⚽INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS SOCCERVERSE?

Soccerverse is a massively multiplayer, community-driven football management game.

Become a manager, agent, club owner, influencer, scout, trader or any combination of these and more, in one huge persistent, open-ended game world competing against other users. Playing Soccerverse and experiencing different roles in the football universe will give you a glimpse of how the football industry works.

The Soccerverse multiplayer gameworld features 5,350 clubs and more than 145,000 players competing against each other in 322 national leagues, 154 national cups, 4 continental championships and the World Club Cup with matches every week.

With league matches twice a week, every season in Soccerverse lasts for 6 months, which results in two seasons being played per calendar year.

Match results are calculated by the match engine according to the strength of the players fielded, their fitness and the tactics set by the manager. Real world results do not have any influence on the results in Soccerverse.

The Soccerverse team together with the input from the community will look to evolve the game in the future and add new features. Just drop any suggestions in our Discord and also follow the respective channels for any game updates.

Experience a thriving football economy that uses blockchain technology to give you true realism, asset ownership and total control. Soccerverse is running with Xaya technology on the Polygon blockchain and supports multiple platforms, i.e. desktop/laptop, mobile smartphone, and tablet computers, as well as a light and dark theme.

KEY THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT SOCCERVERSE

• League matches are played on Wednesday and Saturday, while national cup and continental championship matches take place on Mondays.

• Owning and trading influence in clubs and players is a key part of the game.

• Club influencers receive payouts based on the club's income.

• Clubs receive more income if they are in a higher division and perform well on the pitch.

• Player influencers receive payouts based on players’ wages, which in turn are based on their ratings. Bonuses are paid for starting players, goals, assists and clean sheet.

• Player ratings can go up and down based on how they perform in real life.

• You can play as a manager or agent if influencers appoint you. You then receive a weekly wage.

• Other roles can be trader or scout, but you will find yourself in multiple of these roles most likely.

• Managers set team tactics, negotiate transfer deals, and negotiate with agents.

• Agents can negotiate new contracts with better wages for their players or demand a transfer. Agents can also affect player morale, which in turn affects their performance on the pitch.

• When a season ends:

  • Player ratings can change.

  • New players are introduced or retired from the game to reflect real life.

  • Clubs are promoted/relegated to higher/lower leagues/divisions.

  • Finally, a new season starts and new fixtures are created.

UTILZING BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Soccerverse is running fully decentralized, autonomously and without any servers on blockchain technology.

Why decentralized gaming?

Players spend billions of hours every week in virtual worlds and that time is valuable.

Spending 6 months to acquire a sword in an MMORPG has value to that person and to someone else who would prefer to just pay for it, which is effectively buying someone else’s time.

This market has been made difficult for players by game developers (though sometimes for good reason) by restricting sales of in-game assets on secondary markets.

By restricting this trading, the gaming community must resort to “black markets,” which increases the chance of fraud and banning of accounts if caught by the game developers.

This can be partly solved by using blockchain technology to store assets (or NFTs) on the blockchain that represent the in-game asset. This allows for trustless secondary market trading, and allows for transparency of the current quantity of assets in circulation.

This solution is a much better application than how games currently work as it gives players the ability to resell their time (if the assets are acquired through gameplay) to other players.

However, this can be improved upon by utilizing blockchain to its full potential.

Fully Decentralized Games.

How decentralized blockchain gaming works in a nutshell

Although there are multiple methods for decentralized blockchain gaming, they “mostly” boil down to players signing moves (in-game actions) and then those moves being stored in the blockchain in “order”. The state of the game world is then computed from these moves.

These games can be best described as complex smart contracts and can range from being as simple as flipping a coin to a complex, fully decentralized MMO.

In a fully decentralized game universe, all players in that world must follow its rules. Those rules cannot be broken, just as the laws of physics cannot be broken in our own reality.

Why is decentralized gaming important for games with real money trading?

• Developer Abandonment In most games the in-game assets that are traded most and have the most value are those with the most utility. Players will always pay the most for the best damaging sword as this will strengthen their character to be able to acquire more assets. Note, however, that it is also possible for cosmetic items to have value in games as well.

  If the game runs on a centralized server, there is a risk the game could be shut down for various reasons.

  If the game no longer exists, its assets are much less valuable or even worthless as they no longer have any utility.

  There is the possibility that those assets could be used in other games, however this would require coordination with other game developers and is very difficult to get right, i.e. how do you define how powerful the sword is in another game?

  By having the game fully decentralized and autonomous, the risk of the original servers being shut down is removed. The game will continue and can even be picked up by the community or another studio to continue updating the game if they so wish.

  This gives confidence for the players and investors that the decentralized application will always be there.

• Censorship Banning accounts is a controversial topic and the ability to do so has both positive and negative consequences.

  However, one feature that Bitcoin brought to the world is permissionlessness and censorship resistance. This is one of the main features of blockchain, i.e. you truly own your money and assets. No third party has the power to ban your account, prevent you from playing, or nerf your assets and make them unusable or valueless. Truly decentralized games are permissionless.

• Unfair Gameplay / Cheating There are many different ways to cheat in online gaming.

  The following are some of the most common and obvious ways of cheating in mainstream games: a) Duplicating assets b) Hacking servers c) Speed hacks d) Memory hacks Decentralized games can either solve these problems or at a minimum can make them transparently obvious if it is a bug in the code.

  However, there are more serious ways to cheat that could involve the game developers, such as spawning rare assets for their friends or themselves and thus causing unfair inflation and unfair asset acquisition.

  Even if no such event were to happen, the end user still needs to trust that it won’t. Would Bitcoin be as valuable today if it was not trustless? For example, suppose that you spend 6 months in an MMORPG to acquire a very rare sword of which only 3 exist; it has a high value due to its utility and scarcity. But if the game developer spawns for free more of that item for friends and family, your sword loses value.

  Events like this can cause unknown and unnecessary inflation, which unfairly devalues your fairly acquired assets.

  For MMORPGs with player driven economies, it’s not uncommon for the game developers to unfairly interfere with the economy. Decentralized games like Soccerverse allow for provably fair gameplay. Every action is signed and verified by all players before updating the state of the game. No player (or developer) can break the rules of that particular gameworld. If the code is modified or changed in some way that changes the state of the game, then their move is ignored by everyone else (if it is invalid), and the cheater will be playing in an alternate reality all by themselves like a fork or parallel universe.

  All assets have true provenance in a decentralised open source MMO. Another benefit is games can have a provably fair TRUE leaderboard, i.e. a leaderboard that is stored for eternity and that proves you achieved that rank. The game could even be replayed to view the kills or events. This prestige is valuable but not monetarily.

• Down Time / Server Issues Servers going down due to DDOS, human error, or power outages can cause upsets or issues in the game that can result in player death, loss of assets, loss of leaderboard points, or other unwanted scenarios.

  By running games fully decentralized on the blockchain with no centralised servers, games can run fully autonomous and unstoppable with 24/7 uptime.

  Further, with no servers there are no server maintenance costs or backups required as the state of the game world can also be computed from the immutable ledger, the blockchain.

  This of course provides some challenges such as updates to the game logic. However, these sorts of updates (forks) are approved by the community, which is also a benefit.

  As with all software, decentralised games can have bugs that cause issues, so extra care must be taken.

• Nerfs / Unfair Gameplay Changes Generally in online games, changes are for the better. However, in some cases they may not be better for the players.

  This of course is a difficult topic. The players want what’s best for them, and the developers may want to make more money.

  In open source games the community is more empowered. Blockchain reflects this value and is aligned with the decentralization of power. In simpler terms, players have real choices and are never forced to make any particular decisions.

  In general, we believe that if changes are fair, aren’t greedy, and the community understands why the changes are needed, then the majority of players will go along with it.

  However, if changes adversely impact most of the community, then they can choose to reject the changes and not update. This could force the developers to leave, it could split the community, or most likely the developers and players would reach a mutually agreeable compromise.

  This can also be governed by voting within the gameworld itself (based on stakes or other methods such as in-game level).

  As the game’s code is open source, players can fork the game if they want to. Maybe they want to change the rules, are unhappy with rules, want to restart the game, or even update the game if the original developers have disappeared.

  This could have negative consequences for the developers. However, unless the majority of the community are unhappy, the players will most likely stick with the original game.

• Trust Trust minimisation (or elimination) is one of the main benefits of blockchain. Removing trust allows gamers and investors to spend more time/money with less risk.

  Although the potential issues with gaming listed above may be minor and “not an issue with current mainstream games”, they do all add up, and as the value of player driven economies increases, they will become increasingly more important.

  Whether you have assets worth $10 or $1,000,000 inside a game, at some point, trust will affect your actions: will you sell to minimize the risk of being banned, cheated, or seeing the game shut down? Trustless systems allow in-game assets to reach their true (i.e. higher) value potential.

  All these factors lead to a true, fair, and open player-driven economy.