Session: Real Players, Real Value: Building Onchain Football Management Game Soccerverse.

Speaking of devoted, our next speaker. My first bit of paid journalism just over 20 years ago, I submitted to this man as part of the founding team of Pocket Gamer and got some really helpful feedback. He knew his stuff then, so 20 years on, hopefully he's learned even more. Let's give a really warm welcome to um hopefully you've already heard of this chap, John Jordan, who is real play, sorry, John Jordan from Soccerverse. Real players, real value building onchain football management game

soccerverse. Um, so yeah, we'll give you guys chance to get your seats. But a warm welcome to John.
See how much I've forgotten. I've forgotten that, Will. So, right.
J2ME. Well, who remembers J2ME? Hands up. Gracious with dinosaurs. Okay. Hello everyone. I'm John. Um and I I guess I think I think there was there's one other blockchain game talk in in in the conference today. So um thanks for coming along. Um now okay so what I'm going to be talking about is soccer verse. Um so soccer is a fully onchain football management game. Um it's also a fully onchain football management economy. Um so that those two things we'll explain and sort of the the headline for this and the sort of the the the thread I'm trying to sort of bring out in this um in this talk is real players and real value. So in blockchain obviously um we've had a lot of uh not real players and a lot of sort

of volatile value. Um but with a game like Soccerverse we really feel like you know we are we're building something here um that's a bit different to a lot of the other blockchain games out there. Okay so um some stuff to run through um quite a lot. Um, why sockverse? Why are we making it? What in fact is Soccerverse? What is this economy that I'm um highlighting? Um, why are we using blockchain? Um, if we're using blockchain, is is soccer play to earn? That that that terrible um description. Um, and if we're not play to earn, we must be pay to win surely. One of those two things, you would think. Um,
it's on. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so is 100% community. We'll just discuss that and then at the end got time I'll talk a little bit about bots and AI agents. Okay. So um why why were soccer first made? Well at a very sort of high sort of philosophical level um football management games are fun. People play football management games um generally sort of single player games. Everyone loves sort of the thrill of taking a

team up the divisions. Um we can add some more sort of features onto this and make it more fun I think. So so persistent football management games. That's an extra sort of thing. So you're not just um sort of running a a sort of a seasonal thing. this this thing's going to last forever. That's that's cool. Um and then particularly if we add multiplayer, if we had like a social aspect in there, then we're really getting sort of fun. Um we're also really getting competitive. So when we have a persistent multiplayer football management game based in one world, that's really really competitive and competitive is obviously fun as well. So um so that's what we're um sort of the the high level looking to do. Um there is actually sort of a a a genesis of of the project as well. So um there's a game still game still actually going called Soccer Manager Worlds and that's a just a sort of standard browser based football management game um very popular. There's a sort of Facebook and and and in that groups of people come together and they make a league and they choose which teams they're going to manage and and and they you know play amongst themselves. Um so that's really good that that works. People are still

playing that game. Um and but you can make as many leagues as you want. So you can have thousands of these of these of these worlds. So really soccerverse is the sort of the concept of if we take this this game soccer manager world and make soccer manager world just get rid of the yes so everyone is playing in one big sort of world um and you know what interesting things are going to happen when they're doing that and also we're doing that on the blockchain so even more interesting things um are going to be happening okay so um some some brief sort of numbers so must be multiplayer football game um there are so so we sort of map the real world so there are um 5,350 clubs in the game. Th those are mapping real world sort of locations and clubs. We have 171,386 players. So those are football players. We have a FIF Pro license um which is the players union. So that sort of covers us on the player licenses, that sort of stuff. There about 300 leagues and I say that's one whole universe and that's running on the Polygon blockchain. I'm not really going to talk

about blockchain stuff today, but if you're interested, it is running on Polygon. So that's sort of what we got. Um, we could have a few more clubs, we could add a few more players, but you start having problems with data. Um, it's big enough at the moment. Okay. So, when you um log into the game, which I'm sure you will be doing, if not now, later um this is our this is our game world. So, as you can see, um there are a few sort of white dots. So, Greenland um no no football teams there and and uh Pakistan and Afghanistan I think there. Um so, so there's some places where we don't have data, but most of the world is is pretty well covered. Um, and if you want to, you know, start playing the game and you want to, um, be a manager, you basically choose a choose a country, find a league, uh, find a club, and if it's not managed, you you take it over and you start managing the club. That's what football management games are all about. Um, looks a bit like this on the on the sort of on the UI. Um, so again, sort of fairly fairly standard. You you have a club, it has a certain number of players. Um, you pick your players, you have um your substitutes down the side here. You have team instructions and

formations and things like tempo and situations. So that's when you can put your substitutes on or you can choose what's going to happen in the 30 second minute if you're one nil up or something. You can change these things and bring on substitutes. So so you do that, you know, typical stuff we expect to do in a football management game. Um and then uh Soccerverse uh has seasons. So the seasons run for six months. Um and you normally play twice a week. So we started our season 3 on Saturday. Um we got our next game on Wednesday. Um and so basically everyone's doing these um these tactics and then we're a fully on chain game. So they're submitting them. So up there submit your team sheet and that's a transaction on the Polygon blockchain. Um so everyone's doing their um their tactics and the game engine is dealing with that and giving us the results at the end. So that's fairly straightforward on the on the game side. On the player side again um sort of fairly standard here. So we got Chris Wood. So we'll we'll be looking at Chris Wood a bit later on as well. So his his main thing here is his his rating. So he's rated 90. Um uh and at the end of every season the players ratings change.

So so we we're not a fantasy game, but we sort of map the real world to some degree. So we can see here um he actually Chriswood actually went up four in the between seasons. So we're actually taking real world data there um and seeing how people are playing in the real world, if they're getting transferred to clubs and that sort of stuff. But we're not a fantasy game. We're not a real world game. Um we are you know our own sort of soccer. So So that's uh that's Chris Wood. Um, and in the real world he is injured and when he's not injured he's playing for Nottingham Forest. In our world he's not injured and he's playing for Bruge. So obviously we started off with all the all the players in the right clubs a year ago and now they've all been sort of shuffled around as people have have transferred them around. So um you know we have this sort of real world and not real world sort of stuff going on. Okay. So what's the what's the economy if that's the game? What's the economy? So um again very straightforward. Each club in in in in the game is a I'm calling a financial entity and each player is a financial entity. Um and then clubs and players can be owned by users. I'm using the term users because if I say players it gets complicated. So I use players

for the footballers and users for the people playing the game. Um so you don't have to um own clubs or players. That's a sort of a trading aspect of the game. You could just manage um you could not manage a a team at all and just sort of trade uh own these players and clubs. every club and every player is split into a million pieces effectively. We call them influence and users can can buy those and if you own say 10% of Chriswood you get 10% of Chriswood's um flows of his wages in fact. So so that's sort of the trading side of the game. That's that's the economy that underpins everything else that's going on. So this is what it would look like for a club. Again this is uh this is actually my club Bolton. Um so this is just at the start of actually last season. Um, so the overall balance was 14 million. We have a token called SVC. That's the sort of crypto token. Um, and a whole bunch of stuff going on here. So, gate receipts, TV revenue, and obviously that's coming in. And then players wages and stuff like that are going out. So, in in this case, um, the team started

off with 14 million SVC. I actually injected 9 million myself into the into the club so I could do better transfers. I spent 14 million um, SVC getting better transfers and I still got relegated. So, so um work to work to be done there, but that's how all the clubs work as as entities. Similar thing for players. So, here we have Chris Wood um and um he has wages. So, for every game he he sort of gets 709 SVC. If he if he's starting the game, he gets another 886 SVC. And if he scores a goal, he gets 10,600. So, if you owned all of Chriswood, that's what you would get. If you own 10% of Chriswood, you that's what you get, 10%. And this is all in the in-game token SBC. So, we're starting to get an idea of sort of how the how the economy works and and obviously how the football management stuff works. Why are we using a blockchain? Technically, you probably could do this without a blockchain. Probably Andy, I don't know. Yeah, you could. Um but but there are some there are some things that that is just, you know, you get sort of um for free using blockchain and particularly around sort

of the philosophy of of the game because you're asking people to sort of buy these these assets. So um particularly I would say for for sort of these massively multiplayer games you have um issues with with scarcity um and how many assets are in the game and um do we is the developer sort of um being truthful or is you know getting hacked or something like that. So scarcity of assets on a blockchain is obviously proven because you can go to the block explorer and and prove what's there. Um and also the ownership is immutable. Um, so all the users in the game, they have their own uh blockchain wallet and everything that's owned is owned in their wallet and the game developer has no access to that. So there's no god mode for the developer. Developers can't make another Chris Wood. They can't make more influence in Chriswood if they if they want to. All that stuff is is is on the blockchain and can be proved to be what it is. So um an outcome of that is is users can trade these assets between themsel between themselves. So developer doesn't get involved in any of those um flows as well. So it's from that point of view fully decentralized. Um, obviously, uh, skill and success in this

case are rewarded, um, because you have these these this sort of value flowing through the game. Um, obviously some people like that in a game, some people don't like that in a game. That that's a little bit down to sort of personal, um, sort of preference, I think, but it definitely adds something that you can't do if you're not using blockchain. So, um, Socus has always been a blockchain game anyway. So, it's not like we sort of this is sort of retrospective um, sort of argument, I suppose. Okay. So um when I'm talking about players who are trading amongst themselves and every club is an entity. We'll look at Bolton again here. So we can see this is my account. I actually own 3.5% of Bolton. Um one nice thing about that means I can't be sacked unless someone has more than 3.5% of the influence and can then they can vote me out. That's another sort of part of the game um that you can sort of vote managers out and take over clubs if you want to. Um and here so basically every entity in the game has this which is a um decentralized exchange effectively. And again, this is running between players peer-to-peer. So, in this case, um, if you want to buy, if you think I'm going to be a good manager, um, which I'm not, you can buy influence in in Bolton, and the price is

set for 0.5 and there's 2,000. Um, and here people are, um, some people want to buy um, influence in Bolton, and they've set the price they want there. So, basically, you have a buy. If you want to buy, you you sort of uh, set how much um, you want, and it takes it if if there's something there. And if you want to sell, um, you do similar. So again, Chris Woods, exactly the same thing. We have a buy and a sell here. At the moment, there's only a sell order. So if you wanted to buy Chris Wood, you 500 of his influence and it's 0.7 SBC. But what we can actually start to see here is sort of an economy kicking in. So actually last year, this account here, Long-Term, actually bought 86% of Chriswood. So that's quite, you know, a substantial amount. So there so that account has then gone on to put smaller amounts of Chriswood influence on sale um at twice and three times and basically four times what they originally paid. So you see it's starting to see another sort of economy um that's emerging here with people sort of buying up assets and and and trying to sort of um hope other people are going to want them at a higher price.

Okay. So um you can see get an idea of the economy. It's running on the blockchain. probably you've heard um play to earn um is really bad and it is um and most blockchain games suffer from being play to earn. So is soccer verse play to earn? No, it's not. So um for most play to earn games, what's happening is people are coming in playing the game, earning some sort of token um and they're just they're just basically grinding that that earn loop um as much as they can um and they're basically extracting all the value from your game or your token and selling it. So so there's no economy there. They're basically just extracting and selling. So with with with with um Soccerverse, you can't really do that because time is not a factor in this game. You we play two games a week. Um you can't spend any more time doing your tactics than you do. So So really at that fundamental level, um skill is is the point here. Um and also if you you can play the game for free, but if you are playing the game for free, you basically don't earn anything. You I mean you might earn like a dollar or something a year. So So it's a really low level. You can't really extract. Um and obviously the amount of clubs is also sort of capped as well. So So isn't play to earn and in fact it's actually sort of the opposite. um

particular if you're playing the trading source side of the game, you get involved in that, you need to spend money because you need to buy the influence um in order to get the the return. So actually, you know, from that point of view, that's part of the game is is is sort of spend to earn. Um talk about the SVC token. So I've mentioned it sort of in passing a little bit, but it's quite important to to to this game. So it's a what we call a pure utility token. So um that just means it has its function is to be is to sort of transfer value around. It has no speculative value at all. So, it's not a yeah, it's not like Bitcoin which you might buy because the price is going to go up. That's that's not the point of SVC. Um, and indeed the price is is set by users. Um, it's not set by the developer. The developer hasn't sold any tokens to to people. It's not on exchanges. It's literally only available in the game and the only use it has is for is for the for users. And even more important than that is if you want to sell it, you can't immediately sell it. You can set a price for what you want to sell it at. Um, but you only sell the SVC if someone comes in and buys it. So, you only sell

to other users. There's no there's no speculative aspect there. So, so is as far as you can get it. It is a sort of pure utility token. Um, there's no point holding it and hoping the price will go up. Um, if you do want to buy it, again, similar sort of thing to what we've seen before. This is the sort of decentralized exchange. Um, so you you if you want to buy, you would set in how much you want to buy and it would basically take the lowest price of depending on how much you want to buy. If you want to buy 10,000, it would take 10,000 up there. If you want to sell, again, you set how much you've got, the price, and it just puts it into this into this sell wall, and it won't get bought until someone comes in and buys it. Um, and we can see here these these are accounts, and they're, you know, trading amongst themselves. Um, and the reason you would want to do that is either you want to become, you know, do the trading part of the game or you want to buy SBC to inject it into your club to, um, to do transfers. So, this is the price. Um, you know, there is there is sort of volatility here. So, someone came in obviously bought a whole bunch um back in the end of July. Um but generally the price is sort of steady going down somewhat. Um at the end of

the season there's quite a lot of SVC going around because everyone gets sort of rewards at the end of the they get promoted. Um so um there's no point excuse me there's no point buying this and holding it in the hope it's going to go up. Okay. So if it's not play to earn is it is it pay to win? So this is a bit of a more nuance question I would say. Um so as I said you you can spend nothing and be successful. you can be a manager who just plays the management side of the game and um you know and get promoted and and and have a good time. So so from that point of view um you can win without paying anything but but clearly um something that any blockchain game will have is is is is that there is sort of value in the game um and even for any game really to some degree spending is going to boost your performance. What's quite interesting about soccer and I think quite unique for for a blockchain game is is that while you can buy SBC say inject it in your club to do more transfers um you find market equilibrium pretty quickly. Um there's lots of uh people who been

playing this game now for over a year and lots of you know clubs have been trading players and even you come in with a lot of money you can't buy the best players because the best teams already have them and they don't want to sell them to you. So, so there is there is you know quite an interesting elastic sort of um feature going on here where there is some play to win in there but it's not play to win the game. Um of course we do want people to spend money because we want people who want to sell the SBC token to be able to sell it to someone. So there is also we do want this we do want some aspect of play to win but it's not win um as as the the term play to win is often used and there is I think with these sort of games what what does winning mean in this yeah there is no win state really um I don't think in these very long-term games but anyway that's maybe more a matter of opinion okay um so I think everyone who is uh you know running a game and certainly everyone in blockchain always goes on about their community and how important their community is um you know software is no different from that point of view I I think um you know we can sort double down on it in the sense that our users own everything in the game.

So, you know, there is um if we had didn't have any community playing the game and buying stuff in the game, you wouldn't have a game, wouldn't have any economy. Um and these users now have sort of real skin in in the game. So, um on that deck I've showing you where people can buy and sell SBC, over $100,000 worth of value has been bought, you know, has been bought and sold. So, users have come in um buying SBC off people who who are going to who are going to sell it. Um, so that's not an enormous sum of money really. Often in crypto, we like to throw around these millions of millions of dollars and billions and all this sort of stuff. And um, so isn't that game partly because it has this this sort of very discreet buying and selling marketplace that you can only sell if someone's buying. So it doesn't have these large volumes. But this is still, I think, a fairly substantial amount of sort of skin in the game from people who are buying this um token purely to be for it to be used as a sort of functional as a functional token in the game, not for um, speculation at all. Um and another interesting thing um that as the game has gone on so we're now say

into our third season um even though there is money in the game and people do spend money what becomes interesting and I guess this is the same for a lot of games is is actually about reputation of users. So because every user has a wallet and they actually their game name is is in that wallet. um you can start to see, you know, you get their behaviors. What are they a good manager? Are they a good trader? What are they doing in the game? Are they trolling people? Um there's lots of things you can do around agents and and trying to get transfers out and people doing sort of deals and all this sort of stuff. And it does become apparent um what the reputation of these players are and because you have a wallet, you know, a wallet and you're managing a team in it, you can't just go and, you know, get a new account and and sort of have access to that stuff anymore. So, it is quite interesting how these characters in the game are starting to emerge. Um very uh briefly I'll talk about bots bots and agents. So um bots have been a massive problem and still are a massive problem in in blockchain games. If anything can be extracted um then a bot will come along and basically extract that value. As I say sovere isn't play to earn so we don't really have um that that issue. Um and in fact um

bots could be quite good for this game. This this game is sort of um allows sort of bots and AI agents I think. And this is something actually um Yep. I've got a minute left. Have I say?
Okay. Um so so AI agents, lots of games are worried about AI agents, which I guess are clever versions of bots. Um but but I think actually for this this sort of game where you could you could get a AI agent, give it a wallet, give it some money and get it to go and trade, you know, under 17 year old um people from Nigeria or something that go out with a specific trading pattern. Um that would be quite good. That would improve liquidity in the game. If you had AI managers, they're going to improve the activity in the game and sort of transfer market and stuff as well. So So we not really done anything about it at the moment. We're thinking about it. I guess lots of games are, but I think for blockchain games, um there's a lot of interesting stuff going on with um AI agents. Um, so, uh, I'm I'm finished now. Um, so you got to find me.

Um, there I am. Um, we have, uh, an indie, we're on the indie stand. Uh, if you want to play soccer or even try it out, get£10 free, um, in-game tokens there if you come and find us. And there's a QR code at the back. Thank you very much.