goalunited next open beta

Hi managers!

Tons of fresh news from our goalunited football universe: The Open Beta of goalunited next is starting right now! Beside this big news we have a lot of additional information for you that we want to present here.

First up:

goalunited 2015 will be kept as we love it and will not be updated to the new version.

goalunited next will come as new and separate game. This means, in summer you will start with completely new accounts and you can be there from the Start.

For a while now GU next has been running as a Closed Beta. This means that until now only select GU 2015 players could test it. This changes with the switch to the Open Beta. All players are invited and can register from tomorrow on inside goalunited 2015 or visit our Facebook-Page for further options (http://www.facebook.com/goalunited). The managers that have already been playing on the closed beta can simply keep playing – your clubs will stay as they are. For those of you that would like to start with a new club and have reached level 30, you can create a new club with the Top Manager.

Important: Even in the Open Beta not all features are available, we will regularly add additional features. New for example is the quest system. At first it will primarily guide new managers through the start phase (ideal test case by creating a new club with the Top Manager feature) – For the future new quests with rewards are planned. There will also be a few new leagues, the new staff and the shop. We have also resolved many bugs and stability issues.

Almost throughout the complete Open Beta phase we will run a STAR rebate with a special highlight: You receive 20% more STARS free. For this pay attention to the highlighted packages XS-XXL. At the end of the Open Beta you will receive a voucher over the amount of purchased STARS. This means you get to use all purchased STARS in the Summer, even those that you have used on the Open Beta.  This means you get the STARS twice, and that for a reduced price.

At the same time the tablet version can be tested, but not by all players. For this users will be able to apply in the forum and we will invite 1000 randomly chosen users. For the first test an iPad2 (or better) is needed.

And that is not all:

For some weeks after the start of goalunited next in the summer we are also planning a free companion App for your smart phone (for iOS, a little later also for Android). GU LIVE allows you to check the most important infos on the go and with that to never lose touch. At first the app will include the live ticker, league overview, as well as the player list and manager search. Features under development for the future are formation, playing cards in the live ticker and training. And more features are planned for GU LIVE.

We hope you are looking forward to the Open Beta as much as we are! Your feedback is appreciated and therefore a GU next Open Beta forum will be offered.

Your goalunited team

Open beta coming soon

Hey Managers – we are back again!

By writing these lines the first quarter of 2015 is almost over and you absolutely deserve an update on what is going on with goalunited. Originally we aimed around this date to release the open beta to the public. The bad news: We still need a few weeks. The mobile client is a special challenge, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. It is looking good for beginning of may, but as always: please be careful with development dates. Especially from goalunited – a game that is particularly complex and extensive.

For those of you who are in our closed beta program: You may ask yourself why you can’t see any progress since the last months? This is mainly because most of the development is happing deep inside the engine, the so called heart of the game. But this is something we pointed out some blog posts before: We will start with a rudimentary version and add features in cycles. So expect something new when we open the beta for everyone - shortly.

To keep you better in the loop we decided to bring you one of our employees on a monthly basis via YouTube videos and show you some new stuff. Let me introduce Juan, one of our QA Managers. He is mainly taking care of all bugs that you hopefully never will see by playing goalunited. Juan will also take some of your topics in the forum and try to answer them directly by going through northworks and asking the relevant people. Please don’t expect all questions to be answered. Hi main goal ist always to keep our games clean and stable. 

                                                        goalunited insider - part I

But back to goalunited: We thank you all for participating the closed beta. We earned so much important information out of that and already included some learnings. All this will make goalunited even better – it only is hard to show it to you.

By the way: our racing manager UnitedGP that is going to be released as a browser version very shortly. Just to let you know :)

Development Update

Dear Managers! 

Welcome to the latest developer blog entry of goalunited. Time is running so fast and we are approaching Christmas already. A very busy time is behind us, with development and plannings for the next year. Not only for goalunited, but a big part of it with a lot of news and surprises. Some of these are being shared with you now! 

Again, we thank you for your continuous support and trust in us. By beginning of November, we started the closed beta of GU next as promised. Nearly 30.000 managers have already played the game in its rudimentary form and gave us a lot of feedback that is very much appreciated and very valuable for us.

For example, many attentive players weren’t happy with the actual squad-view in the game. This is something that came to our attention as well and we are already working on very practicable solutions. Here is a sneak peak of what you can expect shortly: most columns are significantly narrower and in this expanded view the whole screen shows player-data.

By selecting a player the detailed infos of the player appear: 

You will be able to reduce the information to see even more:

To get rid of the horizontally scrolling completely, you can configure what columns are shown:  

As you can see, progress in ongoing. It is still a lot of development before the game will see the light of day. More and more features will be put into the closed beta. When most of these are in, we will switch to open beta, where everyone can start playing. There is no release date yet, but we are aiming for Q1 2015. And please be aware of the word „Beta“. It is still an unfinished game and changes are done permanentely.

Some of you are complaining about the screen size – this has to do with the simultaneous development of the mobile versions – something that you can discover at a later date.

For all closed beta players we have created a forum inside the regular gu forum for you to provide feedback, ask questions and of course receive updates about changes.

Best regards,

Jules (Game Director)