Time and Space in Copa City – Always Limited
One of the main elements creating the game’s atmosphere is its limited time in a single loop. Players race against a predefined deadline, just like in real life—a football match date that cannot be postponed. Regardless of the player's actions, the time available to organize all aspects is fixed in advance.
At the same time, depending on the map, the "space" available to meet fan needs by building essential infrastructure varies, leading to different approaches to planning the construction of individual facilities.
Fan Needs and Growing Numbers – The Challenge of Balancing All
As we mentioned earlier, fan needs are a key aspect of balance and the central focus of the player. We categorized these needs into four groups:
- Safety
- Accommodation
- Entertainment
- Food
Additionally, due to the demographic division of fans into three types, players will experience differences in need priorities—some fans will require better lodging, while others will demand more entertainment.
With the ever-growing influx of fans in the game, each club's needs are balanced in such a way as to represent a different structure and gameplay style. Players must adapt their strategies to achieve the desired outcomes.
Long- and Medium-Term Goals – Synchronization with the Football World
The essence of Copa City, beyond organizing match day, is immersion in the organizational rituals and customs surrounding this event. We want the goals achieved by the player to directly correspond with the football world, ensuring that players feel they are playing a football-themed game at every level.
Setting medium-term goals for players also generates satisfaction over shorter intervals—after all, completing an entire match scenario takes several solid hours of gameplay, which poses challenges for maintaining motivation.
However, organizing a football match is a treasure trove of events, which we use in the game as "dynamic bonuses," or medium-term objectives. For example, having teams arrive at hotels designated and prepared by the player. Seeing club buses parked at assigned hotels will undoubtedly immerse players in the football festival atmosphere, as this is one of the iconic scenes at such events.
The First Whistle – The Main Objective in Copa City
Of course, regardless of the above, the player's primary goal is to ensure the match can take place. To achieve this, a series of conditions must be met, including but not limited to:
- Proper stadium preparation levels for the match
- A specified number of fans in the city
- Meeting fan needs to a certain degree
- Completing specific points on the organizer's roadmap
These elements combine to form the main goal—completing the game’s primary loop and starting the match on the stadium field.
Summary
To summarize, building long-term player engagement in Copa City is key to achieving satisfaction in the gameplay. As mentioned above, we achieve this by rewarding players not only for the long-term goal of successfully organizing the city, stadium, and fans to allow the match and teams to take the field but also for smaller milestones like the arrival of team buses in the city or transporting teams to pre-match training sessions.
We believe this approach will give players the sense that organizing a match is not just about reaching the first whistle but a complex process that delivers satisfaction from managing various levels of challenges.