Project Definition

[sturdy-robot]

Introduction

eSports Manager is exactly what the name implies: an eSports manager game. Based on famous franchises, such as Football Manager and the now deceased Championship Manager. This game was born out of a dissatisfaction with the current available options on the market that concern eSports.

The idea is to bring the gameplay experience you would find in these legendary manager games, without any of the limitations that the other alternatives present to the player:

• You don't need to be connected to the internet to play this game
• You don't need to create an account on a website
• You don't need to wait hours to get to play a match
• You don't need to set up a hundred different things for each player of your roster to get them to play better each game
• You don't need to buy packs of cards to have the chance of getting a good player
• No lootboxes, no pay-to-win
• No license fees
• No restrictions to what you can do with this game whatsoever
• There's no over-complicated game mechanic: most things should be self-explanatory and pretty much straightforward

Also, you should find in this game every aspect that makes each eSport unique: patch changes are going to affect competitive matches, your pick/ban choices are going to affect each match and player, each player has strengths and weaknesses that you have to explore in every match.

And yes, in this game, you may choose which eSport you want to focus on: RTS, FPS and MOBA. It is still not clear if we are going to make three separate products from this core concept, but the initial idea is to give the player the ability to choose an eSport to focus on, just in one client. If this idea does not hold up to the test of time, we may separate them in different products in the future, but the core eSports Manager will stay the same, as I believe they will all benefit from the same core.

Gameplay Overview

How will it be played?

Following the standard of manager games, the game relies on the mouse to be played, with screens and buttons to be clicked on.

New Game

First of all we will have a menu screen with basic options: "New Game", "Load Game", "Settings", "Editor", "Credits", "Exit Game". Pretty standard for most games. Nothing more that I can think of. Names are self-explanatory, except for:

• "Editor": In this editor you are going to find a database editor. You may edit eSports Teams (Logo, Names, Financial Status, League, Region, etc.) and their players. Also, you may edit the eSport itself, adding champions/races/guns or whatever component is part of the eSport. It should be a very good modding tool.
• "Settings": Configure game settings such as Screen Size, Graphics, Amount of Text during Match Live, and etc.

Clicking on "New Game" will show an option to select the desired eSport. After that, you can start choosing the Region of the Team, with the option of selecting an existing team in the database, or creating a new team from scratch. You can also choose when you want to start the season, and if the game will follow a random history, or if it will retrieve database history. If it follows a random history, random team results are going to be generated, and certain teams will carry the title of Champions of past seasons, which may also affect players' morale. If it follows a history from the database, the past seasons champions will be the same as in the database, and the game will not generate random data from other games.

After that, you can choose your manager's name and details. And then you are in the game. The main UI will feature a dashboard with information about your team, latest championship news, information on the next match, information about patches, a brief calendar, and there will be a menu that allows for navigation.

Main Dashboard

In this menu, you will find the Advance Time button, that will advance to the next day or to a defined date or even until an important event comes up (it's up to you), which might be some sort of interaction with other teams, or when the next match is close. When your team has a match coming up, the button shifts to Next Match.

Playing a Match

When playing a Match, you should define the team's formation and enter the essential pick/ban phase (for MOBAs, not clear how this would play out in RTS or FPS), and it's up to you to choose the heroes/champions used by your players.

The Match will pop up with info about the players and their champions. That's when Match Live Commentary comes up: every now and then the teams will perform an action, and their actions will show up on the user's screen, just as if there is someone shoutcasting this game.

At the end of the match, all data will be updated with KDA, performance ratings, which will affect player's performances and form later on. This means that if you're team is on a winning streak, they're going to get hyped up for next games, and this is going to increase the chances of winning other matches. Going on a losing streak, on the other hand, will demotivate your players and will increase your chances of getting fired.

Hiring players

Hiring new players depends on your financial situation. You can either approach other teams to hire them, or find new talents in the SoloQueue/Ladder. These prospects will have potential skills that can be explored, and if you practice a lot with them, they might reach their peak.

Patch changes

Every now and then the game generates patch changes that are going to affect in-game choices, more specifically picks and bans. Champions/heroes will get nerfed or buffed, and its up to you to identify that. Your players have to be prepared for these potential changes, and you have to keep practising with different champions to improve their skill lvls to avoid stalling out behind.

Sponsors

Sponsors provide ways to get financial and performance boosts. Each season you will get approached by sponsors to sign contracts, depending on the relevance of your team. If your team is very strong, bigger sponsors will offer very significant contracts. Your sponsorship depends on your team's performance, and the financial boost might come with specific requests ("get 14 kills in a match", "win against your rival", "win 3 games in a row", or so on and so forth). Every so often the sponsor will provide items that might boost players' performances temporarily or permanently. It's up to you to choose what's best for your team at certain points.

Practice

Your team has to practice regularly, so teams are going to approach you for scrims, or you can approach them to set up a calendar of scrims. You can either relegate practice sessions to an auto-manager, or you can play it as a normal set of matches and watch every step of the way. They will have Match Live Commentary as well. The other way to practice is to let your players play their usual SoloQueue/Ladder, which provide less points to your players individually, but can be fired more often than scrims.

Major championships

Winning a league might qualify your team for major championships, such as World Championship or other International Competitions. Winning these championships will provide a major financial boost and will make your name desirable for other teams.

These are right now the main aspects planned for the 1.0.0 release of the game. Further details are going to be found on a future Game Design Document.

Development

The game is developed using Python 3 (currently 3.8.3), using a Pipenv. You will find all the project's requirements in the Pipfile. You may find specifics in the CONTRIBUTING file as soon as it's ready for Contributing. You will also find every information needed to get this project running on your machine, and the code style used in this project. Please, also follow the Code Of Conduct described there, so any contributor that does not follow our Code of Conduct will be dismissed.

License

The license is GPLv3. Defined on the License document and on Readme as well.