Granted, most games these days are fully 3D rendered, but we feel Football Underworld is a tribute and almost a throwback to the world of 2.5D graphics.

As mentioned in the first chapter our graphics guru Gozza recently left the team, but I caught up with him recently for a chat about the graphics he's created for us over the years and the process of taking an idea and turning into a visual reality. Just a heads up - there may be a couple technical words in this post, but of course I'll try and keep it as simple and well-explained as possible.

In the early days, Gozza was directly given a couple tasks for the following week (such as a pages or certain big graphics which were required for the current development branch) in our weekly meeting and would fix all outstanding issues from the current week's tasks on the fly. The latter part was really cool for the rest of the team to see - firstly because it showed us just how quickly he worked (which, for me at least, was rather inspiring) and secondly because it meant that the pipeline of graphics tasks didn't back up. But even the best designers can only handle so many designs at once and with the development of Football Underworld scaling upwards rather rapidly, Gozza got Ant involved to be his task manager. Graphic design then thickened from a "take this idea, make it so" paradigm to a more complex process:

1. Ant e-mails Gozza a design spec
2. Gozza clarifies anything unclear
3. A few more e-mails get exchanged to make everything definite
4. Gozza whips up a first draft
5. Gozza starts his next task while Ant produces feedback on the draft

The main advantages to this process were that the large amount of work could be easily managed and the rapid deadlines for release builds could easily be met. However, since every approach has it's downside, the main disadvantages to it was that Gozza could end up working on anywhere from 3 to 7 things at once (that's enough to spread anyone quit thinly) and that once our weekly meeting came around everyone could weigh in with a recommended change which would delay completion or send a new draft into the process above.

Being the professional he is, Gozza always used the Adobe suite for his designs - namely Photoshop and Illustrator. Personally, I remember how the exported graphics of more detailed aspects such as player faces (yes, they're all drawn dynamically but they have points of reference in design) would be provided for integration into the game: paths and bezier curves. Now, for Flex/MXML (what we've developed our Facebook and web-based version in) this was easy to integrate - all the platforms involved were Adobe-based. But, for mobile development (with CoronaSDK not being an Adobe product) there was no apparent bezier curve library or framework which would allow us not to have to redesign the entire process ourselves. But we figured out the solution, and the dynamically-drawn player faces are still in use today - I don't see us ever dropping them, either. 

So that's how we get from ideas to graphics to your screens - hopefully you've enjoyed this post, if so then check out the others in our series!

Chapter 5: Meet and Greet

"A work meeting? On a Sunday? Who has a work meeting on a Sunday?"

We do. You, like many others I've discussed my work habits with, may think this crazy, sacrilegious or just a lie but give me just a couple minutes of your time; read the rest of this post and you'll understand.

I think it's fair to say at at the core of every organisation is... well, organisation. The backbone of any successful company (and its workforce) is being able to provide an efficient structure for all the important (and even lesser-important) things going on and following that structure - if everything has its place and each thing is in that place then the workflow should run smoothly. The most common way to achieve this, of course, is through regular project management meetings but for a remote company like ourselves it's not as simple as ringing a phone extension and saying "can you come in here please?" - as I mentioned in an earlier post we as a company are dotted around the world and this can make collaboration difficult or stressful at times.

So, just as normal companies regularly have normal meetings, our remote company regularly has remote meetings. Being that some of us work full time jobs we can't do these during the week and since Saturday forms part of the Shabbat for some of our team Sunday becomes the only viable day (none of us seem to follow the "Sunday is a day of rest" mantra either). So every Sunday evening for the last 2-3 years (depending on whom you ask) the team has been reviewing the week's progress and planning for the week ahead as well as longer-term goals. For those of you who do hold Sunday as a holy day of rest and would therefore call us sacrilegious, I would argue that it is in fact quite the opposite - the weekly meetings have become almost a religious level of practice for us. The only time any of the team will not attend is if they are physically unable through either being on a plane or unable to reach a computer with access to the appropriate platform.

Speaking of platforms, we have sampled a few. In the initial stages of our work we were holding meetings over Skype and Google Hangouts. The latter, however, seemed to struggle with holding a stable connection and we ended up giving up on it and using Skype - it's free and allows conference calls. However, after some time we noticed that the connection often dropped there too and that to enable screen sharing in the call we would have to pay for a premium subscription. At this stage we were still working from individual budgets and as such decided that if we were going to use a paid-for platform then we would get one dedicated to meetings. Enter GoToMeeting. For a long time (and the majority of our meetings) we have used GoToMeeting - this provided an excellent solution for everything we needed and we were always able to get through our meetings with minimal connection trouble. However, a free solution which provides everything useful that a paid solution does will always be preferable - we now use Google Hangouts; we have found that latest version of Google Hangouts (that platform we started on which wouldn't hold a connection) is much more stable and (still) free.

Who knows, this post may even help other startups decide on the best meeting platform for them.

Chapter 4: All Work and No Play

"Not that work, the other work. No the OTHER work"

People often ask how I make my living off an app which is not turning a large profit yet. The answer is... I don't. The quote above is something I end up having to say quite a bit since, in addition to my work with Stanga Games on Football Underworld, I have a full time job and freelance web development. Whenever people ask what I'm up to of a Sunday afternoon I immediately turn them down because I have a meeting. "A meeting? On a Sunday?" is usually the response - it needs clarifying that it's not my full time position I'm attending the meeting for.

So for those of you that are disbelieving of the above mathematics, yes, I have 3 jobs and there's a couple of others in the company who work or have worked on FU around other responsibilities. I joined the company just after graduating from university so I managed to escape having a clash between work and final exams, but Ant started during uni and as such had to deal with both education and work simultaneously - he's since referred to it as being "kind of a bitch". Something that, working in other jobs at the same time, I can truly understand. Gozza was another one doing the exact same thing I am, and from what I heard from him he was often getting over tired whenever he'd had a busy day as he always had more to do - again, something I can truly understand.

The biggest problem I've found about doing so much work is time management. Without getting preachy, you underestimate how little time you have in a week until you start working multiple jobs. To put it into perspective, in a single week I'd have an evening playing darts in the local league, another evening practicing with my band, then the rest of the weeknights and weekend days would all be dedicated to working on Football Underworld. Free time starts to become a thing of the past and I often found that one night out could dent productivity for a good 24 hours, which is a sizeable % when you consider the hours in the week not spent at the office or sleeping. To begin with, this was a huge problem and I found myself often not managing to keep up with the workload I was given, so I had to make a change.

Over time I started cutting more things out of my weekly routine, or at least regulating them so that the only nights I used for other things were the same nights as darts and band practice, when the night was a write-off anyway. However, this was still not quite enough to find enough hours in the week, so I eventually cut my sleep to a maximum of 6 hours per night. To begin with, this can be a painful thing (especially for someone who's just graduated uni and would spend more time sleeping than actually attending lectures) but over time the body adjusts and it actually becomes quite a productive solution (disclaimer: I am not advocating under-sleeping, but am suggesting not over-sleeping).

So how is it looking now? Well these days if I had to give advice it would be to keep a mental to-do list of all your jobs combined. Order that list by date due and press on asap. The worst feeling is deadline day for one job and having to work at double-speed because you've been pre-occupied with other jobs!

Chapter 3: Around the World in 80 Functions

"A remote company? What's that? Does it move around?"

This is a simple question I'm often asked and in short, yes. However, to go a bit deeper into the answer I should first make it clear that "somewhere else" is a fluid concept. If you've been reading the series so far you'll have been introduced to the team - now it's time to find out where they do what they do for Stanga Games.

To begin with, "somewhere else" implies that I'm in one location and the rest of the team in a another - this is in fact far from the case. I'm born and bred in Warwickshire, England and I'm not the only one in the country: both Gozza and Ant also live in England but are based in London and different parts of London at that. Just to bring more factors into consideration, the three of us all work at other jobs etc. at different hours and in different capacities so we might as well not be in the same timezone.

Speaking of timezones, if we take a step back by a few hours from UK time, we reach Timothy in a completely different timezone. Timothy lives in Canada and because of this works different hours to any of the English team members. I remember times in the past we've ended up doing midweek midday meetings which basically took up my lunch break from my full time position. That's one of the things about a remote company though - you end up finding the hours you can to the hours you need. Anyway, that's a story for another day, back to locating team members.

Heading east, we find (at least to begin with) the rest of the team; Adi, Roi, Noam and Gili are all from Israel. Seems simple enough, right? 3 of us in England, 1 in Canada and the rest in Israel.... not quite. Anthony, Gozza and I have all travelled to do work from various places and Roi likes to keep things simple and stay in his country, but the other 3 team members from Israel tend to travel a lot! Noam tends to mainly travel between various parts of the US and Israel, although he's also been to South America amongst a number of other places, but Adi and Gili travel a lot - especially in the past year. Israel, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatamala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, the US, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Thailand.... the list goes on!

So we have all these people from all these different places, travelling to more different places at different times and working to collective deadlines each week. It seems totally crazy and near-impossible to orchestrate, but we manage it. A few more of the posts in this series will cover the various aspects of our overseas organisation, but the staple of all our plans is the weekly meeting we have. It's had to move over by an hour or two every now and again, but on the whole it's the one thing we throw everything else in life aside for and knuckle down to catch up with everyone's work for the week. There's been a couple of cases where each person in the team hasn't been able to make it, but 99% of the time everyone's there to share their progress and find out where we're heading over the next 7 days.

What about those weeks where one or two people can't make it though? Well, due to the wonders of technology these days nobody is isolated from anybody else at any time. If a meeting is missed, there's usually a Skype session shortly before or after to keep those out of the loop up to speed. We've tried a few different technologies out as well (another thing which will be covered in forthcoming episodes of 'Stanga Stories') but mainly that's our method.

Who knows, maybe our dedication to our seemingly-ridiculous setup will inspire some of you in your daily lives with your.... shall we say, more regular setups.

Chapter 2: What is Football Underworld?

"It's like Football Manager mixed with Mob Wars. Imagine a football management game where you can attack other teams and bribe their players"

That's along the lines of what I always tell people if they ask, so if you're looking for a tl:dr; or a quick reason to play the game - that's it. Football Underworld is the essence of Stanga Games so I'm going to give you the essence of what it is and where it came from.

If you read the first chapter of our blog, then you'll remember the first two team members I mentioned were Noam and Ant - that's because they were ones who got this adventure underway. It all began in Barcelona, when both were travelling and ended up finding they had a common interest in forming a startup. Over the next couple of years the rest of the team was assembled from various countries through various means and here we are today. Now, onto what you came here for - Football Underworld!

Essentially, as mentioned at the top of this post, Football Underworld is a football management game with a difference. In normal football management games, if you realise you're coming up against a team with a world class player you really hope he gets injured in time for the match - in Football Underworld, you make sure he does. It's up to you to create a new club, where you have many possible backstories you can choose for yourself - some of the ones we’ve had in the past are Celebrity, Mafia Boss, Rich Sheikh and Pro Player. Each one gives you a different pair of bonuses throughout the game, so you can decide what kind of strategy you want to adopt.

It all starts in your city - each interactive building (known as a "Facility") you have in your city offers a bonus: the University helps you level up, the Stadium gives you money for playing matches, the Training Ground lets you give a temporary boost to your players' attributes, etc. The more you upgrade these, the better the bonus from them. You'll sign free agents in your Ghetto Pitch, give them special items from the Pawn Shop to improve them or defend them from outsider attacks and draw up your tactics in the Stadium. Once you're set, head off to the country and start competing! Here you can find the the National Stadium (which offers a number of teams from around the world you can challenge to exhibition matches), your friends' cities and the world's tournaments. Then, when you reach level 10, the real challenge begins - you'll be entered into the FU league, where you will be competing to rise up through the ranks, win League A and be the FU champion.

All this seems fairly normal though, right? You've got players who you've given better equipment two, played a few matches, won a bit of silverware. Why is Football Underworld anything new? Well, throughout the entire process I've been describing you can visit your Pawn Shop and check out the categories I hadn't yet mentioned - Attack and Vandalise. This is where things get heated, because you can start being underhanded to get ahead. Is your best mate preventing you from winning trophies by constantly beating you in exhibitions, tournaments and the league? Grab one of the many Attack items and go to town on his players, or purchase a Vandalise item and start knocking his Facilities down a few levels. Your local Pawn Shop has everything from Electro-Zookas to Voodoo Dolls and Cyanide to Laxatives.

Strategy in Football Underworld is about much more than just the formation you play and the players you put in it. Go and check out the University and you'll see a vast array of skills you can level up, allowing you to set a style for your game. If you want to focus mainly on making your team the most talented, start upgrading skills which offer attribute bonuses. However, if you'd rather be the type of Tycoon who wins because the other team can't stand, start spending points in skills based around attack and defence - the game is yours to mould.

Stay tuned for more updates on Stanga Games and our beloved Football Underworld!

Chapter 1: Who are we?

"Some kids want to be football players. We wanted to be the creators of football"

Most people who have played games like Football Manager have thought at one time or another 'I wonder how they make games like this...' - we are a few of the lucky ones who get to do just that.

We, Stanga Games, are a remote company. We're just like any other startup, except that our team is spread out across the world. Through the course of this blog, we will not only dive into how this has affected our development and the various interesting stories that have come about as a result, but also our flagship (and primary) application - Football Underworld.

So just like any introduction to a new group of people, I should probably introduce the team....

First off we have the CEO, the big cheese.... actually, he probably wouldn't appreciate being called that since he's vegan... the big hummous, Noam Ben-Zvi. If a company is a ship, this man is wearing the captain's hat. He's in charge of, well, being in charge - keeps the company rolling and making sure everyone knows what their tasks are week-on-week. Football Underworld is his brain-child.

Secondly we have Anthony Copus - the jack of all trades. He's dabbled in everything from flex programming, to community work, to the business side. Safe to say if anyone's ever unsure of what's going on with regards to any part of the project (or a diplomatic solution to a problem is required) then Anthony's the man to ask.

Since we mentioned flex programming, it seems only right to mention Adi Ohaion. Adi is our server guy and flex programmer - if you go any play Football Underworld on Facebook right now then most of the engine you're interacting with there is his work. His ability to produce quick, regular server and flex upgrades (as well as cutting right to the chase when a feature isn't as simple as we first thought) has quickly turned an idea and a couple of pages of code into a fully-fledged gaming sensation.... we do hope you feel the same.

Of course, where would a fully-fledged gaming sensation be without it's GUI? Unfortunately the self-titled "Mean Machine", our Graphics Guru, recently left Stanga. He was unable to be named for his recent run-in with a Photoshop file which turned out to be an undercover cop - let's just refer to him as Gozza. Gozza designed, drew and re-drew (about 100 times) all of the graphics we have to date. Could we fit this set of features into this space? Of course we could - we had Gozza. What about a design for this really weird concept? Done. Never afraid to tell it like it was, Gozza made our development work look pretty and professional.

In the interest of being fair I figured I wouldn't put myself in at the top, but I'm Cush. Mainly on mobile development and community management (hence the blog), I've been a bit of an "everything" guy like Ant. A web developer by trade in daily life, I'm just waiting for the green light to turn our Wix website into something to marvel at - I'd like to think the future of our website is good hands.

Next up we have my fellow mobile developer, Gili Werner. As amazing as it is to have a woman doing something as nerdy as programming, the myth is true in Stanga Games. Gili is known for her rapid turnaround of new versions, especially on Android. She's spent a long time travelling the world with Adi, so the synergy between mobile and server is always the best it can be.

"But hang on Cush, how do you find a successful way of getting your game out to the people without spending a fortune on marketing?" I hear you ask... enter our marketing man. This guy is so high-profile we couldn't even afford the rights to his name, so we're going to call him Mr Hyde. His job is to know (because, somehow, he does just know) what you, our Tycoons, want and how we should be giving it to you. His main skills are an innate knowledge of the market and writing lengthy presentations.

Last, but by no means least, we have Roi Sharir. At his standard he should really be playing for the Israeli national team, but he chose instead to use his powers for good and use his knowledge to be our top QA tester. Determined to see a casino be added into the game soon, Roi spends his time picking apart the game and letting us know when things aren't good enough for a release.

There you have it - the Stanga Games lineup. Originating as two men in Barcelona staring at the stars thinking about the future we have sure come a long way in 3 years - a team of 8 young idealists just looking to change the world and bring peace to all nations. If we can't do that, though, we'll settle for releasing games which you can enjoy. Keep your eyes on the blog for more posts; the next one will be focussed on introducing you to Football Underworld.