A few weekends ago I invited some friends over for some serious gaming. We were 7 people playing FIFA ’22. I bought the game on PC around Christmas when I was home ill in covid and couldn’t see anyone. It turned out the game was really fun. I especially like how EA nailed the player faces and the highlights: the commentator reacting to your goals are great; although repetitive after a while, they do the job well. Also the game is super responsive, which is probably the main thing you want in a game these days.
So we teamed up at my place hoping to go 4vs3 , but that was impossible. Although we easily connected my pretty high spec gaming laptop to my TV and all 7 controllers, the game didn’t allow more than 4 players. That was a bit of a disappointment and instead we took turns playing. It still was great fun.
I was out in covid-19 for 8-9 days in the middle of December.
Fever, an aching throat, a cough, a bad stomache, and headache was the main symptoms. I can tell you right now it’s no kids play and it doesn’t feel natural, maybe no disease does but this just felt weird. Like you walked into a wall and you just stayed with that impact for all the days.
Post symptoms include fatigue, short breath, sense of smell and taste reduced and red eyes. I don’t know what kind of Covid I had, the PCR test just said I had it, maybe it was omicron or maybe it was delta.
Let’s not dwell too much in it.
I defeated it eventually and I was away from work for two weeks. Took some extra vitamin D during my illness.
I also started following this Dr. John Campell on youtube who reports on Covid almost daily. He has objective news on the whole thing.
Here’s his latest video. Released just minutes ago.
I started to make this video Monday morning and did many many takes until I thought I’d nailed it. I can get very picky on how the words come out, on my English, what’s correct and what’s not and a whole lot of other things. One trick you can use when doing video is to not blink. You can see it in movies that the actors almost never blink. Anyhow this is the resulting video. Just a recap of what we already released but I wanted to make those who don’t bother with Social Media like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook see this on Youtube. Here you go:
A few months ago I took upon me a new challenge. Finishing a game. That game is now finished – partly.
It took me 26 youtube episodes of up to 1½ hour per episode to get to the end and I was suspecting that one of the choices I made early on could let me replay the game from another angle, and yes. I was right. Lots of replay value in this game I tell you. If you wanna see the first part of me playing the game or me finishing the game check out the videos below.
I usually don’t play many games to the end like this. This is one of the first in years.
The soccer game I’ve been working on took up all of my time.
IT’S COMING HOME! SOCIABLE SOCCER PC & CONSOLE RELEASE DATE CONFIRMED
Highly anticipated global release will be packed with new gameplay and features, building on the mobile game’s huge success
Kiss Publishing Limited (KPL), in association with developer Tower Studios, will release Sociable Soccer for PC and console in Q2 2022, following the title’s huge success on Apple Arcade.
The game, designed by Sensible Soccer creator Jon Hare, will be made available by KPL globally for Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 4/5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S, in addition to a full Steam release.
Sociable Soccer was originally released in 2019 via Apple Arcade for iOS, where it has built up a huge following of fans for its fast, arcade-style, intuitive gameplay, complete with multiplayer head-to-heads and collectible player cards.
The highly anticipated console and PC versions of the game will offer the same great player experiences and more, including:
Update to all 1,000 teams & 30,000 players for 21/22 season
Meanwhile, gamers who bought the previously available Early Access version on Steam in 2017 will get a new Steam code from KPL on release.
KPL Head of Publishing Darryl Still offered: “We’re absolutely thrilled to be working with Jon Hare and Tower Studios to bring Sociable Soccer to PC and console platforms. The game has been a huge success on mobile and we can’t wait to introduce it to new audiences around the world.”
Tower Studios CEO Jon Hare said: “Sociable Soccer has been a labour of love since we first started working on the game as a PC title in 2015. With the game firmly established on Apple Arcade we’ve found the perfect partner in KPL to take it to Steam, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. We’ve always thought of Sociable Soccer as an organic football franchise – and it’s going to be growing more over the next few years.”
What is a NFT? NFT stands for Non Fungible Token. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2021) defines it as: “a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership (as of a specific digital asset and specific rights relating to it)”.
So what impact can such digital identifier of ownership have in a football game? From what I’ve seen so far in the football gaming genre there hasn’t been any real eye popping dives into NFT:s from game developers, but from what I understand and my suggestion that follows it could potentially be a gold mine.
In Football Manager (FM) you can take over any club in the world and face the realism of that club’s position – all clubs have different setups and the amount of detail and time you can put into it could rapidly turn you into a digital football addict (I’ve been there).
Also in FM your team produces new talents that come through the youth system – you can also have a look at trial games to see if there are any jewels that catches your eye. All players in FM can be given a training scheme to follow and hopefully the youngsters will start to improve and develop their skills. Just like in real life youngsters are early or late bloomers , but most result in average players that go on to play in lower divisions. Every once in a while that superstar would come along and that could mean a real cash flow for you and your club. If that player spent enough time with you – you as a club (or as manager/coach) could be seen as the original owner of that player’s digital print.
What if the time you put in was reflected in new game mode? The big football games today (PES and FIFA) make their money on different kinds of in-game coin-based ecosystems which also offers the users the ability to invest real money to buy the best players. These players can be used in the popular FUT or MyClub modes in those games. To many users the advantage of buying yourself the best players is unfair (pay to win) because we all come from different economical backgrounds and to get where the users buying the best players are would probably take 1000 of hours of game time.
Here’s my suggestion: If invested time in your players development was the currency, and to try and mine and grind out the best blockchain created youth players was a new objective, then maybe that could create a new game mode and an equally interesting world for players? The new mode would consist of both real players and created ones but without a “pay to win” market for the real players. It would however have a transfer market for the players that you and other players created, and that would be the NFT transfer market where your digitally owned player license for those players could be sold to someone else.
The FUT and MyClub modes won’t be going away anytime soon, but introducing this new alternative mode together with FUT/MyClub could be seen as more fair for those who cannot or don’t want to pay. In the games that are coming this mode could stand on its own from the start.
What do you think about this idea? Let me know in the comments below!
Welcome to the gusgaming world. This is my first post. I’m looking forward to posting in depth posts about my gaming experiences, especially within the football gaming world!
What is a NFT?