The Metamorphosis
Examining the evolution of Sorare
Preface:
I’ve been struggling to find the right words to explain my growing frustration with Sorare and my concern about the long term implications of the direction we are headed in. Note, while I do criticize some of the decisions Sorare made here, I also believe they have executed some things very well, but the team currently has an impossible task in a flawed system. In order to properly analyze the situation let’s take a step back and look at Sorare as a whole though.
User sentiment seems to follow the same cyclical patterns of seasons where people are excited at the beginning of the season for new cards, new game mechanics, and the hope of what they might win… before the mood inevitably sours as the season progresses and people start looking ahead to the dismal prospect of the Classic game.
Due to the overreliance of new card purchases year over year to sustain the business, new cards became not just incentivized, but required, in order to play what was viewed as the main game (what became known as In Season) when they made the decision to split the game in two.
To Sorare’s credit, their hyperfocus on the newly formed In Season has arguably made that half a success, but forsaking the Classic side has been like ignoring an infected wound, festering and spreading year after year, and if not properly dealt with will ultimately consume the entire thing.
Sorare will not have a fully healthy game/product/company until it is managed holistically. New cards and old cards are irrevocably linked together since they are one in the same. We need to stop focusing solely on the early stages of a card/user but instead the entire life cycle.
Currently the main focus has been on attraction, onboarding and engagement with new cards, but we should also be managing through the entire life cycle, meaning we want to develop users so they continue to progress (not restart every year), find better ways to retain them (that doesn’t require new cards), and ensure even when someone eventually retires from playing Sorare they still champion and advocate for the game.
[Edit: It sounds like Sorare is analyzing the user experience at different points in time, but it also still sounds like they view new in season users vs existing classic users as two separate life cycles instead of one continuous flow.]
Let’s take a look back at some of Sorare’s history to see what we’ve learned and the likely future of the platform for where we still need to improve.
Stage 0 — Inception
Now I’m not referring to literally how Sorare got started, but if I were to break down what the ethos of Sorare is at it’s core to someone else I would start by saying it is a fantasy sports game.
The unique value proposition that differentiates Sorare as a fantasy sports game though is that you outright own your player (cards), meaning you can use them forever* or buy and sell for actual profit at any point in time, and that there is a provable scarcity of each player (via the blockchain) meaning not everyone gets to own the same player. This is part of a long term ‘Own your game’ mission from Sorare.
Slightly more granular, the short term vision for Sorare is to enable something that allows you to ‘Collect, Play, and Win’ — within a game that is global, offers progression, and is competitive while fun.
I’m sure there are various other ways to describe Sorare, but when I consider what Sorare should be in the future I like to ground myself in what the intent starting out was to make sure it still aligns with first principles.
Looking back, the choice to split the game into In Season vs Classic, while understandable from a fiscal sense, fragmented the feeling of ownership because owning a card the first year was not the same as owning the card every year after that.
Lately I’ve been wondering if that was the right decision, if we would be better off having all cards back playing together, but where “Classics” are just restricted in what they can win so people WANT to buy new season cards to win bigger prizes, but don’t NEED to if they can’t afford to that year. While I do think Sorare can survive in the current model, I also think it is preventing them from thriving.
I think a big part of my recent growing frustration (removing single league classic comps, removing the dedicated Unique comp, etc.) is that these decisions have been diametrically opposed to how I perceive the core tenets of Sorare.
Not having a dedicated Unique comp shatters the value of having scarcities, because scarcity value goes far beyond just a monetary value. And Sorare not recognizing that makes me question the trust and faith I place in them. We may be able to win more money in the new structure, but we also lose many of the intangibles that come from owning a supposedly unique card.
Not having single league classic comps means the cards I already collected or planned to collect, how I play my cards, and my odds of winning, are all adversely impacted as soon as they move from In Season to Classic. The bond between In Season and Classic cards has been broken by not having the left side mirror the right side, which also hurts my progression.
[Edit: While single leagues are being explored in Arena, it is not the same because I am still forced to play the more difficult Classic combined leagues to earn the essence to play the Arena, and the arena upside is capped as the size of the prize is reflective of only 10 users instead of a global audience.]
There are other flaws that also exist within the game that have not been figured out yet, but the recent changes set us further back in my opinion.
Stage 1 — Infancy
Going all the way back.
During the early days of Sorare, league licenses were still being fought over and celebrated, limited cards didn’t exist yet, a free common card was playable with rares, divisions and competitions were being defined, the scoring matrix was being redefined, and of course we had THE threshold where you could win 0.01/0.02 eth for hitting 205/250 points (respectively).
Obviously this version of the game was not sustainable or scalable though. Easy to beat thresholds became a playground for multi-accounters to siphon off as much money as possible and it meant more money was going out than coming in. The threshold ended up getting anchored to $15/$30 instead of 0.01/0.02 eth as a first attempt to plug the leak.
Divisions and scarcities became intertwined as a means and as an incentive to shoot for the stars. “Can a man change the stars? Yes William, if he believes enough, a man can do anything.” — A Knight’s Tale
A sudden spike in demand (aka the Gary Vee boom or Joao Felix era) also highlighted another flaw in the game, when demand significantly outpaces supply the prices go up in the short term (benefiting existing users) but the cost eventually becomes prohibitive (to onboarding new users). We needed a way to scale to more users than we had cards for.
Sorare eventually tried to address this by introducing Limited cards, and while that did band aid the problem at the time, it still to this day does not actually address the root of the issue. (If we suddenly got a million users or ten million users wanting to play the game we would experience the same exact problem again but at the Limited level.)
We knew it was important to encourage scarcity and get people to dream big and progress upwards, but we hadn’t figured out how to balance a finite resource with an infinite number of people.
Stage 2 — Childhood
The NFT era circa 2021. Cards became looked at as speculative collectibles more than they were looked at as chess pieces to strategize around in our creative fantasy game. The first limited cards sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars while top uniques went for tens of thousands and a few even peaked in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Football licenses expanded to more of the big leagues and we managed to land the NBA and MLB.
We pushed the limits of collectability with the National Series cards during the World Cup… sorry Global Cup.
‘Legend’ cards got added. And cancelled almost immediately when they realized that type of collectability didn’t mix well with gameplay.
We fully embraced the idea of collecting and full Collection sets became a thing. We also started getting special edition cards and eventually 3D cards!
Scarcities eventually found their footing with enough supply minted to get their own competitions.
Capped modes became a thing for awhile to try and make shit cards less shitty (dumb reason) and so people could progress upwards within a scarcity, since moving between scarcities became too difficult for most.
Thresholds actually got added to multiple scarcities for awhile to try to facilitate upwards growth between scarcities (was a glorious time) but then finally taken away later (rightfully so).
Individual league comps started getting added (hooray!). Oh and we finally landed the Premier League. Hell yeah. Manchester is blue.
What we learned during this time period is that you can encourage collecting, but it still has to fit within the mechanics of the game. And we learned that the concept of progressing can be multidimensional. You can progress via the quality of your cards in a given scarcity, you can progress via which scarcity you play, and you can progress via which league(s) you play.
What we still had not figured out at this point was how to scale to a global (read as infinite) audience, and how to have a sustainable business model. People were still more focused about competing in the PvE (beat the game thresholds) than they were the PvP (leaderboards). The balance was tipped too far onto the fun side and not enough on the competitive side.
Stage 3— Adolescence
I (mistakenly) thought Sorare had hit an inflection point of maturity when they pulled the plug on thresholds entirely and the game changed to In Season vs Classic with an introduction of Rivals for a free to play game. I did not foresee a need to make any more macro changes to the game at that point in time. They could survive in this model.
Note: While Sorare had started to make more mature decisions, in hindsight I would say Sorare was still very much in the growth phase.
Another note: Removing any sort of beat the game mode made it hyper competitive, with not enough fun, so we learned we needed a balance of PvE and PvP across the board. Hence, streaks were born.
If I were to reflect though, what did I miss? What drove the need to abandon Rivals, abandon Uniques, abandon single league comps, and expand to SO7 with 4 lineups?
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I’d argue there are 3 fundamental flaws that still exist today that contributed to those decisions being made:
- The free to play game exists in a separate ecosystem as the real Sorare
- There is no game mode with fully mixed scarcities
- Finite rewards for infinite users / infinite cards
Let’s break it down.
#1 The free to play game exists in a separate ecosystem as the real Sorare
First and foremost, having a game mode that can support an unlimited number of users is absolutely critical to long term success. But I believe that Sorare will find that the new common mode will run into the same pitfalls that Rivals did — not converting enough free users into buyers.
The best free to play games out there allow you to play the full version of the game, not a watered down version, with a choice to either pay to advance quickly or a choice to grind slowly over time for free. [I’ll reference League of Legends here, a free game that’s been around since 2009, where you’re given a few starter characters to play with & 170 total unlockable characters, and where you can pay real money to unlock them or earn your way to free unlocks]
The current common card game mode lacks all of the key features that make Sorare, Sorare. Users don’t earn the cards, don’t own the cards, can’t keep the cards, can’t trade the cards, and there is no incentive or reward for winning. (Common essence? Useless. They are given free cards in packs daily.)
If it were me, I would do two things.
First I would have the common mode mirror the full game as much as possible. That means:
- All the same comps but within a common scarcity (I think this is now happening in the latest revamp?)
- Get rid of free daily packs. After giving them a starter set either make them buy cards or win cards so they attach personal value to them.
- Make the cards actual NFTs that the people actually own with a serial number and all.
- Let people collect them year over year. People love collecting things. It also enables trading them so people can make it a social thing.
- Throw a little bit of money (gems at a minimum) at the prize pool even as a loss leader if need be. It gives them hope, incentive, and a means to convert to buyers.
- Offer the option to insta-buy the common cards at a flat fee per tier of card or something. I’m sure some users prefer to pay less to rip a cheap pack on a gamble, but others will prefer to pay slightly more to get the exact player they want.
- Can even do in season and classic (if that is still a thing later) where they get to use some classic cards the next year as a reward for grinding.
The second thing I would do is add commons to the fully mixed scarcity comp… which leads me to my next point.
#2 There is no game mode with fully mixed scarcities
Back in the day we had the hybrid scarcity “Pro” comps so people could dip their toe in a higher scarcity until they acquired enough to make the full jump up. Acquiring 5 of a higher scarcity eventually proved too difficult for most (and hybrid rewards were difficult to manage) so divisions eventually got split out per each separate scarcity.
While restricting comps to a specific scarcity did stratify users into relative spending buckets, it incidentally eliminated any natural progression up scarcities within the game.
Instead of debating if scarcities should be mixed OR isolated, I think there should be isolated scarcity comps AND a fully mixed scarcity comp.
Keep the Uniques, unique.
AND.
Create a comp that mixes commons through uniques. Show people first hand what they should be striving for. Rebalance the scarcity bonuses so that people are incentivized to play with higher scarcities, but in a way that better assembled lower scarcity lineups still have a chance to outscore some of the higher scarcity ones.
A fully mixed comp solves the problem of needing 5+ of a higher scarcity before moving up and getting value from the cards, people can get in at any rate they want to, and they can even jump multiple scarcities if they want! It inherently trains common users on the same gameplay used in pro, what the different scarcities are, and the benefits of different scarcities.
It would be the most fundamentally aligned version of Sorare in my view. Offers ownership, includes every scarcity, accessible to everyone, with a clear path to continuous progression, and can be as competitive or fun as you make it. Plus it can be more social as everyone is together.
And before you yell at me about how much of a disadvantage some people would have, this is where PROPER divisions comes in handy. The current division system took a step in the right direction by finally separating managers based on performance (instead of scarcity/spend), we just need to refine how we measure performance (using multiple gameweeks).
Make people dream again though and give them a means to beat goliath.
#3 Finite rewards for infinite users / infinite cards
This is the big one. The contagion at the center of it all that corrupted all of the brilliant ideas that have come before today, and will continue to corrupt all of the future ideas being worked on unless it is thoroughly eradicated.
If we look at the current life cycle on Sorare we can see that the Classic side of the game compounds every year.
If we look at the Classic reward system we can see the flaw that Sorare was trying to provide a (temporary) relief for. With each additional year of accumulating new teams the essence rewards distributed by Sorare will have to get smaller and smaller.
Finite essence cannot satisfy infinite lineups per user, nor infinite users.
Sorare found a clever band aid by creating the Arena. By separating the design into a third game…
Sorare is able to better maintain their essence per lineup levels. (Not accounting for new users, just compounding lineups from the same users.)
(Note: The essence awarded per number of lineups submitted could also be further mitigated if we treat cards/lineups like raffle tickets. You can buy all the raffle tickets you want to increase your odds but the reward stays the same. Let people submit as many lineups as they want but only their top lineup can claim a prize in that competition. Shouldn’t be able to win with 4 lineups.)
Sorare then has us finance the Arena ourselves by having us gamble our own Personal Essence that we’ve won.
The (problem) can that was kicked down the road with this is there is still a finite amount of essence in the ecosystem so we are not able to submit as many lineups as possible, only as many as we’ve won essence for. Over time this will become more obvious.
With infinite future lineups being submitted in classic/arena, and finite cash/cards to be awarded by Sorare, a new reward will have to be found that can scale 1:1 with the userbase.
Either Sorare has to conjure something out of thin air (cosmetics, new game mechanic) that can be handed out to millions of people and still have a perceived value to users…
Or each user has to finance their own entries with their own controllable supply (ie. personal money). You want to submit more lineups, you have to pay more money. This is the most obvious answer, and the direction we are headed in, even if it is the harder one to swallow for Sorare.
Technically there is a third option I see, which is to restructure the game in a way that disincentivizes accumulating a high volume of cards so we stop expanding how many lineups we have and refocuses on accumulating only the highest quality cards you can into the single best lineup possible… but I really don’t see that happening, so gambling it is.
There can be a non-gambling free version of Sorare still, but the end game for Classic Sorare is almost definitely a DFS style Arena game. Good news, is when we are paying to play, it means limitless possibilities in the types of games/rules.
Stage 4— Adulthood
We could always choose to stick our head in the sand about Classic, pretend there isn’t a glaring problem with the design of it, and be content with people burning out by chasing single season returns in In Season.
OR
We can grow up and recognize that the best version of Sorare is one that plays to all of its strengths, not just some of them. We need to find the best way to unlock the benefits of lifelong ownership, not just in season scarcity, because when we do that, we truly turn Sorare into the Infinite Game.
It’s time to evolve. One more metamorphosis. Stop swimming against the current, embrace the idea of gambling, turn it into a new game mode, and it will be smooth sailing from there.
Note: I acknowledge acquiring gambling licenses globally is not a quick or easy feat, and we will have to make do the best we can in the mean time, so none of this is a dig at the Sorare team that’s building things within the current constraints they have. But I think it’s important to incorporate this into the vision and roadmap of what they are ultimately building towards.
