Cricket Manager
Program-Ace created a profound sports simulator for fans by adding all the key elements of modern management of activities
Background Info
Cricket Manager is a mobile game for both iOS and Android platforms that recreates the experience of handling a team in a popular sports environment, granting full control over finances, tactics, and backroom management. By creating a franchise from scratch, the players have access to the single-player campaign or can play with the friends. The deep customization level will allow for choosing the country and the team member comprised of Batsmen and Bowlers, based on their attributes-to-price ratio.
Created for a broad range of sports fans, it mainly focuses a group of cricket enthusiasts who are willing to enjoy their favorite game in a convenient, mobile environment. Uniting the players from all across the globe, the app is most popular in the former British colonies where cricket is an essential pastime among all the demographics, thus, securing a sizeable constant revenue for the publisher.
The main purpose of the app was to create a stable gaming experience for our client who could further implement their monetization and distribution models. Given Cricket Manager's immersive and engaging nature, it was a nice solution to fill the niche of this popular sport in a growing mobile games segment.
Created for a broad range of sports fans, it mainly focuses a group of cricket enthusiasts who are willing to enjoy their favorite game in a convenient, mobile environment. Uniting the players from all across the globe, the app is most popular in the former British colonies where cricket is an essential pastime among all the demographics, thus, securing a sizeable constant revenue for the publisher.
The main purpose of the app was to create a stable gaming experience for our client who could further implement their monetization and distribution models. Given Cricket Manager's immersive and engaging nature, it was a nice solution to fill the niche of this popular sport in a growing mobile games segment.
SAVE THIS SUCCESS STORY
Erkki Heilakka
CEO
We have outsourced all our development efforts to Program-Ace for years. We have been very satisfied with Program-Ace’s unique ability to deliver. They have the resources, tools, and processes to develop graphically intensive products using the state-of-the-art technologies.
The Program-Ace team has a world-class skill set in various areas, including graphical design, 3D modelling, game design, programming and project management. The team has had the full responsibility for the whole product development pipeline, all the way from prototyping to live operations. I have recommended Program-Ace to many of our colleagues and partners, and I will continue to do so.
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Business Challenges
1
Marketing Appeal
With a hefty cricket popularity in the former British colonies, the app was aimed at attracting a sizeable audience to enjoy the game.
2
Cross-Platform Availability
Another way to boost the popularity was to grant access to both iOS and Android stores, effectively increasing the player base for the publisher.
3
Performance Quality
Due to a sizeable game saturation, we needed to secure a smooth and stable game flow on all-tier smartphones while maintaining a high graphical level.
Approach and Solution
Our client has set a number of distinctive goals that required us to create an app that would mimic the sheer complexity of the real-life cricket management, whereas major game components could stay simplistic and easy to learn for the general audience.
The abundance of various game mechanics and opportunities was introduced to become the app's key feature, combining the areas of training or composing the team, executing finances, stadium area, managing the players' health and transfer policy, granting the feeling of an absolute grasp that the real-life franchise owners have.
The playing field was another area that needed to retain realistic cricket elements to give a player enough influence towards the result by allowing to choose units' positions and elaborate tactics based on the cricket-specific skills they possess, such as doosra, a specific delivery technique for bowlers.
For the sake of better performance and therefore reaching a wider audience, we have decided to implement the best mobile practices for our application. Static and dynamic batching, optimal texture compression, and texture atlasing were the essential steps to make a fast-running and stable application that would convey all the in-game features in a smooth fashion. Considering a profound MMO data flow, whole computing and calculating phases are processed on the server and then sent to user devices.
As a result, our team has deployed a full-blown solid product that was easily susceptible to publisher's manipulations from aside and regulate all the microtransaction and in-game currency values to make the game a lucrative entity for all the stakeholders.
The abundance of various game mechanics and opportunities was introduced to become the app's key feature, combining the areas of training or composing the team, executing finances, stadium area, managing the players' health and transfer policy, granting the feeling of an absolute grasp that the real-life franchise owners have.
The playing field was another area that needed to retain realistic cricket elements to give a player enough influence towards the result by allowing to choose units' positions and elaborate tactics based on the cricket-specific skills they possess, such as doosra, a specific delivery technique for bowlers.
For the sake of better performance and therefore reaching a wider audience, we have decided to implement the best mobile practices for our application. Static and dynamic batching, optimal texture compression, and texture atlasing were the essential steps to make a fast-running and stable application that would convey all the in-game features in a smooth fashion. Considering a profound MMO data flow, whole computing and calculating phases are processed on the server and then sent to user devices.
As a result, our team has deployed a full-blown solid product that was easily susceptible to publisher's manipulations from aside and regulate all the microtransaction and in-game currency values to make the game a lucrative entity for all the stakeholders.
Technology Stack
Cricket Manager app has gone through multiple development stages, and, given the project scale and a number of components that an MMO game needs to have, it required the efforts of a game designer, project manager, 4 unity developers, 2 backend developers, 2 QA engineers, concept artist, two 3D artists, two 2D artists, VFX artist, animator, UI/UX designer and took 12 months to be fully produced from scratch.
Audience
Cricket Manager is aimed at fans of cricket and sport simulation games. According to marketing research, the majority of players are males between the age of 21-45 who tend to spend around 1-2 hours per session each day. Also, the game popularity is specially large in the UK and the former colonies of the British Empire (Australia, India, Pakistan, and the West Indies).
Cricket Players
Sports Fans
Coaches
Gamers
Value Delivered
The final product has garnered a sizeable chunk of attention and has met all the conditions required by our client, which helped them achieve:
- The application has been downloaded nearly 800k times on both platforms combined;
- We managed to reach high performance, even on low-tier smartphones;
- We have successfully integrated social networks into the game, allowing the players to share their experience with friends;
- Implementation of the graduate league system allowed us to retain the player focus and engagement level that led to an increase of an average play session;
- Delivered a full-cycle MMO ecosystem that is free for publisher's adjusting over the course of a game's lifespan.
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