One of the more enjoyable browser-based management/tycoon games I’ve enjoyed over the years has been CS Manager, perhaps better thought of as top-down Counter-Strike in Flash. It was a fun spin on the Half-Life mod that let you create teams with the personalities you wanted, with the strategies you always wanted to run but couldn’t.
It’s called Cyber Team Manager — but really, it’s a cross between League of Legends and Football Manager.
“Do you ever dreamed of creating a cyber sports team? Or dreamed of when yourself play your favourite video game at the professional level?”
Alternatively, have you ever tried to play video games competitively and gotten increasingly frustrated at the inability of you and/or your teammates to follow, execute and react to in-game situations? Or would you like to see what it might be like to be a professional MOBA coach.
If you’re wondering why the above map looks like it’s gotten the MS Paint touch, it’s because CTM is in early access. Very early access, in fact, with developers The Tambourine saying the game is being released in a state where customers can “see the mechanics to see what will be in the final version and where the game … moves during development plan”.
The current build allows players to create new managers, a new team, offer contracts to players, simulate matches, set the training and frequency of training, analytics on opponents, the setting of roles for your contracted players and submissions to join new tournaments.
According to today’s Steam update, the developers will issue minor patches every fortnight. But all tasks put on hold until the beginning of February so player feedback and bug fixes can be prioritised.
But this isn’t the first MOBA manager, of course. Like CS Manager, Lolmanager.gg has been running in a limited beta since late last year with the game currently only open for 210 players. The last wave of keys were issued on November 25, and the official Twitter account has been quiet since then. Lolmanager’s interface looks light years ahead of Cyber Team Manager, mind you, and these kinds of games are well suited to browsers.
As eSports grows and the popularity of MOBA continues unabated, however, management sims tying into this will only become more prevalent. After all, there have been management sims for professional cycling, F1 management, basketball, baseball, and every sport under the sun. eSports is already all about video games, so why not make a video game about a video game?
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