PowerPlay Magazine

Ivan Krechňák a.k.a. tuttle is one of the founding members of PPM. Even though he is a busy man, he has found some time for me and for the readers of PP Magazine to answer a few questions. If you want to know what led to the creation of PPM, how it was conceived and what the future holds, just keep reading. The answers are really interesting...maybe even more interesting than the questions themselves.

Have you played some other on-line managers before you started working on PPM? If so, which ones?

Of course I did, otherwise I would never have gotten to this project. The first one I played was MIFA. I was helping the creators there a little bit. I helped in a similar way the testers are helping us here even though they didn't have testers per se. Then I found out by chance that the game is also played by a guy with the same nick as my former classmate from elementary school. I asked him if it was him and it was. We hadn't met for some ten years :). He (current owner of Hockey Arena by the way) had told me that he had been working on his own project related to hockey and he asked me if I could help him. We had started with maybe 200 users and then we had managed to get it up to 30,000 users. Back then it was a huge success. When the project reached these heights and the game was becoming successful, conflicts began to arise and I took it really hard. People demanded new things and I couldn't influence the development directly. So I said to myself that it has no sense to continue like this for me and that I could use the experience gained to create my own manager game which I would make a little bit differently. My friend maxo has a good head for math and he is also a veteran of many manager games. He agreed to start a project with me. We were then looking for a good program writer. Back on Hockey Arena I have known a young programmer Gioel, whom I considered to be the right person for us. I contacted him and he agreed and so we started working on the PowerPlay Manager project.

Do you remember the early days? How was it? What did you have to overcome to realize your dream about PPM?

In the beginnings there was more determination than practical experience :). First we agreed how things should work in theory and which one of us would be responsible for which part. Back then we had no idea where it would all lead us. In the beginnings we met three times a week after work and we were putting down our ideas. We were thinking of the game engine which we had changed a thousand times and still there was only three of us. Then the first developers, our friends, joined us. But after half a year we still only had the theory and the people were dissatisfied. They told us we were just a "Czech dream" with many registrations and no game. But that was our plan from the start. To gather registrations even through a lot of criticism. I knew that when the game would start, we would need a lot of people to start playing. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to tweak the game and it wouldn't be so interesting. Time has shown that I was right and that it was the right move. Then we had a crisis and we decided to pick the pace up and go for broke. We launched a really early version and then people started helping us with advice and everything suddenly got better. The version was for testers and friends. Then there was the official beta version. The big issue from the start was money which we had to invest from our own pockets for two and a half years. Another big issue was the huge amount of time that we had spent on the project. I have to say that without the support of our wives and the patience of the people we meet we would never have finished it. I owe them a lot of thanks.

Do you remember some of the first managers who have registered?

On Hockey Arena my main job was propagation and work with community. I have created national support teams which were helping us. When I was leaving, they knew I was setting up my own project and they were curious. Some of them have been with us from the start. I would like to thank all of them. A lot of the initial players have stayed with us until today. However, I was just recently checking the higher leagues and I found out that some of them have stopped playing. I feel really bad about that but that's how it goes.

How would you rate the status of PPM now? Are you getting close to the end where you would only take care of the maintenance of the project?

That would have been a dream if this had been so. In reality it's far from that. It is a huge project. We are just finishing hockey and we are content with that. There are some problems with the game calculation and if we had been doing it today, we would have done it differently but it's too late now. We have learned our lesson and we will take that to heart when doing soccer.

Are you preparing more changes and improvements?

National teams by the end of this season or beginning of next season. Player loans, which is a complicated matter, but it is also planned. We want to finish the skyboxes and some other small tweaks which the regular users might not even notice. SMS and e-mail notification of results. And we also plan to implement Paysafecard as a payment option. Then we start working on soccer because hockey will not generate enough revenue to keep PPM alive financially.

How does the financial side of the project look? Are the contributions from PRO pack owners helping?

If it wasn't for them, we'd have to fold a long time ago. We appreciate their support a lot. The first years we were funding everything ourselves and overall it was a lot of money. Monthly expenses are now really high, 6 people earn full time salary which they use to feed their families, it's our job. But gradually things are getting better.

Which one of your co-workers do you esteem the most? Who would get the most praise for the work done on PPM?

It's hard to name someone. I would like to thank all the people who have helped us even with the smallest things. If I had to name someone, then I would like to mention Gioel and Maxo because without them, this project wouldn't be.

What do you say to those who are always complaining about something?

Sometimes I even get upset when I read it. Many people think that everything is so easy and often they don't know the circumstances. On the other hand these complainers often help us to find errors which we wouldn't have otherwise found. And that is very important and in a way I am thankful for that. However, those who are complaining about PRO packs are just getting on my nerves. We do not force anyone to buy them, they can play for free. But everybody must understand that we have to attract people to buy PRO packs. Otherwise this project wouldn't be able to survive and they wouldn't be able to play at all.

How many people overall have a PRO pack?

Something over 9 per cent of users have a PRO pack. The numbers vary by country. The best countries percentage-wise are Switzerland and Norway.

What percentage of PRO pack owners would be optimal for you in order to maintain the project financially just from this money?

Optimal is 100 per cent :). But 15 per cent would be good too. If we had 20, we could get the other sports going much sooner.

When all sports are done on PPM are you planning something like PPM Olympics where every nation from each sport qualifies one team and they compete against each other in all disciplines to determine the ultimate sporting nation?

We were thinking about that and we would like to do something like that. However we have not yet come to the conclusion of how exactly we shall accomplish that. But probably something similar to what you wrote. Soccer and hockey are team sports but it is more difficult with the others.

Do you attend meetings? Do you like meeting the players of the game?

I enjoy the meetings very much. I have to say that there are always really great people there and it's a shame that I can't talk to everyone for more than a short while. I talk more with the old friends but on the next meeting I will gladly talk to everyone who will want to talk with me.

What is PPM for you now? Is it more like a job or just fun?

PPM is more like a job which I really enjoy doing.

Do you think the users have already penetrated the system of counter-tactics? That they have found out how to set it up to win? Is it possible at all?

By long term observation it is possible but we will be modifying that anyway. But we will always notify you if any changes are done. But it is difficult to observe everything because the calculation is complicated.

Is there anything you would like to wish for the players or for PPM?

I wish for the sake of PPM that the economic crisis would end and that the companies would start buying ads on websites as it was before. That would bring us money and eventually it would lead to faster development of other sports and also we could give a lot of things from the PRO pack to all users. I wish that PPM team would be able to cooperate without problems even in situations when people seem to be fed up with each other (sometimes there is 6 of us in a small office). For the managers I wish good health and a lot of success on PPM.