footium

Footium is an innovative new NFT based football strategy game that allows players to manage their own football club and create teams of professional players from different countries. The project aims at improving upon the existing genre by integrating NFTs (Non-Fungible tokens) with a native token giving gamers true ownership for each team they control in this highly immersive virtual world.

If like us you’re familiar with the football strategy game – Football Manager: the footballmanagement simulation video game developed by Sports Interactive and published by Sega. Then the prospect of combining this seminal football strategy game with the NFT based metaverse world of crypto is a very exciting prospect indeed.

The opportunity to actually manage and own the team, players and assets you develop in the game, whilst earning in game tokens, is compelling. This is why Footium and their football strategy metaverse has all the ingredients to become the standout Web 3 project in 2022.

Key elements to the gameplay and launch

Gameplay

Player and club minting

Footium clubs, squads and training

Tactics and strategy

Play to earn economics and footium token economics

Blockchain technology

Footium gameplay

You compete in a tiered league system. Play daily against real teams twice a day, your team plays in your league against other clubs.

Footium league breakdown

Seasons – The game moves fast, with seasons of 20 games finishing inside two weeks.

Promotion and relegation – The best teams move up the pyramid to a higher league, the bottom teams move down to the league below.

Rewards – Performing in the league gets you token rewards, with the prizes higher as you progress up the leagues.

Think of the tiered system of national football leagues throughout the world. Footium are using a similar pyramid system. The premier league will consist of 12 teams, the second 24, third 48 for a complete set of 8 leagues in this initial presale.

Footium gameplay and league table
Build a football institution

So far, we have only mentioned the club and badge, but you get much more than this. As the owner of a club, you gain access to the game, a unique 3D stadium, a club kit, and colors, coaches, and an academy. Your club also has its own tradition that includes its own Ultras and club history.

Footium is multi-chained

Footium is an exciting new game that lets you play with crypto. You can use any of the following: Ethereum, Solana or Binance Chain to jump into one league and then switch between them if your heart desires!

At the end of each season there will be a cross-chain championship similar to the European Champions league.

How does Footium work?

The game will use the Footium token within the game to reward winners and for all transactions such as transfers and can also be staked. Clubs with more tokens staked, will have a larger fanbase, and quicker leveling up of the stadium and home game advantages. For example, players have more abilities and coaches to improve their game and tactics.

For players, staking tokens is an interesting way to increase their level and unlock more abilities in the game. They can use these extra powers on either offense or defense depending on what best suits them given a particular opponent’s alignment with one of three variables – speed (agility), strength(power), and technique/skillset preferences which determine how well they perform certain tasks like tackling vs running through opposing defenses.

Footium gameplay
Footium in-play gameplay

The game of football is a complex one with many different aspects, but NFTs can take it to the next level. Each club has its own set-up and players who have their strengths advantages over others – just like real life! For example, the NFTs could start out representing young stars before retiring into legend status once they’re done playing professionally or even after retirement for those managers that want them to stay active in coaching duties if needed rather than sitting on your shelf collecting dust. As such, the blockchain technology underpinning footium creates a level of ownership and utility that recreate a truly immersive football strategy experience.

Footium transfer market
Footium transfer market

The academy is where you can mint more players and the better your club the better the players that can be minted. Your club academy can become a card minting machine that produces players that may well become living legends in the game.

Another core aspect of the game includes the transfer market. This is where you can buy and trade players from which you can make profits or reinvest wisely.

Within the gameplay itself, you need to employ the correct tactics to outplay your opponent and create off-field morale that keeps the whole club behind the team

Minting clubs and minting player NFTs

Footium plan on launching on layer 2 which should keep the transaction fees on minting players fairly low. The fees for minting players from the clubs’ academy will go directly into prize pools.

Fees will correlate to divisions but not scale directly on player quality. It’s expected, for example; that it costs more to mint a division 3 academy player than a division 7 academy player.

It’s estimated by the Footium team that fees will be as follows: 

  • $10 to mint a division 8 player from your academy* 
  • $20 for a division 6* 
  • $40 for a division 4*

*(Subject to community feedback)

Also worth noting that there will be 3 levels of cards:

  • Common
  • Rare
  • Legendary – these won’t be minted from academies

Upon launch, each team will come with 20 players of varying ability and 10 players in your academy. It is possible to produce rare players from your academy and have them from your genesis 20 squad — rare is defined by the potential max rating of that player being particularly high. Legendary players can’t be produced from your academy. A player will reach their potential by being nurtured in their career through training sessions, getting quality game-time and avoiding injuries.

From then on, each club will generate 10 new players every season which you can play until they are 21 without needing to mint them. At 21 you need to decide whether to mint them otherwise they will become a free agent.

If players turn 21 without the club manager minting them they will be released from your club and act as a free agent for other club managers to bid on. If other managers want to sign free agents from the pool, they will need to mint them.

There is a loan feature, and you’ll be able to take a fee for a loan or do it as a free loan.

Players will be shown on a card with their name, age and rating on. Your club’s crest will also be displayed on the card, we will make sure to show some more screenshots from the beta that showcase this.

The clubs’ lore/history was completely generative which is why some clubs have more than others. Over time and throughout the seasons, your club’s lore will develop and change.

Footium football club sales
Footium football club sales

Gameplay, tactics and strategy

Club owners will have the power to engage with their players off the pitch through a daily training schedule. Planned elements will include; fitness sessions, training sessions, and opportunities to specialise. For example — do you want your squad to improve their performance of a particular tactic or players’ individual skills or improve overall fitness.

Ultimately success will depend on; how managers choose to run training sessions, the number of game time players get, the quality of that game time, and the ability to avoid injuries.

In-play tactics

In terms of making match day tactics, you’ll be able to interact with your team and players in the same way as in real life. You’ll be able to make substitutions, change between different styles (attacking/balanced/defensive), as well as tactical changes (i.e. going from 433 to 541, changing from pressing to sitting back).

The in-game tactics will have an influence but due to the fact that Footium will be a game with a worldwide audience, Footium will be putting more emphasis on the preset tactics. Footium managers will be able to set up a variety of preset tactics that can be changed at any point before match day. With this comes an opportunity for players to experiment with different strategies and see how they compare against other opponents setups. 

That said, if you did not set any tactics for your team at all before a match, the computer will pick a random team which will put you at a slight disadvantage. Also, Footium are planning on launching with an assistant manager feature which will allow managers to let someone else play their games (e.g. if you are going on holiday or in different timezones).

Assistant managers

Instead of building our own login system, Footium will use Ethereum accounts to handle Assistant Managers. This’ll work very similarly to the existing login system. Assistant Managers will log in via Metamask as a particular club, providing that the club’s Owner has pre-approved their wallet address. Assistant Manager roles will be granular; allowing Owners to give different permission to different addresses.

Notifications and alerts

A notification system is being discussed by the Footium team. This could be launched in the future in the form of a mobile app which gives you a push notification for these events.

In the meantime, alerts are generated in places like discord. For example, there has already been a NewsFeed implemented into the beta which has been shown in the Footium discord server.

Play to earn – the footium token

Crucially managers have the opportunity to earn currency from performances in game. This will be done in the form of the footium token; a crypto currency – built on the ethereum blockchain with a limited and pre-set supply. The Footium team have given a few indications as to how this might work:

Token distribution – Although not public yet, tokens will be divided between team, investors, advisors, a community treasury and community incentives. Non club-holders will also be able to hold/buy/sell the token, with governance/staking of the token outside of the game mechanics.

Owning and staking – Managers will have the opportunity to buy tokens at issue and from decentralised exchanges at launch. Owning and staking tokens will allow you to improve the lore of your club. This in turn helps improve facilities, stadiums, fan engagement, training and player development.

Rewards – Based on performance in leagues and cups, clubs and managers will be rewarded in the form of Footium tokens. The tokens will have utility in the game in the form of minting fees for new players and governance votes on the running of the game itself.

Trading players and clubs – In addition to token rewards, managers will also be able to earn via trading players and clubs to other managers. Should you build a successful football franchise or develop wonderkids into world beaters, managers can trade them on the open market. Just like in real life!

The final word

There is a huge amount of anticipation around the launch itself, planned at some point in 2022. Please have a look at the roadmap here. In addition to the ambitious plans from the team, there is also a vibrant discord community here, crucially many decisions, awards and AMAs are conducted here on discord. We think this is definitely a project to keep an eye on and if you haven’t already, grab yourself a club on opensea here.

By Steven @RNDM

Passionate about sports and the open metaverse