Majalah PowerPlay

1) Hello, since you are a person that most of the people know, it's not necessary to introduce you. I believe we can get directly to the main point of this interview. In the last few days many of us have seen a new project being made by the PPM team called Tennis Duel. How did this project begin and what is its main goal?

Hello. The project Tennis Duel was established because a lot of people were asking us about the possibility of making some kind of a tennis game which would be easy to play to fill up their free time. These requests just kept coming. Many of the people found PowerPlay Manager too complex, so we were thinking about a possibility, why not do something as a side project, while still working at PowerPlayManager, that would be something different, but at the same time it would be sports related. We wanted to make a game where the people could come anytime to play it and to compete with other players for positions in the ranking. We decided to involve in it a small group of our team, because it's a simpler kind of project, and we managed to make the beta version within just a couple of months.

2) The beta version is running at the moment, how long will it last approximately and what would be the major differences compared to the full version? What new features are you still planning to do?

We suppose, that the Beta version will be on for more than a month - it's very hard to tell you the exact time that we will need to get everything done. In any case, the game will definitely be restarted before the start of a full version, which means that everyone will start from scratch. We are still expecting many changes to be done, such as the tasks which will be changed for more interesting ones. The current version is just about clicking, but in the new mode, you will be required to complete various challenges before doing the task. For example, you will need to buy something specific before you unlock a taks, so in general, the game will be based more on logic, more fun and we are also planning to add Bosses - they will be something like the final opponents, which you will unlock. The bosses will be very hard to beat, but once you succeed, you will get a nice reward. The game is still being tuned because sometimes it is too fast and ohter times too slow and so on. All of this we want to improve. We are also planning tournaments, but at the moment we don't know yet whether they will be ready during the Beta version or only in the Full version of the game.

3) We got an interesting question from a czech manager  prcek17, who is asking, if you are planning any changes, talking mainly about the sponsors, since by his reaction, many managers don't use this item, because they don't sit at the computer for the whole day, and that's the reason they lose the money they had.

This is one of the things that we we want to tune up. We want the sponsors to be attractive and we also want the facilities to be some kind of a defense from being robbed. That means the players will be able to upgrade their facilities to avoid losing their money.

4) Are you planning any further connection of this project with PPM, or will this be a separate project?

This will be a separate project, which will still have its support from PowerPlay Manager. There will be a Premium pack which will make the lives of the players easier. We would like to give some of the premium features to our PowerPlay Manager players for free and this way the projects will be connected in a way.

5) As far as forums are concerned, will it be done via PPM like now or will you create a separate forum later on? 

The forums will most likely be only be via PPM and possibly via Facebook page later on, but at the moment we are not playnning any internal forums.

6) The whol PPM leadership worked on the Tennis Duel project. As we know, some projects such as U20 and U18 national teams have been postoponed for several seasons. Is this the main reason why these national team competitions were not implemented yet? 

This is not the reason why we havent launched them yet. There is another member of the team that is responsible for the national teams, and he didn't work on Tennis Duel. Some problems arose during the implementation of these national teams. Such problems as conflicts between the U18, U20 and senior teams. A question arose what happens if both the U20 and U18 coach would want to have the same 18 year old player? So now we are working on the connection between them. We had to change the whole structure and now it's just a matter of coding it. So once again, the postponing of U20 and U18 national team competitions has nothing to do with Tennis Duel. We hope that this season we will finally be able to launch these competitions.

7) Right now you are probably working on the re-design of PPM pages. What new features will the new design bring?

We are work on it very intensely and it is also a very expensive project. The design will be nice, with lots of pictures and new functions such as easier line-up editing although it is yet to be seen whether it will be launched immediately with the first version of the re-design. We are also planning to launch a new hockey live broadcast, where the people will have a chance to see the actual players at play. The hockey broadcast will be done first and then the soccer live broadcast will be done in a similar way. We also want to create fan clubs of real national teams, whether it be in hockey or soccer, which will be a credit feature. Once you become a member of a fan club of some national team, you will see special pictures in your user account. Our new game mascot will appear on the pages, he will be for example in the penalty box, holding a cup, in full hockey equipment and so on, and he will be wearing a national team jersey depending on which fan club you are a member of. Fan club members will also have a possibility to play friendly matches against each other and in the end the best members of the fanclubs will be rewarded with some kind of prizes from us.

8) The new design was criticized as well, some said it is too ordinary. What do you think about that?

We think that the new design is mostly important for new players who are not attracted by the current one. The new design is so innovative, that I think that with time everyone will get used to it. Those who play PPM now are used to the old design, so it's obvious that they will take more time to adapt to a new one. Lots of other projects did the same thing and i dont think that this criticism is justified. On the other hand I understand, that the people are used to the old version, but unfortunately we need new players and it's not possible with the old design.

9) I got a question in my mailbox whether the new design will be as demanding as the one in Tennis Duel. Manager  tommi007 said that his FUP connection on his cellphone was depleted in 2 hours. 

Definitely not, there will not as many graphic elements, perhaps one on each page.

10) A lot of managers criticise your (you,  Gioel and  maxo) inactivity on the forums, what is the main reason for that? About a year ago we were often able to meet you on the forums, but nowadays it's almost impossible... Are you planning to come back to those times, or it won't get any better from here? 

Until recently I could say that I always to every mail I got. But the fact is, that we have so much going on that we are no longer able to do it this way. And that is one of the reasons why there are other people responsible for this type of communication. I am talking about the new head of development and head of translators  vlady  and new developer  portugalec. If anyone has a question that requires my personal answer, then I do reply, but since many questions are banal, I am just not able to deal with all of them. The three of us have been pulling this project along since 2007 in such a way that we were working more than 12 hours a day all the time. We are just unable to do it this way any more and that's why we are looking for people who will have these things in charge. Either way, we are still here and we listen to the people's reactions. Even though we don't respond to them directly it doesn't mean that we are ignoring them.

Thank you very much for your time that you spent with us making this interview and good luck for the future with the new developments...

+ Here is something extra for the end. All the pictures in the game where you can see Ivan alias tuttle

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