Tomorrow we’re going to be previewing our roadmap for the company and product. So it’s a great opportunity for me to leak things early and infuriate our product team and community managers.
I want to focus on just one feature today that I’m really excited about because it highlights a theme I’ve been talking about internally often - give people what they want in the fastest way possible.
Under the hood, Sport.Fun is a complex system. Many copycats sprung up after we broke out thinking they could make a cool sports game too but there is a reason they are all dead now. The tech and economics in the background is gigabrain PhD level brought to you by highly determined turboautists.
But for the player it must be experienced in the most fun and simple way. So now we start to peel away the layers so it can really shine for a mass audience.
We’re starting with the Pack Opening and reward experience.
What’s wrong with it now?
In the current flow, you choose 1 of 3 pack sizes (Pro, Epic or Legendary) then get a random selection of 4 players presented to you. These can be very rewarding, with people opening anywhere between 300 to well over 1,000 gold (1gold = $1) depending on the current marketcap and their pulls.
But it doesn’t “feel” as rewarding as it should be. If you won $300 most people would be jumping up and down and telling all their friends. But somehow in our game - winning $300 feels… just kinda ok? It can happen frequently, is not particularly treated as a “celebratory” moment in the app, and because of the Development Squad system, you are disconnected from the win. You may have won but you can’t collect it for a few days and have to do a chore to login every day to promote them. By the time you do, you forgot the winning feeling.
These pack sizes don’t scale very well, so some of our whales complain of busy work (“I have to open 50 Legendary Packs every week and my steak is too tasty and my lobster is too buttery”). Rich people are precious with their time.
And the lower budget players may not even have enough for any packs at all. That’s death to retention if someone gets no reward at all even if they did quite well.
The system has brought people a lot of joy even with the weaknesses. And there are good reasons we did it that way, e.g early on we believed we would need the Development Squad and gradual promotions to manage supply issuance.
But we can do better.
So how does the new system work?
1) Buying A Pack
The pack choices are now simplified - there is only one type of pack to start, and you can make it as big or as small as you want, by using the slider to spend a variable amount of your Tournament Points on it. The more TP you spend the more shares you get.
There is now no “false” decision about whether to buy Pro, Epic or Legendary which were actually just different sizes. Whales have no busy work and can do it much quicker, and smaller wallets can always get something if they win some TP.
Tip: You can control your variance in outcome by opening one big pack or many small ones if you want!
2 )Upgrade Chance!
If you are lucky, the opening sequence has a chance to transform into an Epic or even Legendary Pack! This creates the first potential exciting OMG moment. Upgrades will increase the amount of shares of each player you get.
3) Reveal
There is now a teaser reveal that’s great for streaming that teases who it may be by slow revealing the position, team, nationality, share count and then finally the player (which you can skip if you are impatient!).
4) The Decision
Each pack will now reveal 9 players to choose from that can have variable value and a variable numbers of shares.
You choose 3 of the 9 to add to your squad. That’s right - the development squad is being sunset. Now you just instantly make your choices and get the player's shares straight away. Give people what they want in the fastest way possible.
This is also better because you get to pick 3 from 9 instead of having no choices - you get more players you actually want.
Any players in your Development squad at the time of switchover will be automatically promoted to your main squad, so you don’t need to do anything.
5) The Reward Screen
Now you instantly get your shares and see what it’s worth, and can share it with friends. It has a nice animation which makes this feel much more like a win!
What’s next?
Tomorrow we’ll preview our roadmap (we may even see a special guest appearance ;)).
The new pack system is in testing already and we expect to roll it out in the next couple of weeks. We also have new skill based formats with meaningful leaderboards, an enhanced reputation system with new benefits, scouting and even more in the works.
All with the objective of making Sport.Fun the best sports app in the world. We show up every day to make it happen.
