Majalah PowerPlay

January 10, 2010, it was winter, and with a seasonal job, I was experiencing some down time from work due to bad weather.  Boredom had officially kicked in. In the two weeks prior I had achieved legendary status as a samurai, bootlegged alcohol for the mob, slayed a dragon, and pirated a vessel full of treasure, all in a bid to kill some time while hiding out from the bad weather. I'm talking, of course, about online simulation games, not real life. Let's be honest, I'd be the world's most out of shape samurai. I did kind of resemble the sexy wench in the pirate game, but only because my man-boob bra size is roughly the same as hers.

As I scoured over the google results pages, looking for a new game to try, an NHL game was playing on my TV.  It made me wonder if there were any decent hockey sims out there, and I quickly refocused my search efforts.  I typed "hockey manager simulation" into google and pressed enter.  The first result back was this game called Powerplay Manager, with a google summary that read "create your own hockey team and make your dream of managing a hockey club a reality".  A-ha! This was what I was looking for, a fun little hockey game that would give me something to do for the next week or two (the fun of online sim games usually fizzles out in a couple weeks for me). I signed up, and three and a half years later, here I am writing this article. It turned out there was something else at work here, something other than the great gameplay compelling me to stick around, and that was the PPM community.

Within minutes of signing up and being assigned to IV.5 I received a message from Fedidit, of the Fedidit Rangers, welcoming me to the league and offering any help I needed getting started.  As the Rangers were the top team in IV.5, I was happy to ask a few questions.  He then went out of his way to help me through the first couple of months, and to get off to a good start. This initial outreach was only a sign of things to come from the PPM community. I started getting more and more addicted to the game and began lurking the forums like a sweaty pervert in a Taylor Swift chatroom.  Using the help from Fedidit, and some information picked up off the forums I won IV.5,  and got my first big promotion!  If I was to keep winning and promoting, I knew I had to start asking some questions in the forums.  So I did, and what I found was an outpouring of people willing to help. 

What started off as questions and answers regarding the game, slowly morphed into more, as little bits of each persons personality began poking through the posts.  I found numerous people with similar interests to me, not only from within Canada, but from all around the world.  We've talked Canucks hockey (oh, and other NHL hockey, even though none of the other teams really matter ;P), other sports, movies, and tv shows.  If I want to talk fishing, Luongo, or women, I can chat with Canucks357. If I want to get a prospect update on my NHL team's latest Swedish draft pick, or just have a laugh, there's Tian76.  If I want to talk in quotes from Disney's The Mighty Ducks, I can ask Beetbout "Do you know what sarcasm is?" and he'll reply "NoooOOOooo" and I'll laugh and laugh and everyone else will think we're cake-eaters (If you got that Mighty Ducks reference, then congratulations, you're a cake-eater too! We should chat some time).

To truly experience this game I highly recommend that you develop relationships with some of the great people playing it.  Don't be constricted by language either. In this ever shrinking global village, technology has made it so easy to smash through the language barrier.  Use a translation tool like google translate.  It takes 5 seconds to copy and paste something into one of these tools. While it may not give you a perfect translation, you'll understand enough to have a meaningful conversation with someone on the other side of the world, and that can be well worth the extra few seconds.   Chat with a Czech, small talk with a Swede, reminisce with a Russian, banter with a Bulgarian....you get the idea.

Expand your horizons in this community and you'll be amazed at how much more this game has to offer. On the surface, Powerplay Manager is an excellent manager sim.  At it's core, you'll find a network of like-minded people driving the engine further than you could have imagined. It's a hub of managerial games, and a great social network all rolled into one.  I now know, that the google summary that read "create your own hockey team and make your dream of managing a hockey club a reality" didnt even scratch the surface of what this game is. Now, when someone asks me if I prefer Facebook, or Twitter, I often reply "neither, I prefer PPM, you should sign up too".