Following our updates to Howzat on Friday, we have received a flood of feedback from you, all of which has been tremendously helpful to us. It is great to have a user base as engaged as you all. We have taken into account your feedback, and we will be making some changes to the game in the next week to address some of these concerns. We also wanted to take this opportunity to explain our motivations behind these changes, and provide a sense of where we are going with Howzat, including changes that we will make in response to your feedback and our roadmap for the future.

Our Goals for this Update

Back in March, when we started planning for our next round of updates to Howzat, we had a few goals that we had in mind as we built Howzat towards our goal of making it the world’s best online game. This included:

Add more variety and realism to the live game: We had noticed that Howzat tends to have a few dominant strategies when bowling and batting. With bowling, this meant that most players bowled yorkers pre-dominantly, while batsman also had a few go-to shots only. We thought about ways to address that.

Make team management more dynamic and balanced: We felt that the current point system was very limiting given our goals for the game looking forward. It also failed to adequately reward players for achievements, playing opponents of a higher difficulty, or reaching important game milestones. Going forward, we will be adding significantly more depth to the game, including new types of pitches, coaches, and different types of batsmen, and new dimensions in bowling. Similarly, we believe that the current system favors old players at the cost of new players. For any online community to thrive, new entrants need to have a balanced and fair environment to flourish in. We needed to devise mechanisms to address all of the above.

Address issues related to cheating and quitting: We felt that the game experience of a fair majority of Howzat players was being compromised due to (a) certain players continually quitting on their opponents, and (b) other players creating fake accounts and using those accounts to unfairly boost their teams. We believed that this was a key issue, that most of you had written to us about.

Overview of the changes, and response to your feedback:

With the above goals in mind, we devised a few new mechanisms to enable us to take the game in a new direction. We want to brief discuss these changes, our motivation behind these changes, and responses to the feedback that we have received on these changes.

Transition from Points-Based System to a Cash-Based System: Cash is the new equivalent of points in the game. By transitioning to this system, we believed that we could address the challenges of rewarding players more adequately with regards to opponent difficulty, and for various in-game achievements and milestones.

Energy Points: Energy points essentially have the effect of limiting how much a player can play in a certain time frame. All users start with 12 energy points at the start of the day, with energy recharging at 2 points per hour. For each game played, we deduct 3 energy points.

Our Motivation: We believed that one of the reasons that quitting was rampant was because there was no intrinsic value of any given game. By putting a price on a game through energy points, we sought to limit players who could continually quit on their opponents, or otherwise cheat the system by creating fake accounts and playing with those accounts. We had observed player behavior over the last few months, and realized that the majority of Howzat players play an average of 4 games a day. For all such players, energy points make no difference to their experience. The current system of energy points allows players to play up to 11 games a day, as your energy recharges at 2 points an hour.

User Feedback: While it has been perceived that energy points are simply a mechanism for us to milk money from users, the reality is different as we explain above. As mentioned earlier, for the average player, the energy points would maintain the status quo, whereas for others, it would be a source of some limitation. We are looking into this system further, and are evaluating allowing users across the board to be able to purchase energy simply with cash (rather than coins as in the current system).

Match Fees and Winning Bonus: Whereas previously users were awarded a simple win or loss bonus per game, we have now broken up this award into a match fee and a win bonus.

Our Motivation: This mechanism was devised to encourage players to complete games rather than quit. The match fee (only provided on game completes) when combined with energy points (deducted at the beginning of the game) were designed so that players always have the incentive to complete a game. We will continue improving this system to encourage more game completes. Match fee and win bonus are rewarded on the basis of your own level, and the level of your opponent. The higher they are, the higher the award.

Game Play Changes: We made significant changes to the bowling within the game to make it closer to what we believe it’s like in real-life cricket. Now you get the ability to select a general area where you want to pitch the ball, and then the computer selects how accurately you are able to bowl.

Our Motivation: The general philosophy behind it is that you will bowl more accurately when bowling on a good-length, though you will lose your line and length when you are bowling yorkers and bouncers. As observers of cricket would know, even the best bowlers struggle to accurately pitch bouncers or yorkers, and our new bowling algorithm seeks to match that feeling. Moreover, you will bowl more accurately as the level of your bowler increases, much like it is in real cricket. As a result of this change, batsman will get a higher variety of balls to play, rather than yorkers from fast bowlers, and short-pitched balls from spinners.

User Feedback: We had heard quite a few complaints about how unfair this pointer was, and we have made some changes to make this more fair to the bowler. We realize that the effect of this was to make the game more favorable to the batsman, so we made a few changes that will re-address the balance between bat and ball. The batsman’s movement is now limited, so you won’t find batsman flicking balls from outside off-stump. We are in the process of making the game even more balanced, and over the next week you will see the balance between bat and ball being restored.

New Team Management: We moved away from a system of adding points to players, and instead moved to a system where to be able to level up players, you had to purchase them with cash earned in the game, or with coins. The result of this was that we divided players into “Permanent” players (available in your team always), and “Temporary” players (available for periods of 3 days or 2 weeks). We also increased the team size from 11 to a squad of 22 players. You also now have the ability to change the batting order prior to the start of the game.

As a result of these changes, we thought that the cleanest implementation would be to remove the existing teams of the players, and to enable players to recreate their teams, we would exchange the points that they have earned for cash. Hence we gave 1000 in cash for each point that you have earned to date. This will enable you to recreate a similar, if not stronger team than you had previously.

Our Motivation: We also felt that the leveling up that we provided in the previous version of Howzat was quite unrealistic since it isn’t often seen that a relatively mediocre batsman can progress to becoming a world-class batsman. Similarly, to be able to change a spinner to a fast bowler without losing any ability in between didn’t sound right to us. To provide a more accurate system, we want to move towards a system, where you can acquire better players, while also having an ability to play with higher level players even while you are at a low level. The new system is designed in a way such that you can make quick short-term changes to your line-up to suit your evolving strategic needs as you see fit.

With this change, you can continue to upgrade your current team with new permanent players, while if you want, you can play for limited periods with players of a higher level.  This will allow you more flexibility as you play different kinds of opponents. This will become especially useful as we start to provide different kinds of pitches, which will suit different team line-ups.

User Feedback: This change has probably been the most controversial. We really apologize for the inconvenience here. In particular, we understand that players are really upset to have lost their existing teams and statistics. We are working to restore your previous team and statistics for those teams. You will get back the statistics you previously had, along with the names and player types that you had selected. However, in order to re-balance the game,  we will reset levels to default, and allow you to upgrade the players with the cash that we have given to you.

Changes that we will make in response to your feedback

We have been listening to your feedback, and in response to that, we will be making a few changes over the next few days. This includes:

-          Restoration of your old teams and statistics.

-          A modified player acquisition system that is easier to follow.

-          A modified energy points system that will allow you to buy energy with cash (as opposed to coins).

-          Better in-game help so that the changes are easier to follow.

-          Improvements in the live game, which will make bowling easier and tweaks to the batting so that the balance between batting and bowling is restored. In the coming weeks, we will also be adding in miscued shots, edges, and a variety of changes to batting, which will make bowling even more exciting.

The Future of Howzat

In the coming weeks, we are going to be adding in a lot of features that have been enabled as a result of the changes that we implemented on Friday. You will have more stadiums (different pitch settings) which will add variety to the gameplay, coaches, and other things you can buy that will add more depth to the gameplay. In addition, we will also be adding tournaments, and a single-player challenge mode, which will hopefully take the fun to the next level.

We realize that change is never easy, and can often be chaotic. In our eagerness to quickly improve this game, we probably pushed too many changes at the same time, and we have learned our lesson here. However, it has been greatly encouraging to see how involved our Howzat community is. We will continue to seek feedback from you over the next few weeks as we seek to improve this game. Working together, we can hopefully take this game to greater heights. We would like to thank you for taking such an active interest in our product, and hope to serve you better in the future.

- The Howzat Team

Essentially, here’s the plan:

• We’re patching the game with a lot of fixes within the next few hours
• We will be restoring your old team and statistics within 24 hours. You will still be able to buy players, but your old player names and statistics as of yesterday will be back!
• We are happy that some of you got the reasoning behind the bowling pointer: minimize yorker “spam”. We’ve made a few updates to it already to minimize wide balls. Clear your cache to try it!

For more news on what’s new on Howzat, check out the post below!

• Cash, Coins and Energy Points

o Cash – this is the equivalent of ‘points’ earlier. You can use cash to buy player contracts for your team. Player contracts can be bought for daily/weekly or permanent contract periods. You can also use cash to buy energy points (Upto Level 10).

You can use cash to buy a variety of items, such as player contracts, coaches (coming soon), stadiums (coming soon), and other in-game items.

o Coins – Coins are the most valued currency in Howzat. You can use coins to buy players and energy points. You can get coins by filling surveys, or using one of the payment methods inside the ‘Get coins’ page.
Coins enable you to buy limited-edition and special-value items which are not always available with cash.

o Energy Points – Your players, like you, have only certain amounts of stamina and limited energy available to them. It’s upto you as manager to keep them energetic and motivated to play hard! Remember, each game takes 4 energy points from your players, and energy points recharge at the rate of 2 every hour. Alternatively, you can exchange cash or coins for an instant energy point boost.

• Better leveling systems

o Levelling in Howzat is now not just tied to the number of games you win, but also based on how well you do and interact within Howzat. You need to add a certain number of Howzat friends, along with winning matches like before, before you can level up.

• The all new ‘Manage Team’ page

o Get more in control than ever before with the new Howzat manage team page. Customize your squad, make your own jerseys, strategize batting order, swap players on the bench, utilize your player contracts wisely and more!

• Bowling

o No more annoying Yorker spammers with the new Howzat bowling mechanism! Each bowler gets a box, or an ‘area’ where he wants to pitch the ball, and our system generates a point where the exact ball will pitch. However, the reward is not entirely for the batsman – as bowlers level up, the size of the box gets smaller and the pitch pointer gets more accurate.
The new bowling algorithm is made to encourage bowling on a good length. You will witness more variation in bowling line and length if bowling at a yorker or a bouncer length, but more accuracy when bowling good length or short-pitched bowling.

• Match Fees, and Win bonuses

o Win Match Fees, and get rewarded for finishing games – Match fees are just like the ‘points’ you used to win the older version of Howzat. How much you win per match depends on your level, and also the level of your opponent. Also, you will be handsomely rewarded with cash if you finish a game – so quitters, remember – Everytime you quit, your opponent benefits a LOT more than you!
Match Fees increase with your level. We also provide a win-bonus. The Winning Bonus depends on your own level, and the level of your opponent. The higher the level of your opponent in relation to you, the higher reward you can expect to win.

1.Facebook fan page: 156 points
2.www.planetcricket.com: 143 points
3.Indian Cricket Fans: 85 points
4.CricketGaming.net: 38 points
5.BanglaCricket: 29 points
6.PakPassion.net: 20 points

The top three users with most number of wins are

1.IrishIndian representing planetcricket.com
2.lordhowzat representing facebook fan page
3.mansandeeps representing IndiancricketFans.com
Pick up your pace and take your forum to the top…

To take part in the league send in your user id and team name at hzleague@gameventures.com.

Dunn miss out on the fun…

As you may have noticed, we now have a truck-load of achievements for you to win and brag about! Don’t forget to enable Facebook connect to really be able to show who’s boss to your friends and co-workers.

Next set of updates coming your way:

1) Overall game-play optimizations
2) Network optimization
3) Temporary ban on cheaters/quitters
4) The game download size is going to be considerably smaller – We’re very excited about this. Fingers crossed!

PS: Help Howzat out by voting here

Some people may need a pinch of salt for this, but the T20 continues to attract diverse audiences, and has certainly monetized the sport to an extent that can make one just stutter in awe at the figures of the average sponsorship deals. Cricket just sold out, and as a fan who worships the game for all that it is, I’m not complaining.

Being a bunch of fresh engineering graduates from college with a lot of time, ideas and red-bulls with us, we started to brainstorm on the best way to take the cricketing experience one step further. We were ambitious, and almost stubborn in believing that we could contribute positively to the great game.

We finally arrived on an idea. We had some criteria – It had to be interactive, it had to be social, and the biggest of all – it had to feel like REAL cricket where the millions of fans across the world could actually feel involved with the game, reliving their cherished moments, and feeling completely in control of those moments. It was to be this massively multiplayer cricket game that was free to play, yet casual enough for most cricket fans to get in and start playing without having to stand upside down to install the game. Sure, it was the first in its genre, and we were taking a big risk, but in our heads, we were seeing glowing orbs of cricketing goodness and that was enough for us to pull the trigger and get started.

So the development process began, and after a lot of blood, sweat, tears and beers over a period of 6 months, we finished the game. I’m certainly not going to talk too much about the game itself, but let me tell you there are plenty of features for you to keep coming back! So go ahead and try it out, remake records, build your dream team, and hold the flag of the game high.

The game’s called HowZat – http://www.howzat.com – And it’s free, if you’re wondering

Let us know what you think!

1) Improvements in Shot Play

There were certain shots that were more advantageous to play than others because they had higher connection areas, and more power. The connection areas have been adjusted for a number of shots, and the shot power has been normalized. This means that some shots, in particular power shots, are now easier to play, and hit for sixes (For e.g. Pull, Lofted Cover Drive, and Hook). Others that always used to go for sixes/fours such as Upper Square Cut, Late cut have been readjusted and made harder to play.

The following shots had decreases in connection areas:
Late Cut, Upper Square Cut, Leg Flick, Hip Glance, Cover Drive, Square Cut, Mid-Wicket and Cover Punch, Pull

We also adjusted the possible areas where the shots could travel. Now the placement of the shots corresponds much more to the level of the batsman. A batsman of a higher level will have a greater chance of placing the ball in gaps.The timing of the shot also dictates the direction in which the ball will go. All the optimizations add up basically to the fact that shot selection is now as important as timing. You can’t score a 70 with just 3 shots

2) Improvement in LBW Calculations – Self explanatory.

3) New Manage Team Section – This was modified to be more user friendly.

4) Detailed Practice Mode – For you to pit it out against the CPU and fine tune your shots.

5) Performance Improvements to smoothen Gameplay

6) Higher Magnitude of Spin for Spin Bowlers – To trick your batsmen out!

7) Pavilion Optimizations - The user levels are now shown in the lobby.

We are also in the process of adding in-game elements that will allow you to earn points much quicker, including awards for good bowling and batting irrespective of the result of the match.

Initial reviews have been great, and there were over a 1000 registered users within a couple days. And we haven’t even spread the word far enough yet! This is exciting, and we hope you come and join the party at howzat.com !

HowZat is the world’s first free real-action cricket game, that’s multiplayer, and combines managerial features with real-cricketing ability. As a batsman, you have access to over 19 cricketing shots, and when bowling, you get to use our innovative swing/spin meter to trick the batsman out! Seriously, we should patent that thing.

Cricket Blogs and forums seem to be teeming with HowZat fans, and we really can’t wait to unroll the full feature list. Coming up soon – Detailed playing statistics, limiting yorker spamming, and other performance enhancements.

Planetcricket.net and their users have a lot to say about HowZat! –
Check it out at HowZat forum on PlanetCricket

Until the next update!

Radius_Vector
Team HowZat

While that’s great, we felt that it didn’t complete the cricket-gaming experience. And then we probed further. Manage your own team? Sure, we brought that on board.  Want to play against your friends? Oh yes. Let users pay to play the game? Hell no.

We were possibly going for the grandest, most complex scheme of things, demanding so much out of our game-development team, but we knew that in the end that cricket-fans would go crazy over it. And just that was enough to keep us going – And our team delivered. However, I must warn you. Ever play a cricket game with all these features? Don’t blame us if your girlfriend/wife or boss kills you for getting hooked.

And now there’s this blog, where we’ll keep you up to date on the latest from the HowZat team. We’ll post game feature updates, competitions, gaming tips, and some insights into the technology, people (and cat) behind HowZat.

One of the really exciting things about working on HowZat is seeing all of the goofy, fun but great ideas that people come up with, at the office. This blog is a place where we want to highlight and share some of those ideas, along with giving you a sneak peak into the life of working in a cozy little company – and the crazy things we’re up to around the office.

Stay tuned.

- Sridhar
Business Development Director, GameVentures