A blockchain-based football management game currently in development has received investment from Hiro Capital. But, what is Soccerverse?

Alt+F4 was the only way. My age was still in single digits and as I sat at the family computer, playing my Dad’s copy of Championship Manager 96/97, I watched as Ruel Fox — inexplicably my favorite player — had a stinker and my beloved Spurs were about to lose again, under by juvenile tutelage. So, I’d crash the game, load it back up, and play the fixture again, until the RNG gods bestowed a win upon me.

By the time I was a teenager, and Championship Manager had become Football Manager, I would sink thousands of hours per year into the game and had parted ways with my foolproof but sketchy methods of victory. Football management sims were — and sometimes still are — a gaming focal point for me, so needless to say, a Web3 version has my ears firmly pricked up.

Soccerverse recently announced that Hiro Capital, a sports and metaverse VC from my own foggy London town, has invested in the project. So, let’s look at Soccerverse.

What Is Soccerverse?

Soccerverse is a massively multiplayer, online football management game in a large and persistent world. The game allows players to name their own clubs and players, have input in the direction of the game, and it is open source. It is possible to earn from the game in various ways, and thanks to blockchain technology’s transparency, snot-nosed children cannot cheat.

One particularly interesting dimension to Soccerverse is the option of multiple roles. You can, of course, play as a football manager, but you can also be a player shareholder, player agent, and club shareholder. Agents are hired by the player’s shareholders and receive a percentage of the player’s wages, and will negotiate moves for the player, as well as new contracts. Player and club shareholders receive rewards for success and can trade the shares on a decentralized marketplace.

There are championships with leagues and divisions, and a fully autonomous economy, with over 10,000 players and 300 clubs, each operating as DAOs.

The team behind Soccerverse is well-situated to make this game. The CEO was also the CEO of Soccer Manager Ltd, a football management app I have dumped yet more hours into and that had over 50 million downloads.

Soccerverse is built with the Xaya SDK for blockchain integration, and the blockchain in question is none other than our beloved (and recently partnered with) ecosystem, Polygon.

As someone who has been playing football management sims for the best part of 3 decades, and has been working in blockchain gaming since it was a foetus, Soccerverse has me tingly in ways no person could evoke.

Lead image by Abigail Keenan on Unsplash