Premier League Soccer Game

I've been an amatuer game designer nearly as long as I can remember. I started 40 years ago -- making up my own games using a deck of cards when I was bored on Sunday afternoons at Grandma's house. I can recall playing Kingmaker for the first time in 1976 and then making up a simplified version the next day at school. A group of friends and I spent much of 7th grade English class playing my version of the game. Al and I developed a space exploration game (what today would be refered to as a 4x game) in 1983 that went under several names, including The Carl Sagan Game and Mercantilism. For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, Mercantilism was our group's most-played game. We probably would still play it, but Twilight Imperium has much the same feel (plus cool plastic pieces).

During the 1970s I created a number of sports games, including baseball, football and hockey. The baseball game was eventually replaced in 1981 by APBA, and the football game was eventually replaced in 1982 by Strat-o-Matic. The hockey alternatives, however, were always weak. I played dozens of games of Strat-o-Matic Hockey and APBA Hockey over the years, but wasn't impressed with either of them. So, my hockey game never really disappeared during this time. In fact, Rick, Fred, Al, Doug, Mike and I had a hockey league for three years using my game.

As I've mentioned before, both boys are really into soccer, especially the English Premier League. I've been trying to learn the players, and last week I came up with the idea of redoing my hockey game as a soccer game. So far, the game is a success; Patrick and I played three games last weekend pitting my Chelsea against his favorite Manchester City. Man City won the first game, 2-1, with a pair of goals from Carlos Tevez. (Frank Lampard notched the sole Chelsea tally.) The second game was all Chelsea; Didier Drogba's two goals combined with one each by Lampard and Nicolas Anelka for a 4-0 score. In the third game, Lampard and Tevez traded goals at the beginning of the second half, but Drogba's 60th-minute goal proved the difference-maker in a 2-1 Chelsea win.

So far the game is getting the stats right. Obviously the correct people are scoring, and given the final table from last season, it's not surprising that Chelsea would dominate (although interestingly enough, Man City did win both matches in the real season last year, with Tevez scoring two of their three goals). There are parts of the game that seem awfully repetitive to me, but to the extent that Patrick represents the target audience, the market research is coming back positive. Right now I'm working on adding yellow and red cards. The next step will be to sort out how formations will factor into the game.

Anyone willing to playtest should let me know.