The Xaya blockchain-based play-to-earn game Soccer Manager Elite has rebranded itself as “Soccerverse” in a move that better articulates the variety of roles players can fulfill.
Soccerverse was originally envisioned as a kind of P2E soccer management game, akin to classics such as Championship Manager. However, the developers quickly realized that there’s more to managing a soccer club than simply picking a team. Indeed, there are multiple roles to play in the day-to-day management of a soccer club, and its metaverse has therefore been designed to reflect this.
In Soccerverse, there are just 300 clubs and each one can only have one manager, so the available roles are limited. Luckily then, players can also take on the role of a club shareholder or player agent, massively increasing their opportunities to get involved.
Soccer managers will be under intense pressure to perform. For any player lucky enough to land such a role, they’ll get to pick the team, choose the tactics, attempt to buy and sell players and get paid for doing it. But if results go awry, they probably won’t get much sympathy from the club’s shareholders, who can dismiss them from the role via a community vote.
The shareholders have a vested interest in the club’s success after all. To become a shareholder, players must acquire fractional NFTs that represent individual shares in each club. These shares give them voting rights, and also pay dividends. The more successful the club is, the higher those dividends will be. So underperforming managers who struggle to achieve the desired result will face a very real chance of getting the sack – just like real life!
Soccerverse fans also have the chance to become player agents. Once again, they can expect to face fierce competition to land such a role, as each soccer club player can only have one agent. It’s a financially rewarding job though, because agents have the responsibility of negotiating each player’s contract and salary, as well as their own cut from the player’s earnings. Successful agents can manage multiple players in the game, increasing the competition.
Given the variety of gameplay, Soccerverse founder Andrew Colosimo said the rebrand makes perfect sense. “Soccer Manager Elite simply doesn’t reflect what it is, or where we’re planning for it to go,” he said. “Soccerverse is a much more suitable name.”
The future development of Soccerverse will be headed by a new legal entity, Soccerverse Ltd., which has multiple updates planned in the coming months. The most important is the upcoming switch from the Xaya blockchain to Polygon, a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. With that move, Soccerverse believes it can tap a much wider audience of potential players.
Another update to look forward to is the game’s Beta 4 release, which promises to bring a major refresh of the Soccerverse user interface on mobile, desktops and tablets.
Soccerverse also revealed that it’s expanding its team. It has just hired veteran games developer Andrew Gore, one of the “top experts” in soccer manager video games. He boasts more than two-decades of experience working on famous titles such as FIFA, Soccer Manager, Soccer Manager Worlds and Need For Speed. Gore is expected to be the first of many new hires, with Soccerverse promising to add more exciting talents to its development team in the coming months.
“I am excited to be rebuilding a decades-old, battle-proven multiplayer manager game on the blockchain, and having the opportunity to do so with the blockchain gaming pioneers at Xaya,” Gore said.