Pro Gamer Manager – PC Review – by Selthor
Genre: Indie Casual Sports Simulation
Developer: Raptor Claw Games
Publisher: 501 Industries
Release Date: Apr 28, 2016
Pro Gamer Manager is a release by Raptor Claw Games, listed at $12.99, in which you manage esports players. You have two choices for game type, FPS or FOBA (MoBA), and you can start as a player or a team manager. When you launch the game you are given a box to select resolution (ranging from 640×480 to 1600×900), which display you wish to use, a toggle for windowed mode, and graphics quality (giving you a range from fastest to fantastic without any other choices within). It also had a input select option as well. Once the game is launched, the options contain muting sound, muting music and autosave.
I chose to go the route of a FOBA Player as I am intimately familiar with Dota 2. You are given the option of taking a randomly generated player or creating a player. Creating a player allows you to name the player, set its age, and nationality as well as name its team and player handle. Afterwards, you select a trait for this player to focus on at the start. From here you choose your game and role. This is where my heart fell a little as the roles for the moba are based of that other game… yup League of Legends. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s popula,r but I have no interest in it and know next to nothing about it. I chose support as I know that in the genre, good support play can easily win or lose you games.
Getting into the game you start with a player sitting at a computer desk in a bedroom. Clicking him brings up a menu giving you the option of playing a ranked game, watching a stream, going to bed, researching, your profile gear career and house, and then Esport Central. Esport Central gives you an overview of the tierlist (basically what’s overpowered and what is weak, which changes randomly without any notice), shows league standing (when you are on a team), access to the top players, and tournaments. Tournaments are a 1v1 competition that nets you money and prestige.
To really get started, your main options are to either play a ranked game, which gives you fans, rank improvement, EP (a currency to use for research (more on this later)) and little spheres for playstyle, focus, and knowledge (which is how you advance your players skill). Ranked games also generate rage if you lose, or remove some rage if you win, and take energy. Watching streams allows you to earn spheres of knowledge and also takes energy. When you run out of energy the only thing you can do is go to bed, which also reduces rage (as a side note I’ve never maxed out rage so I don’t know what happens or how it affects things).
When playing a ranked game you first choose a hero. Despite logging 10 hours in the game for this review, all I know about the heroes is that there seems to be 3 types for support: Healer, Sustain, and Utility, and 6 types overall, the other 3 being Chaser, Burst and Tank. The game then shows a pick and ban phase, shows the average skill level of the teams, and your perception of team comps based on your stats. Next up it asks you to chose a mentality, how you will play out the lane phase and your plan for team fights. I honestly don’t know how much this impacts things, and if I had a way to know more about the heroes, I’d feel better about it.
Now back to EP and researching; you start out with the options to learn a role, learn a specialty, or to learn to stream. After learning a role you unlock the ability to master a champion through research. Once again, I don’t know what this does for you outside of adding it to your pool of comfort picks (which once you join a team they will sometimes instruct you to pick). Unlocking streaming gives you an income source, which you will need because you get charged rent weekly (I thought that was harsh, considering my created pro gamer was only 1 year old…)
The gear and houses are unlocked as you progress through your career, both as a streamer and as a player. I don’t really understand what the house does for you, but the gear lists its improvements and the requirements to unlock them. Being on a team gives you a salary, and your team plays in a match once a week or so, and occasionally has team meetings. During team meetings your team leader will ask your opinion on something, during games your team will either have you play and direct you to pick a certain type of hero, or give your slot to another member of the team. (I was the number one ranked player worldwide, and my team continuously gave my slot to a player that specialized in another role.)
Once you are satisfied with your career as a player you can research opening a team house, which transitions you to manager mode, where you juggle personnel training, sponsorships, tournaments and the expenses of running a team trying to increase your team’s fan base and profit.
Overall, the game is both a fair and unfair example of what becoming a pro gamer is like. Like becoming a pro gamer, it is a grind, doing the same things over and over again in hopes of moving forward. Unlike becoming a pro gamer, you don’t get fans and the ability to be on a team from your first game, nor do you make hundreds of dollars a stream from the very first time you start streaming. My opinion of the game is a bit tainted by the LoL influence on the game, but is mostly based off the feeling that, in the end, the games you play feel random in the results, especially the tournaments, and the fact that if I wanted to grind through the slog necessary to get a pro gamer to stardom I would be playing Dota and not reviewing this game.
Selthor gives Pro Gamer Manager a Drastik Measure 3 out of 10 (30).
Pros
- Easy to play
Cons
- Seemingly random tournament results
- Very grindy
- Repetitive
- No real satisfaction that I could find
