Hey gamers and sports fans,

yesterday was the first official Town Hall for the new project Genesis League Sports (GLS) with its first release, Genesis League Soccer.

We had Splinterlands co-founder and CEO @aggroed as a kind of moderator and inquirer and four of team members of project GLS. Chatter is quite known in the discord already, but I didn’t know Chiclet, Don Gorgon and Durango.
Quite nice to see the faces behind this mammoth project.

More than once, the answer to Aggy’s questions was „We can’t speak about it“, which was understandable, but frustrating. Quite a few infos were revelead nevertheless, so let’s get into it.

If you want to watch the Town Hall event yourself on YouTube, you can do that below.

White Paper GLSoccer on 2022.10.11
Pack Sale on 2022.10.18
Airdrop on 2022.10.25
Pack openings will be in February or March 2023
Stadiums (possibly land feature) sometime in 2023

White Paper

The white paper will clarify and go deep into details. This is the Genesis League Soccer white paper, specifically for the soccer game,
not the overall GLS(ports) project. We will have a white paper for the first game to come out (soccer, well football to be precise) on October the 11th.

You can find the white paper for the overall GLS project (with hints of possible coming collaborations) here

Airdrop

As you can see, the airdrop begins after the pack sale. We don't know yet, by which means we ought to buy packs. Hopefully with a mix of crypto and fiat (via Paypal it seems).

Another great project on the Hive ecosystem has it the
other way around. The $WOO token from wrestling organization online (@wrestorgonline) is the only token allowed in the general sale on October 31st and the airdrop of $WOO is in full swing for two months now. Personally I find it more reassuring for existing and early players and supporters of a game to get early access with the utility or governance token and not only with fresh fiat money, but more on that in my final thoughts at the end of the article.

Let’s have a look at possible gameplay options.

The team couldn't share much details, because they had previously sent all important papers to the MLSPA organization to approve
and they didn't want to jeopardize anything. Understandable, but frustrating, if every second answer is "We can't share it right now."

Possibly Autobattler with player input within the 3 to 5 minute games (multiple turns per game? Substitutions? Strategy changes?)
I anticipate something like Bundesliga manager, Hattrick or Anstoss (kickoff) (I'm from Germany, but I am sure,
there were similar games in other European countries in the 80's, 90's and noughties as well.) mixed with the auto-battler genre like Splinterlands with a few tweaks.
This is speculation on my part, but when I look back at my childhood and youth, friends and I played those manager games a lot back then and we had massive fun with buying
cheap players, building youth academies and merch shops to boost our fanbase. I very much hope, there will be those elements in the game (maybe only in later stages).

Source
If someone can guess the coach on the picture above, you know your stuff from the mid to late 90‘s.

The whole football (sorry Americans) ecosystem was depicted in those games and the depth you could go into was magnificent.
There were nearly infinite little adjustments you could do, to gain an edge over the AI or your friends. We played those career modes for months on end, starting from the lowest
leagues just to end up being champion at the highest league or even fighting to be the European champion. Glorious times indeed.

It was funny to hear aggroed asking "you need ten players and a goalie, right?". In most football-loving countries that translates to "You need eleven players!". No shade, but
you can certainly feel, that most americans have other sports interests than football. Maybe through GLS, this will change a bit. I for one am very excited to brush up on my
american football and baseball knowledge before plunging into those games, if it comes to that.

There will be "items" cards. If I let my imagination run wild, I can come up with at least 100 different things, that could be incorporated. From assistant people cards (massage therapist,
secretary, different types of choaches other than the head coach, marketing department, superfans, merch clerks, staff all around, bribed media personalities for favoring coverage etc.)
to land (stadiums, which can be expanded, youth academy, gyms, training camps, different cars for players, busses for gameday) or booster-items like half-legal doping, good food, energy drinks
better shoes, better equipment all around, fan merch to generate more fans, which gives you more income per home match.
There are so many possibilities and I hope, the team has enough folks, who know football from A to Z to utilize its potential for players all around the world.
This will be the first of many iterations for GLS, potential players have to be reeled in with the perfect hook, the perfect immersive system.

Abilities could be changing for instance, if you hire a technical coach or you buy a personal trainer for specific cards (a personal trainer card could be limited to one or two players)
That would change the whole blending to level up your abilities system and would make it more unpredictable. We would have truly individualized cards after a couple of months.

Important to note:
The GLS project has a contract with the Major League Soccer Player Association (MLSPA) not the league itself. So we will for the foreseeable future not have real american soccer teams,
but we will have the real football player names on our cards. That is quite something and it could be, that the MLS or perhaps other leagues around the world will have license
agreements with GLS in the future. The possibilities with this project are endless if it is done correctly and I for one am pretty excited (though I get excited about everything, that
is not the best indicator for future success to be honest).

As I said, the pack sale is on October 18th, but we will only be able to open those packs in late February or March due to the fact, that the MLS season ends somewhere inbetween and the
GLS team wants player stats as correctly displayed as possible. So, if a veteran player retires all of a sudden and the GLS team would have incorporated him already in the roster of
cards, this would be a bummer. So, in my opinion it is a good move to wait out the end of the current season. As a European onlooker, it is quite odd to see a football season end in Feb/March
and not in the summer, but that has to do with all those other leagues, Americans watch and every big sport gets their time in the sun. In Europe, there is only football (soccer),
and all the other sports have to fight for crumbs. It is what it is.

There were a few other questions, which could be somewhat answered sufficiently, though not completely.
They are already in talks with another project, which couldn't stand on their own feet and who looked for a partnership. This is an undisclosed project for now, but we will
hear from it soon, I presume.

To be honest, I find it a little discouraging, that we as prospective players have to buy in wholly with fiat money. A better, more player-friendly model would have been, to set the airdrop one
month before pack sale and let players with staked SPS (that is the mechanism for the airdrop. SPS stakers will get 365 days of airdropped GLX token from October 25th onwards.) buy in
at least partly with earned GLX tokens.
Splinterlands players are a loyal bunch, but even the best and financially fortunate players don't have infinitely deep pockets. Aspiring gold players like myself are
spread pretty thin already with all the projects going live in the splinterlands universe simultaneously, and as we don't have the soccer/football/spors fanbase reeled in just yet,
it would have been a wise move not to bleed the existing playerbase even more. Airdropped GLX tokens are a nice gesture, but owning the token for half a year without being able to
utilize it, is just meh. It could have been the perfect debut for the token and would have shown, that the team cares about the finances of existing players, who support the project since its inception.
I really think, this was a mistake. You want to create the most buzz around your project and your token.
The same mistake as the doubling and tripling in price since Chaos Legion in my opinion. The mood was killed instantly in my circles when the new price was introduced.. There will always be loyal or stubborn souls like myself, who try
to grind to success, or to just sell their firstborn to buy more cards, but I would bet my Second-Born, that we would have a bigger playerbase, if the team had decided against
the CL price-spike.
I guess this is all water under the bridge now, as they were too many discussions around that subject already and valid points were made on both sides, but I only can argue from my perspective and from those, entering the
ecosystem at the same time as myself or even later (I joined Splinterlands in July 2022 and had to pay a steep price for cards already, before CL was introduced.)
Many of them left the game or are hibernating right now. From my batch of newcomers, I am the only one left. I am certain, this wouldn't have been the case, if the price of 2$ would
have been held steady. More players would have bought in and could have climbed the ladder higher. We would have had a bigger, more vigorous player-base.

I very much hope, previous mistakes won't be repeated and we all can learn from the past. I for one will not ape into projects with warning signs, even if I like the premise.
I will get my toes wet, but I try to be as prudent with my finances as possible, to not burn 4 or 5k in one game like Splinterlands Summer 2021 and then have to hear, you just have to buy
more to be successful and/or shit up. These kinds of rifts are very hard to mend.
Even if I stuck it out, because I really love this game and want to support the Hive-ecosystem as a whole, these kinds of words are stuck in my head forever.

Too many players it seems heeded the advice of aggroed, that this game is somehow not for them if they don’t want to invest a small fortune to be competitive in a lower league and just left.
I have to believe, that the team knows that and won’t make the same mistakes all over again.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Freedomprepper