ManagerLeague : Online football manager : Season 9 about to kick off, and a special Saturday

Season 9 is upon us, and tomrrow morning at 09.00 it kicks off with training, followed by league-round 1 at 15.00, CEST as always.
Newly crowned champions, Team Magic, will see some new fierce competition from newly promoted Elysium, Team Villa Service (who relegated directly with just 17 points last time they were in the top division), The Natives (who have never played in the top division before) and MDK United who have returned, along with The Gremlins.

No team has yet managed to secure the trophy more than once, but this can certainly be the season. Both Benkerns Vålerenga and Vartdal FK will certainly do what they can to secure the title, and having finally met both of them in real life, I have a hunch one of them might actually do it this season. Then again, it doesn't look like Blackpool will give them a single point easily, and Jailhouse_gangs is also a likely candidate.
Rauagjre and The Penguin Conspiracy might also have what it takes, and only time will tell which top-team will leave the crowd in awe this season. I wish them all good luck, of course, and hope it will be tactics, the right choices and, of course, the right players, that will tip the scale in the end.

On an entirely different matter though, this weekend contained a little party. Not that a party in itself is all that extraordinariy, this one was a bit different. It was a pure ML-Party, where football, gaming, beer, social experiences and a raised stress-level came together
in perfect harmony. Sir Johnny, of Vartdal FK invited a bunch over to his place, including myself and "chairman", some cases of beer, some laptops, and we were all set;
All set to try out a party-version of ManagerLeague.

A party-version, quick-version, speedgame-edition (whatever you wish to call it) is a very intense version of ManagerLeague, where league rounds and training-sessions are just minutes apart, and going to the bathroom in the wrong moment can cost you the premiership. Of course, a lot of extra fun came from the fact that we were all in the same room, shouting and hitting eachother when the urge arose. The cases of beer probably helped too, and if Sir Johnny ever offers you a Cognac, be sure to take him up on the offer, it was splendid.

We managed to play 2 seasons in one day, but we could have managed 3 I guess, had we all had a leptop each. But some of us had to share, and that took a little more time.
But it was FUN FUN and FUN!

I didn't win either season, but I think I came second in the first one, beaten by Benkern. Chairman proved he is more than a share-owner when he taught us all a lesson in season 2, and I am a bit stumped that I can no longer claim to own him in ML (!).

Be that as it may, this was a good test of something very enterntaining we hope to offer to you soon. We certainly learnt a few lessons when it comes to running such fast games, and it is likely we will need a slightly better server if we wish to do these for more than 80 people at the time, but that will be sorted out when the need comes.
For now, we have decided this is something we wish to look into, and we will take it from there.

Speedgames have some unique benefits that make them highly playable, such as fairness, evenness and a serious stress-factor

Everybody has a set amount of credits, and should have the exact same odds of winning, provided they do things right of course. We tried with issuing 20 credits per season, and that seemed to be ok in such a setting with so little time between rounds. There is the question of how to deal with Cups in such fast games, but we found it ok to do some small custom cups "now and then".

Anyway, it was great fun, and I hope this is something many of you will want to try later when we are ready, if you have a weekend to invest in it anyway

Two pictures are due from the memorable evening here, first you see Chairman, Benkern, Kallemann and Bad Babba, then in the comfy chair you can see Sir Johnny himself

I was there too, but behind the camera, obvisouly!
Click to enlarge

Good luck to you all in season 9!

- Spinner

Written by Spinner 23:30 23/04 2006

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