TM Ireland - Trophymanager Ireland

Not known as a man who minces his words, Master Teamster and one of TM's founders, Nielsen took time out of his day to chat about recent game developments.  No words were minced in this interview.

Thanks for taking the time out to chat to us, how are things going? Are you happy with the recent rise in manager numbers?

No, its less than anticipated.

Has the Facebook application helped?

Some of it, but not that much

Is TM currently advertising?

No

Why not, budgetary constraints?  I have a couple of google adwords vouchers if that is any good to you…!

Vouchers are always welcome :) We never advertise in the last third of the season. Thats the only reason.

How many managers do you think TM could realistically support to make it:

1. Profitable?

2. Unaffected by high volume performance issues?

There's a difference here, its not hard making it profitable, but we have a lot of plans for the games, and want to continue spending resources on developing, unlike other competitors.

Is TM a profitable entity?

We use all our money on development so no.

How is TrophyHockey going by the way?

Bad, cant attract any users, but I know Niklas are working on a match viewer that will hopefully change that, and we should be able to use it also on TM.

Do you (Senikov) have any other large projects in mind?

No

Lots of recent changes in TM; are you happy with how the game is developing?

Yes quite happy. Think we have come a long way the past 2 years.

The recent removal of the money cap had a controversial reaction; can you explain the rationale behind that decision?

Theres no rationale behind having it. We have 88 clubs with more than 2 billion, and only 800 with  more than 1 billion, an interest cap is much more understandable.

I noticed on the forum that you expected the removal of the money cap to take money out of the game, how will that work exactly?

Eh I dont think so, I only said that we have a lot less money and daytrading is a lot less profitable.

Right.  You have said that interest will be capped, when will this be implemented and will this cap be at current levels (ie, max interest of the previous cap)?

Very soon, and it will most likely be reduced compared to what it was.

So max interest will be in the region of 4.4% (or whatever it is) of 2.1 billion…?

Yes, or a bit less.

Have prices fallen for players in recent seasons? I don’t mean prices for the top-end world class/ unique ones, but for mediocre to good, ie the bread and butter sales…

Fallen

MC's Sales Profits

Is there any reason for concern on this, how much lower do they need to go, if at all?

No reason, we are still not back to season 1-5 level, for which the game economy was actually planned.

Needless to say the game has changed an awful lot since then, both in terms of functionality and manager numbers, but I agree that prices have fallen and for a long time I put that down to recent decreases in manager numbers — less new teams with disposable incomes — but now I wonder if the new transfer list doesn’t have something to do with it. Will you allow non-pros to search by skill on the new transfer list any time soon?

New transfer list has some to do with it, no doubt about that. Non-pros will not as it stands now get anything on the transferlist.

Why is that?

Its working as intended convertion-wise

There seems to be a strong desire among the TM devs to ‘take money out of the game’, do you have the facility to measure the size of the TM economy or are economic decisions based on instinct?

yes.

Can you elaborate on this a little… pretty please…?

Inflation in facilities will ultimately lead to inflation in player skills - which is the only thing this games 'economy' has to worry about as player skills are capped.

With the lower player prices that we have had for several season now, is there any reason for the transfer tax?

yes - to make daytrading harder.

Would increasing the minimum time between buying and selling not help counteract daytrading?

I think half a season is pretty much, but yes you are most likely right.

Then you know what to do then...!  Would you even consider removing the tax for products of managers’ youth academies?

yes - and then no. Im generally against making a lot of different game functionality as it confuses people.

Are there any plans to adjust facility etc costs?

No, if I had a say the youth academy should increase in price, but I think I stand alone on this one.

We haven’t heard much about the conditional orders thing lately, can you give us a progress report on that?

Woody is soon ready to test - Its hard for me to know the exact status before we have done some testing.

A Little Scan

We are currently making a whole new TM design-wise and adding and removing a lot of functionality - we plan on making a simple-mode where a lot of stuff is hidden. A better tutorial, more emails to new users and a more fun match viewer.

What functionality are you thinking about removing?

We have a long list, it's most likely just an issue about presenting it in other ways, and merging pages into more simple versions.

Have there been any tweaks to the new Match Engine since it was introduced?

Only to make match reports longer.

What other game development ideas are you working on, thinking about…?

Live match viewer really needs changing. Youth development could be more exciting.

If time, money and resources were no object, what would you love to implement tomorrow that would make TM the leading game in its category?

Live match viewer :)

What’s the weather like there now…?

Shitty, been so for 2 months

The Bloody Wevah

Is there anything more you’d like to tell the people, so to speak…?

Look forward to the new TM framework - it's gonna be massive.

Thanks for your time and good luck with it all, cheers