Fantasy Football Manager idea (feedback/help wanted)

koHd

First off, if anybody knows of any project currently out there that's similar to what I'm about to describe, please let me know so I can check it out, and possibly just join up with that project.

The idea (elevator pitch):

Fantasy Football as you know it, but with the tactical depth and transfer realism of Football Manager.

More detail:

Ok, so Fantasy Football in general is kind of ok. But I always wished it had more depth to it, but also at the same time, required less of my time once I had put the work into picking a squad and tactics.

Things that put me off Fantasy Football:

Weekly transfers.
Small squads.
All of my mates having 80% the exact same players because they just look at the weekly Dream Team and copy it as best they can.
People playing players out of position and it having no barring on their points tally.
No real tactical game to it at all.

So, I've decided to start a project of creating a Fantasy Football Manager type game when I start my Computer Science degree.

The idea right now is simple, and obviously lots of work to be done to work out exactly how it will work. But my basic ideas;

Proper squads: you pick a squad of 25 and are stuck with this squad until a real life transfer window opens, then you can carry out transfers.

Players from all the top leagues with Opta Data tracking available: As it suggests, instead of just one leagues worth of players to choose from, you can get players from any league that Opta has detailed statistics tracking for. Obviously then the points scoring system will be affected by this, as a player scoring a hat trick in The Championship is a bit different to a player scoring a Hat trick in the Premier League. But this is something we'll work on to even out.

One player One team: Once a player is signed for a team, he can't be on another team in your league unless two teams managers arrange a transfer. Transfers are only allowed during real life transfer windows, so you build a squad of 25, and are stuck with that squad until at least the next transfer window. I have ideas for making the transfer system a fair, yet diverse system.

ie. not every player will have the same budget. There are "cards" available that you can opt to play that will decide your transfer budget.

Playing Cards: These are cards you can play that affect your squad or finances. There will be a system in place which puts cards in the same pile as certain other cards, and you can only play one card from a certain pile, meaning you can't both have a sugar daddy and a top youth policy. The cards area is one area that requires a lot of work and can be worked on right now by brainstorming.

Eg. The 'Sugar Daddy' card(all figures mentioned are just guides and will change as it's worked on):

<Card example>

The 'sugar daddy card' is available to all players at no cost during transfer windows. It is only playable once per season.

If you choose to take the sugar daddy card you get 100mil extra transfer funds and increase your weekly wage budget by 500k.

These additional funds are considered the 'sugar daddy investment'.

The draw backs on this card are;

1. Your sugar daddy will instantly buy the two most expensive players available from his country. The sugar daddy's home country is drawn randomly from ALL countries with international teams.

The budget for these players is a maximum of 50mil from the 'sugar daddy investment'. This means if a player brings the sugar daddy's purchases over this budget, he will go for the next available, highest priced, home country player.

If your squad is at maximum capacity, you will have to sell two players to make room for the sugar daddy's home country players.

If your wage bill is pushed over budget by the sugar daddy purchases, you must sell players to bring your wages back within budget. But, you cannot sell purchased players in the same transfer window they were bought. Meaning you cannot off-load the sugar daddy's home country players as soon as they are purchased.

2. All your transfer fees and wages are multiplied by 0.5x (this includes the sugar daddy's home country players).

Example: when buying a player worth 1mil in transfer fees and 10k per week wages, you will have to pay 1.5mil in transfer fees, and 15k per week in wages because you have a sugar daddy and the players agents and selling clubs know this.

This rule affects all players in your squad, regardless if they were bought using the 'sugar daddy investment'. To simplify, as soon as you use the ', sugar daddy card', your weekly wage bill is multiplied by 0.5x.

<end of card example>

There will be lots of different cards available for play, so it's your own personal preference that comes in here, and it will diversify what kind of squads people build. For example, an option you can for instead of the sugar daddy card is the 'top youth system' card.

<card example>

The 'top youth system card' is available to all players during transfer windows and costs 10mil. It is playable once per season.

This card allows you to take any five players aged 21 or under, for no transfer fee.

If two or more managers use the 'top youth system card' and choose the same young player, then a wages bidding war will decide who gets the player.

<end of card example>

Tactics implementation: The tactics idea in a nut shell - if you have a winger in your squad, lets say Stuart Downing, and you deploy him on the left wing as a supporting winger set to assisting goals with crosses, then in real life he assists a goal with a cross from the left wing, your points earned from this would be much more , than lets say a manager that had Downing in the middle of the park deployed as a playmaker set to threading though balls to the strikers. This will be the most difficult aspect of the project and will require a lot of work to get it right. But it's possible. The data is available from Opta Sports Data to purchase.

There is a lot more I have down on paper (well virtual paper heh), but too much to put into a post for now. But this is just a basic of idea of what I want to work on.

So do you reckon it sounds interesting? Silly? Interested in helping out?

Right now it will be very slow work as I don't have the necessary programming skills or money for the data to make it happen. But over the next year I plan to work on the ideas I have by using free data available from various football data sources and working it out manually on a couple of test teams. So if you're interested in helping out, programming skills would be nice, but not required as it will be mostly brain storming and testing with pen and paper for a year.

I'm sure I missed out a lot of info in this post, so any questions, throw them out! But obviously not everything will have an answer now as it's a project in it's infancy.

Dave_

Think this is a seriously ambitious idea. While I think the chances of something like this succeeding commercially is small (not saying it couldnt be a success) I think it is a great project, as a computer science student, to help practice your programming and analysis skills.

One thing I would recommend to you is to document everything you do, even if you implemented this at a very small level, it could be a great final year project under the right guidance.

As a computer systems graduate I can tell you that having something like this to think about while trying to grasp the key concepts of programming and databases, will help you as you will always have a practical example to relate and compare to.

Best of luck!

koHd

Dave_ wrote: »

Think this is a seriously ambitious idea. While I think the chances of something like this succeeding commercially is small (not saying it couldnt be a success) I think it is a great project, as a computer science student, to help practice your programming and analysis skills.

One thing I would recommend to you is to document everything you do, even if you implemented this at a very small level, it could be a great final year project under the right guidance.

As a computer systems graduate I can tell you that having something like this to think about while trying to grasp the key concepts of programming and databases, will help you as you will always have a practical example to relate and compare to.

Best of luck!

Cheers for the feedback Dave. Yea you've hit the nail on the head really. It's not going to be a commercial venture in any way. It's something I'm passionate about and as you say will help me implement my learning in a real setting.

My hopes are to have the project become open source.

Glico Man

Just gave this a read now, it's a very ambitious idea but also sounds pretty good and I'm very intrigued about how it would work. Ticked off everything about what you don't like about FF and I'm in total agreement. The melding of FF and FM would be quite unique and I'd definitely take part in such a game, I'm a nerd for the in-depth details that FM allows.

The only feedback I can give you (as I know zero about computer programming) but start off small, maybe four/five teams with a pilot group/friends and see how it goes. If it works and is successful then grow/go from there.

Very interesting idea you have sir and I wish you all the best.