The last couple of weeks we’ve released additional clubs and ladders, so here’s some fresh stats about that.

All in all, we have 21500 additional clubs right now. Quite fantastic I have to say. Germany is the origin of most additional club managers, followed by Switzerland, Italy and Holland. Some “top lists”:

Leagues with most additional clubs
1. Germany 1011
2. Switzerland 762
3. England 734
4. France 644
5. Italy 582

Leagues with most “native” additional clubs
1. Germany 748
2. Switzerland 663
3. France 532
4. Holland 380
5. Italy 338

Leagues with most “foreign” additional clubs
1. England 639
2. Scotland 464
3. Ireland 434
4. USA 421
5. South Africa 340 (same as some other leagues)

Over to ladders. We’ve played ladder matches for a week now and there are some interesting figures to share. During the first ~24 hours after the release there were around 25900 challenges made. Today, for the last 24 hours we’ve had 43500 challenges.

More than 50.000 users play in one (or more) ladders now, 24.000 users joined during the first 24 hours. There are participants in 2248 ladders (there are 2835 ladders). And all in all 178.500 ladder matches have been played. Quite impressing!

Now, it will be interesting to see how things develop now when challenges aren’t free tomorrow. The activity will probably drop, but even so we’ve had a really nice start I think and it’s cool to see that many users trying this out.

It was a busy week. So to say.

And on the forums (and facebook) a lot of things was said about the new Supporter tiers. About the second team option.
Many did like the news with the new Supporter, many showed interest in the new Platinum tier and some were really looking forward to re-play the game with a second team. Then there were some who did not really like it, some that would’ve wanted other solutions than the one we’ve opted for, some arguing for us to protect smaller leagues related to second teams. And a whole lot more. All in all some 3000+ posts only in the Global forum. Which is a remarkable amount of posts.

But what’s even more remarkable is that despite our news being quite controversial the atmosphere on the forums has been fantastic. The tone in all these posts has been friendly and very respectful, including those who disagreed with something. For an internet forum of this size, that’s actually something out of the ordinary these days and it just makes me feel very glad. And proud.

You guys and girls are really something extra. You really are. Respect! (And thanks for showing there’s still hope for the human race. )

So, there was a busy week last week. But it was also a really great week, it really was. I know there are some posts we haven’t been able to answer on and some that we can’s answer on yet. But as I mentioned on the forums, there will be more information about the second team rules closer to the launch. Where league restrictions and distribution information will come sooner, and other technical details (such as promotion/demotion rules if both teams are to play in the same league) will come later.

Moving on, our focus for the coming weeks is of course the second team feature. And wrap up the ladder competitions project, too. My main personal focus for now is to make a final decision around the rules how second teams should be able to join leagues and then the distribution around that. Which is a challenge, especially as more users than I expected showed interest for really small leagues based on a poll in the Platinum Supporter forum and that some users want us to “protect” small leagues at the same time.

And psst. I hope you also noticed we have a new shop, and that you enjoy it (in the way you can enjoy a shop, that is). It’s been a really big project in itself and as it was released together with all the other news I guess it lost some attention it’s probably worth. And I don’t know, but it can have feelings as well – so make sure to at least notice it a little bit. Ok? Ok.

I have no excuse really, it’s just the roadmap time of the year, so it’s a lot of planning. And internal discussions. Debates. Assumptions. And in the end you hopefully get a roadmap worth a name (which you then later will have to tweak back and forth).

Well, I guess I just don’t want to mention anything in public which I just don’t know to 100% certainty that it will happen at a certain time, we’ve had enough of broken promises over the years. Does that hold as an excuse for being silent?

Anyways, in the “meantime” we’ve been working on the new shop as our old one has past its best before date since quite some time now. It’s slowly getting there, we had internal tests last week and today we opened up for some Stage users to try it out. Still, we have a few weeks of work/tests before we can launch it for real.

Last week we also started working on ladder competitions, a new competition form which will be based on single matches. You might remember me mentioning this when we introduced single matches some months back, or from a forum topic from late last year. I guess most of you are familiar with ladder tournaments (they’re pretty common in sports and games), but easily explained players (teams in our case) are listed as if on the rungs of a ladder and the aim is to reach the highest rung. Something you do by challenging teams listed above you, and winning these matches. There will be different kind of ladders: global, league/country, regional and for federations. And we also aim on ladders based on when you started playing Hattrick, so you can compare yourself to those who started at the same time as yourself.

By the way. Do you know what happens about a week after starting up a project? No?
That’s about the time when you start seeing the technical difficulties with the solution you opted for in the specification. And you also start seeing other possibilities. In short, it’s the time when you take all the questions and loose ends, and find the way forward again.

For example here we had hoped to make ladders based on league levels (divisions). Turned out to be more difficult than what we thought (the fact that around 30% change division each season is not a walk in the park to handle). So that idea will have to rest for a while.

And we also got in on the dear subject of whether the ladders should be based on ladder rank (traditional type) or based on points, like ELO rating (google it) for example. Again, I should add. Both have their pros and cons, so it’s not a really a trivial decision. But to be frank we have a few days before we need to make the final decision, which means there is still a chance to influence us.

So.

If you have any opinion about whether ladders should be based on ladder rank or points – speak now or forever hold your peace! Ok?

Anyways. There are few things in the current discussions that I feel is important to point out.

First of all, it’s been a lot of talk about this being done to as a measure to stop trading, that it will make the transfer boring because all players will cost the same (“there will be no bargains”) and that we punish ‘active’ players. Which is pretty exaggerated, to say the least.

No, we don’t do this as a measure to stop trading. To be totally honest I don’t think this will have any huge effect (if any) on trading at all, it’s more an effect of prices are likely to be fluctuate less. And even if price are likely to fluctuate less, they will still fluctuate. Adding autobids just doesn’t mean that all the good deals on the transfer will suddenly disappear. That said, neither is price fluctuation the real reason for doing this, it’s rather a side effect. A side effect I don’t mind at all though, it’s a good one for the market and the economy overall.

The main reason for doing this to make the transfer more accessible for all kinds of Hattrick managers, to give the general user a better transfer experience. We know a lot of users miss out on the transfer experience today, and with that they miss a very big part of the game. Moreover, we don’t think it should be a must to be online at the time of the deadline in order to buy a player (or make a bad deal (pay more) just to be sure to get him). And we don’t see any fun in repetitive clicking (bidding) during a longer period of time either. There is simply no other task in the game that requires you to be online at a certain time, the whole game on the contrary based on being able to plan your actions ahead.

Then there are some that claim we by doing this benefit the “lazy” users, and find it odd that we don’t want our users to be active on our site.

Now, I don’t see any point to categorize users like this. Hattrick is designed to be a game where you don’t have to be constantly online to succeed, you should be able to play the game even though you just log in once a week. And as such, we should also make all game parts accessible to those who want to play the game like that. Also, some of the time you use to play Hattrick may not take place when you’re actually online. Many times you will find yourself thinking which lineup to use in the next series match while sitting on the bus, or thinking about different team strategies while laying in bed and so on. Simply put, one can’t just measure how active a player is from how much time he spends on the site.

And if you think about it, what’s the harm in letting “lazy” managers also benefit from a change and as a result also buying players on the transfer? I mean, we DO want more people to take part and enjoy the game.

Also, many core features included in Supporter are just such time-saving features, such as auto-joining the friendly pool, custom match orders and the whole match preview page to mention just a few things. And I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call any Supporter lazy.

But don’t we want our users to be active on our site then? Yes, of course we do. But the way I see it, I want our users to spend quality time on our site. Making interesting decisions, scouting players and teams in order to find the tactics and strategy ahead, or having fun on our great forums. I see very little point in “forcing” users to be online at a certain time, in order to do a pretty repetitive task (as for example clicking the bid button for an uncertain number for minutes), if I can avoid it.

I simply want people to be log in for the right reasons, because I believe that in the end it will make a better game. Hattrick is a strategic management game, where the reward should be about finding the right player and the right strategy. We’re not the game that rewards online time just for the sake of it.

And that’s all exciting of course.

But you know, there’s something far more interesting about this.

When user regia5 won the World Cup for Norway he celebrated it like this:

So.

Can we expect something like this now?

The main focus for this autumn will be Supporter, in various ways. Ever since we released the first version of Hattrick Supporter 10 years ago, we’ve continually added new features to it and today the Supporter package contains a lot of great features. However, one thing we haven’t really done during all these years is redefining what Supporter is or what Supporter should be in the future. And it’s naturally of high importance, since Supporter is our main source of income.

I don’t know, it may perhaps sound like an easy thing to do to you, but it’s really not. It’s very much the backbone in the whole product, and it affects what things that should be included, what things it shouldn’t include and also how to present it. So, we’ve had a lot of talk around this, and some really good workshops and group exercises – you know, such things I’ve heard that real companies do. Only that they probably end the day/evening with playing Eclipse (really good board game), we do have more fun!

A box with Supporter, please. Or take two! One workshop task was to “package” Supporter in a box. Jesper and Erik plus Michael and Chris showing their Supporter boxes.

But just so anyone don’t get any false assumptions here: No, we’re not planning on touching our key principle that Supporter should be about extra features that aren’t really needed to be successful in the game, but they should of course give the user something extra of real value. Where the latter is really important.

But yes, in case you’re wondering: Developing some new great Supporter features are also included in this.

Anyways. Now you know what I’ve been doing lately. That and occasionally playing Plague on my iPhone and the Dawnguard DLC for Skyrim.

The new ML is more like a tutorial then the old one, and we have focused on giving the new user better aid and more – and better – game advice. The tedious and annoying parts that existed in the old MLC are removed, and now you also have to actively finish a task to get your reward (in the old MLC some challenges were completed just by visiting a page, so often challenges were completed without the user even knowing about it).

A little bit more detailed, on the Manager License page there is a list of all the tasks (17 all in all).

Clicking on a task opens up information about what’s it about and what to do. And when a task is completed you collect your reward for the task (clicking the pile of money) on this page.

On the page where the user is meant to complete a task, there is a help box with more detailed instructions and game tips. Like this one for example:

What we’ve also done is a welcome screen (before the user gets his team) followed by a short tour around the site as soon as the team is active (team is active after only a few minutes). This tour is very linear; it takes the new user by the hand to meet his players, set up a preparation match for some instant action and also shows where to find the new Beginner’s guide (a short guide to Hattrick with tips on what to do, and what not to do, in the beginning).

All in all, with these improvements the start of a manager career has been given a much better feel and it’s much clearer what’s expected of you as a new manager. I hope it will show as well.

This year is no exception of course, for the last few weeks I’ve been busy as a bee. I tried really hard to make room for a calm last week, to get some extra time for the ongoing Euro 2012 and so on. Well, I didn’t succeed. Yesterday I found myself working during the Italy-Germany game (looking back I should have worked during Spain-Portugal instead, as nothing really happened for the first 90 minutes in that match anyway). Sure, I know that many work while “watching” football games nowadays, but it’s not a habit of mine. When I watch football I want to do just that: watch football.

Now, I’m not really complaining. No, not at all. Honestly. I’ve been working with a smile on my face most of the time. But you know, that crazy hope to be able to relax a little before you can relax for real still pursues me.

Anyways, the projects that will go on during the summer are now prepared and planned for, working hard pays out in the end. Our focus right now is to improve stay rates among new users, and that focus will go on during the summer as well. We will revamp the old manager license; removing tedious, bad, annoying parts of it and keep things that’s worth keeping. And then turn into a better introduction for beginners. We have also made a really short intro to the game/site before that, to allow new users an instant feel of the game. And we also plan some changes to My Office, to improve the information flow and make it more useful. It will be really interesting for me to come back after my vacation and see how all this feels like (I hope it’s ready for test by then at least).

We have also made a first test of the new ratings among our staff, a test that will end after the weekend now. This test has been about verifying that the rating data we will display is correct, before me move on and focus on the visualization and interface (and more proper tests). It’s really looking good though (in the sense that there was no major problems), so it looks we can start working on the visual things quite soon.

After some dark times we have had a really nice winter/spring in Hattrick. We released some really nice things in the game, Tournaments in particular. But what I’ll remember most is in fact all the warm feedback and appreciation we’ve got these last few months, it’s been a really positive attitude in the forums and in the community. I’m so grateful for that, because it just makes it so much funnier to work. And it makes me really look forward to coming back from vacation and continue building on this.

But now first: vacation. And the plan is more or less to do nothing at all. See you in a few weeks again!

Have you ever thought about how little we seem to appreciate what we have and what we get? And how much we focus on the negative side of things? Well, I do. A lot. I don’t think you see much of it in public though, but I guess I leave traces of it both here and there on the forums.

Thing is that I just don’t understand why it seems to be more interesting in today’s world to focus on what you didn’t get or what that new (all in all fantastic) thing didn’t do, than focusing on what you actually did get.

Last week we celebrated the Supporter anniversary by giving all Supporters 11 Credits as a birthday gift. 24 hours after the announcement we had 17 posts about this in the global forum. 17. About half of them were “thank you”-posts.

Now imagine if the news would have been negative. We would have got the same amount of posts within 5-10 minutes. Within 24 hours I’m quite sure we would have got 500-1000 posts.

No, I’m not saying this because I’m disappointed on the amount of thank you-posts.
No, I’m not saying this because I think there’s too many critical voices out there.
No, I’m not saying this happens only in Hattrick (we’re probably better of than most other places).

I’m just fascinated by this phenomenon or what to call it, the fashion people in general seem to react on things, or perhaps choose to react. And the reactions on our gift last week is just a good example of this.

When something works as it should, no matter how amazing it is, it does just that. Work. As. It. Should. No need to give it any praise or say anything at all about it. But when this something doesn’t work, IT IS AN OUTRAGE!!!! I WANT MY MONEY BACK (no matter if you’ve spent any or not)!!!!!

As an American comedian put it, we live in a time when everything is amazing but nobody is happy.

But just so you get me right, I don’t think the biggest problem is the amount of negative reactions or so. It’s totally ok to be critical, and different risks should of course be discussed. I just don’t get why the negative perspective is the default one or why the amount of negative feedback always dramatically exceeds the amount of positive feedback. And if something is genuinely good, why don’t we take the time to show our appreciation?

Questions and thoughts like this often occupy my mind, because I think we would be so much better of and a lot happier if we focused more on the positive side of things. And that’s why I was so glad to read this post I talked about in the beginning.

It was from a user that used to be very critical and negative on the forums a while back, but now he has changed his attitude. In the post he says decided to do himself a favor a year ago and stop being so overly negative about the game, and since then he enjoys the game even more. And even though he still thinks we make some mistakes, there is a lot we do right as well.

Frank – thanks for sharing. It really made my day. Well, week actually.

(If you want to read this post yourself, it’s post #11 in the HT’s decline thread on the Global (English) forum.)

Now, from the reactions it’s clear that the vast majority of you appreciate our fools jokes. Some jokes might be better than others, but that’s how it is and it’s all a matter of taste in the end. I also have to add that our joke this year was really good, one our best ever I think. But even if most people enjoy our jokes, I will actually focus mostly on those who don’t in this post. You know, to explain why we do this and why we think it’s important. Well, give it a try at least.

Some say doing jokes like this is a waste of time, as nothing of it can be used in the game world and thus is of no use. I respect that opinion, but I strongly disagree with it as I find it utterly boring having to be deadly serious about everything. Sometimes you just need a good laugh. Just as you sometimes want to go out and have a good night out, for no other reason than to have a good time. Sure, we can all work 16-18 hours per day and devote the rest to sleep and eat (but eat really, really fast then – enjoying it would be a waste!), but would the world really become a better place if so?

So, for no other reason than just having some fun we spend a little dev resources on creating April Fools jokes. This year we spent about 0,04% of our yearly dev resources, and I think it’s time very well invested (to be honest, the spending the double would be totally ok too). Even if it’s for no other reason than for the fun of it and sharing that fun with the community. Naturally we also want to show that even though we’re very serious about what we do, we also want to give you this side of us and joke a little  - mostly with ourselves and sometimes perhaps even about our own shortcomings. We don’t have to take ourselves so seriously, I mean you have to be able to joke about yourself as well.

Anyways, I think most negative reactions this time was about us joking about a 3D match viewer though, as it’s common wish at least from some users (but fram from all) and thus nothing to joke about. However, this is also what made it perfect to joke about.

Hattrick is a game proudly presented in text. That’s what we are, and we don’t try to be anything else. And that’s not likely to change either as we believe a 3D match viewer has little to do with how good the game can be in the long run. To be honest, most of the viewers for manager games I’ve seen haven’t really impressed me at all, plus that it’s a gigantic project to complete. I just don’t see that big benefits of doing it. Other games may think it is for them, and for pure football simulation games  like FIFA it’s naturally obligatory. But we’re not that kind of game.

So, sorry guys and girls if you’re one of them who really fancy such a viewer. There is definitely things that can be improved in the live experience, but any 3D or 2D match viewer is just not likely to happen. And I guess some of you couldn’t appreciate the joke because of that, but in the end the best jokes also have to challenge your thoughts and opinions a bit. At least that’s what I think, and I think we pulled this off quite nicely. If I’m allowed to say so.