Title: Hattrick Soccer Manager
Year introduced: 1997
Country of origin: Sweden
Languages: multiple
Price: include premium accounts / options
In 2009 Hattrick was one of two (next to ManagerZone) games that were competing in number of users and both were (officially) in the numbers close to 1 million. Unfortunately the glory days for Hattrick are long gone - in 2012 the original creators sold their game at its prime to a British company that within 1 year ran the game down and soon later sold it back to Swedes. Since then the game is in what might be called a stagnation era with not much improvement being done and player base reduced to hardcore users.
Hattrick gathered attention of users due to its simplicity, but at the same time it turned out to be the weak spot of the project. It was easy to join the game (although due to pyramid structure of the league you would start at very low level division, like f.e. 8 or 10), it was easy to grasp the basics, the interface was easy to master and the game might have been fun in some seasons. At the same time there was a huge rotation of users - sometimes the same club changed the name and owner twice per season, even though season was only 18 weeks long and manager was removed after few weeks of inactivity. Another problem was with the users themselves - like any other game Hattrick gathered a hardcore base of players, who stuck with it for years, but for new players it was virtually impossible to be promoted above some level (f.e. division 5), because above were those, who had far more experience and more advanced teams.
Frustration was often reason for people to quit the game - if you start in division 8 and after few season, if you’re lucky, fight your way up to division 5 (with one match per week it would take about 2-3 years in real life) and then you realize you are completely outclassed by every team in division 5 you could be frustrated. It would take few more years to reach the level of your opponents and often (due to economy model that was oppressive towards weakest teams in the division) it was better idea not to fight for promotion, instead be relegated and earn far more money in lower division. Hattrick match engine had also some flaws and was very predictable, also one particular formation turned out to be far better than any other, which was also frustrating. That formation was 2-5-3 with only 2 wingbacks in the defence (no central defenders), which makes no sense whatsoever.
With all of its flaws Hattrick managed to gather a lot of players, a lot of publicity (especially around 2005-2010) and still is a simple, but good game. If you keep in mind the simplicity and that you will (most likely) never get anywhere near division 1, you should be fine to enjoy it for long time.
Rating: 3.5 / 5 based on 2 votes
★★★★☆
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