Inside Social Games

Most Facebook users have seen the various RPGs that circulate around. Each of these games follow a fairly formulaic methodology in their game play, but developers are always (or should always be) looking for new ways to employ new game mechanics. That said, Football Tycoon by Blue Frog Gaming takes a curious spin on a standardized genre.

Okay, so it isn’t a huge leap from traditional RPGs – but rather than just managing one character, in Football Tycoon you need to balance your resources and level your entire football team. Each team consists of nine team members (quarterback, running back, wide receiver, etc) and each of these has corresponding statistics that need to be upgraded with both cash and energy. As expected, these make your players, and in turn, your team stronger, thus allowing you to win more games.

These games, however, are not too different that most RPG events. Essentially, all you do is go to “Play” select a team to duke it out with and a text based result and score is presented to you. Upon playing, you receive some cash, and you can continue to play until your stamina is depleted.

What is nice about playing games in Football Tycoon, though, is that you earn some money regardless of whether you win or lose (of course, winning is worth more). However, this is where a little “social strategy” comes into play.

One of the key social elements to this game is your fans. Fans allow you to earn more money per game by strategically purchasing business elements such as endorsements or stadium upgrades. These, in turn, can earn you extra income per game, and passively, and as you play more games and level up, new income features become available to you. However, the number of fans does not merely affect endorsement deals, but rather also grants access to different and more effective training methods (drills) that better increase your player’s statistics.

Beyond fans, you can also utilize your friends as players on your team to earn you some extra stats, and you can even add your very own nicknames with them, adding a nice personal feel to the game.

The only real downside is that the energy and stamina numbers are rather low at the start and players end up sitting around and waiting for them to recharge most of the time. In general, people don’t like to have to wait that much (it’s boring), and while this is an issue in most Facebook RPGs it is far more prevalent in Football Tycoon as you only have five energy and four stamina as opposed to a more standard ten and can use it all up in about 15 seconds. But again, this is very minor and not much of a hinderance.

If you can look past the slow pacing of the game, Football Tycoon is a pretty fun game for any football fan. Furthermore, the developers do take a few baby steps away from your cliché RPG template with the team concept, and the social elements are nicely implemented. In the end, however, the game still feels like another Mob Wars, only with a different look and a few minor tweaks.