Pop Rocket Games Marries Social Sports to Text RPG Genre on Facebook in CopaSocca

CopaSocca is a soccer-themed text-based role-playing game from newcomer Pop Rocket Games. The game launched to the public on May 25, though was silently live from the middle of April as an open pre-beta release. There was a complete database reset prior to the official launch date, however, which cost the game some early-adopter players and has caused the game's MAU figure to decline throughout the first week of June. According to our traffic tracking service AppData, CopaSocca currently has 1,275 monthly active users and 124 daily active users. CopaSocca casts players as captain of a small-time soccer team. As with other Facebook games in the sports genre, energy can be spent either on training soccer skills or on earning soft currency with part-time jobs. Once players are satisfied with their training and earnings, they can compete against other players' teams, either watching matches via text commentary or skipping directly to the result. Players can also customize their personal avatar with haircuts, clothing and other equipment. Certain pieces of equipment offer bonuses to match performance, and some are required to unlock special abilities acquired through training. Players can also invite friends or random Facebook users to join their team, which presents the opportunity for better performance than with the default players provided. The game is presented simply and clearly, and Pop Rocket made the conscious decision to build the game in HTML rather than Flash in order to allow it to be accessible from the widest possible range of devices, including non Flash-capable devices such as the iPad. Pop Rocket Managing Director Tahsin Avci describes the game as an "egocentric football manager" game. "On Facebook you are sharing everything about yourself and what you are interested in, it's always you in the focus," says Avci. "And that's where CopaSocca is perfectly fitting in. You start your career as the next big-time pro football player. But football can't be played solo, so you as the team captain invite your friends or other Facebook players into your own team." To encourage regular participation, the game features weekly competitions. There's a league system, where players can battle for promotion or to avoid relegation on a weekly basis. There's also a weekly "top scorer" competition. Avci notes that these two competitions have been very effective in motivating players to check back and play regularly, but hopes to add more personalized, customizable "friend leagues" in the near future alongside the global competition. The game is monetized through the purchase of hard currency, in this case known as Credits, which can be purchased using Facebook Credits. CopaSocca Credits can be used to top up energy or fitness levels, but can also be spent on boosts to improve match performance, premium equipment to improve skill values, and vanity items to decorate the player's Trophy Room. All seems well with the payment system now, but as Avci explains, it wasn't always that way. "Like many other companies we were affected in a recent malfunction period for Facebook Credits that occurred for at least all European countries for nearly a week," he explains. "From our perspective Facebook didn't seem to take the issue seriously and reacted very late." The future for CopaSocca holds a wider variety of cups and leagues for players to participate in, as well as more robust communication and socialization features. At the same time, the Pop Rocket team is planning to work on another sports management game and is also developing a new IP named Project Luna with Daedalic Entertainment, due out this fall. You can follow CopaSocca's progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

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Pop Rocket Games Marries Social Sports to Text RPG Genre on Facebook in CopaSocca

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