“Like all players of my age I grew up on bread and Doom. I love different genres, from RPGs to graphic adventures, but shooters are my favorite ones and they bring my mind back to the dawn of videogames “. Talking about the passion for the historic game, developed by id Software and published in 1993, is Pierluigi Zomparelli, game designer and developer of ZocaLight, studio responsible for Shootball Arena, multiplayer title that blends FPS mechanics with one of the greatest Italian passions: football.
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ZocaLight is a small team made up of four professionals Alfredo, Vera, Diego and Pierluigi who explains: “Me, Alfredo and Vera met working online on a project within a larger team at the beginning of 2020, we found ourselves well and we decided to continue this adventure. Later Diego was also added. We are scattered throughout Italy from north to south and we work remotely”.
Merging shooters with football is a very unique idea. It comes from imagine a horde of heavily armed space marines invading the grassy lawn of FIFA, explains Zomparelli: “One day, brainstorming with Alfredo and Vera, I threw an idea, initially designed for mobile devices. Two space shuttles framed by the other that shoot a ball to score in the opponent’s goal “.
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Initially the team doesn’t give much weight to the idea because they were busy developing another game, then they recovered it and started thinking about it, Pierluigi tells us: “It turned into a 3D shooter where you shoot a ball. to score goals, we therefore decided to temporarily pause the other project to create a prototype in a short time, about six months “.
Shootball Arena was defined as a mix between two very famous and popular titles, Rocket League e Fortnite “In general, anyone who has tried the game, friends, testers, youtubers, has expressed positive opinions and more or less everyone they called it a Rocket League with weapons. It is certainly nice to be associated in some way with such a noble game, but it also raises the bar and for a small team with scarce resources like ours, the fight risks becoming uneven ”.
On a graphic level Shootball Arena adopts a semirealistic style, meeting the preferences of the new generations of gamers, explains Pierluigi: “The choice is also a good compromise as regards the quality / development time ratio and of course also Fortnite use the same style… as if it wasn’t hard enough to be compared to Rocket League”.
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ZocaLight has decided to self-publish the game, at a very low price of 2.96 euros, in early access on the Steam platform. A very widespread system among small independent studios, explains Pierluigi Zomparelli “Our commercial strategy included sell the full game with all content at an appropriate price and at no additional cost. For early access we have chosen a very low price compared to the actual quality of the game with the intention of increasing it as we add new content such as maps, characters, etc… also a low price attracts gamers ”.
Pierluigi honestly specifies that unfortunately the results are not what we hoped for. The reasons are different, the game is a hybrid so it is difficult to identify a specific target audience, continues Pierluigi: “It is an objective difficulty that we have also encountered when comparing ourselves with other developers. Secondly, being a pure multiplayer, we need a large fan base which, especially at the beginning, is very difficult to create, also thanks to the first point “.
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In addition, the potential audience of Shootball Arena it is part of the catchment area of products just like Fortnite e Rocket League, Pierluigi states: “On a qualitative and quantitative level it is difficult to keep up and probably we have not been able to maintain a good level or to present ourselves adequately, perhaps with a good trailer… and then our direct competitors are also free. At the moment there is little we can do, therefore we have chosen to switch to free-to-play to conform and wait to see how the situation evolves “.
Shootball Arena is preparing for the transition from pay-to-play to free-to-play, which will take place in mid-May, explains Pierluigi: “Let’s start with this, then we’ll see. We could decide in any case to add free content in the future, but if we do not have a feedback I doubt that it will be possible to carry on such a game. This does not mean that we give upwe have chosen this path and we are determined, but we have also understood that we have to lower the bar a lot… choose something more suitable for us ”.
Video games are a complex and competitive world where it is not easy to emerge, surely making bad or difficult choices like a multiplayer hybrid doesn’t help ensure success. But the experiences and mistakes help small indie studios to grow. As stated by Pierluigi and recently also Luca Galante, responsible for the development of the videogame phenomenon Vampire Survivors, the important thing is: don’t give up.