The Table Tennis Manager is not a natural person but an online game in the style of the well-known Football Manager games. In this game you can slip into the role of a manager of a table tennis team and guide their skills. The table tennis manager offers a high game depth with many options and settings. This was not always the case, because the game was developed over a long period of time and has gained a few new features every year.
Here are the key points of the development of the Table Tennis Manager
2009 - Origin of the idea
2010 - Beginning of the development by the first programmer, the optics are still from me
05.12.2010 - Start of the Alpharunde with the basic functionalities of a manager game
2011 - Further development with a new programmer, because the first one was unreliable
24.05.2011 - Update with the new features: facilities, saboteur, fans, skills and bigger halls
17.06.2011 - Restart of the server into the second alpha round
01.12.2011 - Single and double championships will be integrated into the game
2012 - Redesign by an external graphic designer
01.06.2012 - The new homepage from the external graphic designer goes online
14.06.2012 - The forum is offline for two days due to DDOS attacks. The game itself is not affected, because it runs on other servers
05.10.2012 - Restart of the servers with revised calculations and the auctions as a new feature. The training course and the training camp are added.
15.11.2012 - A new and faster server is set up and now takes over the database operations.
10.12.2012 - Server restart into the Open Beta, which as hoped seamlessly moved into the "full version
2013 - Launch and first marketing of the game
01.01.2013 - Problems due to multiple calculations over New Year's Eve
03.05.2013 - Update with the new features balance and player development
31.07.2013 - The sabotage functions "Damage facility", "Steal money", "Scare away sponsor" and "Poach players" will be removed from the game after heavy demands from the community
18.11.2013 - Network attacks on Hetzner delay server calculations
2014 - 1,000 player limit cracked for the first time
22.04.2014 - The spy is again equipped with more functions and the security service is introduced
19.12.2014 - After a long wait there is a big update with the following new features: player rental, black market, new club info, invite players, master table, skill bar, retirement announcements and tactics in the match report sheet
2015 - The year of optimisation
Between March and October some bugfixes and optimizations will be implemented
16.06.2015 - The first table tennis manager millionaire in the game triggers a crisis, because in order to get the economic system of the game back under control, the number of spectators and thus the income is reduced significantly. Some players leave the game angrily as a result.
16.07.2015 - New marketers such as POGED, WE LOVE X and SEVENGAMES are won and the affiliate program at Adcell is set up
21.10.2015 - The Liveticker is added
08.12.2015 - There is a new landing page
2016 - Mobile design and apps
14.04.2016 - There is a responsive design for mobile devices, ladies are coming and home advantage is coming into play
03.10.2016 - Due to problems the Paypal subscription will be discontinued
05.10.2016 - The tutorials with the speech output are integrated
07.10.2016 - The first Android app is released on Google Play
2017 - Over 2,000 players in the game for the first time
2017-01-07 - The forum is switched from vbulletin to Woltlab
12.02.2017 - 1,500 teams in the game
03.04.2017 - Random events with player value changes and the automatic game acceptance is introduced. In addition, there is now a countdown for the calculations and the game is switched to https://. First translation into English with introduction of the Table Tennis Manager.
22.04.2017 - 2.000 teams in the game, among other things by a posting of Timo Boll on his Facebook page
04.05.2017 - The 2nd server is started
09.06.2017 - Discussions in the forum trigger a reduction of the home advantage
11.10.2017 - A trailer of the Table Tennis Manager is officially presented
26.10.2017 - translation into the Russian language, Premiums can now hide the banner advertising, the transfer history of the players is integrated and the paysafecard comes additionally as means of payment
2018 - tactics update
2018-02-26 - Inactive teams are now deleted from the system after 42 days, which results in a short-term larger drop in the total number of teams in the game
14.05.2018 - translation into French, the iPhone app for iOS devices goes online, the automatic friendly match acceptance is extended, there are additional speedgame bonuses and the training performance is linked to the number of table tennis tables
29.05.2018 - A tactics update is coming that better balances the game tactics of extreme attack, offense, all-around, defense and passive
22.09.2018 - The Video Bonus is introduced. It is intended to compensate for the poorer CPM prices of the market, as well as the losses caused by the deactivatable banner advertising of the Premiums.
01.11.2018 - Players encourage the reduction of staff waiting times
2019 - Year of player acquisition
22.01.2019 - The Table Tennis Manager is translated into Chinese. Due to the large population and the fact that table tennis is a national sport in China, I have high hopes for this. There is a new feature: Scout Skilling, the special training can now be stopped over a longer period of time and the tactical espionage is now supplemented by the bat
18.06.2019 - Start of a crowdfunding trial for a proxy server to China. The attempt fails
12.10.2019 - The black market will be adjusted
03.11.2019 - Inactive teams will be deleted from 30 days on
2020 - Year of crisis
15.01.2020 - The advertising agency mediasports is taken over by DAZN and the advertising contract is terminated. Sportplatz Media is brought on board as new advertising partner
10.04.2020 - Over 3,000 registered teams in the game (also due to Corona)
26.05.2020 - Major update with many bugfixes and changes, e.g. the auction area was revised, the rental fee was introduced, the friendly match rules were simplified and a new multi-account concept was introduced
14.08.2020 - The "China Experiment" is abandoned without success after much effort and capital investment
21.09.2020 - Double calculations at season change cause such a big mess that the game is suspended for two days
06.10.2020 - The server is cleaned up and 118 million data of players who are already retired are deleted. The positive consequence is that old player balance sheets will be accessible faster again
2021 - Little news
28.07.2021 - Due to the server problems last year, an "emergency system" will be installed that allows match days to be postponed
06.09.2021 - Update with new features as well as three new language versions of the game: Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.
06.12.2021 - A player from the community brings himself into the game as a programmer with significant improvements in the user interface and gives everyone a present with a successful Father Christmas update.
2022 - Hardware failure and move to a new server
14.01.2022 - One of the two servers has a hardware failure and thus a total breakdown. Without further ado, it is decided to order a new high-performance server instead of the two old servers, which will accommodate both player worlds and the db alone.
17.01.2022 - After the successful server move and solution of the associated problems, the new server not only runs stably, but also processes the nightly server calculations approx. 10x as fast as before.
17.03.2022 - WeChat terminates cooperation without justification and is removed from the game as a payment method.
16.04.2022 - The dedicated player makes another extensive update for Easter, among other things there are improvements in the championships, challenges, auctions, tactics and in the player info there is a new premium feature
Summer 2022 - New registrations drop to a low and there are well under 1,000 teams registered in the game, with the number of regulars remaining stable.
So much for the key points, which really only sketch a rough outline of the update. If you are interested in further details of the development, you can read them in the forum back to the beginning.
I try to update this page from time to time, but please bear in mind that this kind of work has little priority and therefore may lag behind a bit longer.
Future Prospects
As always for me and the players: After the update is before the update. Even though there are only a few updates per year, we always want to keep the game up-to-date, add new features or optimize existing ones. For this purpose, I keep a list which is then communicated with the programmer via GitLab.
Among many other small things, the most extensive feature planned for the future is to integrate nationalities into the game.
For me as the operator, the acquisition of new players is now at the top of the agenda, because they not only enrich the game with more income, but also swirl the "old players" a bit and create new challenges.
