I thought I'd create a blog to talk about the progresses of my massive fictive db project, IIHF 2080 for EHM 1. Thanks to the game's newest iteration and Archi's outstanding editor, I'm finally able to create a working db for an idea I'd been having pop up in my head every now and then for years. This db, as the name suggests, is set in the future and aims to:
1. create a totally different EHM experience than what we are familiar with;
2. push the limits of db editing;
3. be fun!
The story behind the db
Set in the year 2080, this db explores an era of renewal in the hockey world. For well over a century and a half, the NHL stood as the world's elite hockey league. Competitor leagues arose at various points in history, such as the World Hockey Association, the Kontinental Hockey League or the Global Hockey League in 2055, but at all times, the NHL managed to outcompete its rivals, either directly or indirectly. Meanwhile, it never joined the fold of the IIHF and relations between the two have always been more or less tense, even after the Bettman era. The arrogance of the league - at all times justified by its unarguably superior budgets and competition level - reached a limit in the 2060s. The rest of the world, indeed, never quite stopped getting better at the game, and, as new technologies allowed for the maintenance of ice rinks at vastly inferior costs that those of today, more nations picked up the game, more players laced up skates and improved by leaps and bounds over time. This tendency was accelerated by the consolidation of Asia as the world's top economic power. Where pockets of hockey enthusiasts exist in many Asian countries nowadays, more money and accessible technology introduced the sports to the masses in Asia and helped develop the game over there.
This led to a most interesting situation, where many countries ended up with very good domestic leagues. With good attendance figures, the top leagues could in time afford to offer players salaries that compete with the NHL's. This encouraged a good many of the best European and Asian players to stay home. This also encouraged the various national federations to drop out of the agreement that lets the NHL draft and sign their top youngsters for a meager fee. The NHL, of course, could do without these players, as North American players largely remained. Overall level dropped a little bit, but the league remained interesting, especially since the greater gap in skill between the best players in the league and the worst fostered higher scoring games. But, the tensions we see today between the NHLPA and the owners never quite disappeared. This proved to be the league's downfall. CBA negotiations could never happen without partial or total lockouts, which helped drive the public away; if the NHL's hockey spectacle was not so reliably available, other leagues of similar calibre existed elsewhere and were worth following. The ultimate NHL lockout, which stretched for all of three seasons from 2073 to 2076, simply killed the league off.
With globalization even stronger then than in 2018, the IIHF came up in 2077 with a bold plan that was presented to all of its members. They would merge and realign all of the domestic leagues to form 20 international superleagues. The goal: limit the number of major leagues worldwide and facilitate the following of them all by greater numbers of hockey enthusiasts. Superleagues would have 20 or 30 teams, and most would have several lower divisions, linked together by promotion and relegation. The top teams of each of these leagues would then play in a worldwide tournament similar in concept to the UEFA's Champions League in football (and indeed to the Champions Hockey League) in order to determine a global champion team. The proposal was studied thoroughly, drafts were made, debates were had, all kinds of emotions were felt, but in the end, by May 13th 2078, every member nation had accepted the proposal. In an increasingly global world, the IIHF also allowed subnational regions to apply for full membership, as if they were sovereign countries, even if they, in fact, are still part of a larger country. These regions are typically regions with significantly different culture than that of the country they are in. About 20 of these had been granted membership by 2080. Many of these regions, such as Wales or Cornwall, have experienced a cultural revival in the previous decades and felt they would fit in as full members. Others, such as Québec or South Tyrol, have always been distinct from the rest of their country and keenly interested in hockey. These memberships were accepted by every IIHF member, albeit not always without some amount of protest, especially among the federations where losing these players somewhat weakened the national teams. It was however felt that this would provide opportunities to let more players develop into stars, so in the end, it was accepted.
It is in this context, that the World Hockey League is set to hold its inaugural season for 2080-81, that is, 102 years after Wayne Gretzky started his legendary career.
The structure
2,000 professional or semi-professional teams from 117 countries and regions are playable from the start. These are spread into four 20 teams leagues and sixty four 30 teams leagues, arranged into 20 superleague systems. Each of these superleagues is made up of an elite league; fourteen of these have at least one playable lower tier. The number of playable lower divisions varies from superleague to superleague and ranges between 1 and 7. All superleague systems with a 30 teams elite league also features one non-playable, amateur division, linked to the rest via promotion and relegation, that further increases the number of potentially playable teams. The hockey enthusiast of 2018 will recognize many of the teams, as they are indeed often contemporary teams that were relocated to new leagues. Many more adopted names of defunct teams that played in their city. And, of course, a lot of new teams appeared, especially in regions where the sport is more developped in 2080 than today, namely, for instance, East and Central Asia, the Middle East or the Balkans. Each team comes with a farm team (that plays in a separate national reserve league) and a junior team. A bunch more junior teams are independant, meaning that there is, worldwide, a total of 3,500 junior teams to scout for talent. Despite the large numbers, thanks to spreadsheets, adding all of these clubs took much less time than one might think. In fact, the one thing that takes the longest... is deciding colours for all of the pro teams!
Superleagues (rules, teams, etc.) will be detailed in future posts.
The players and non-players
Close to 250,000 players and non-players are in the db. As impressive as this number looks, it's important to remember that most of them are totally irrelevant. Indeed, a majority is made up of unrated free agents that the game tends to ignores at startup (or at best turn into naff players that are irrelevant for anything but the very lowest tiers). Indeed, their only use is to add names to the database, so that new players created as the game recycles retirees have a wide variety of realistic names. Again, while it took time to create all of these folks, it took less time than one might think. Indeed, in spreadsheets, it's easy to randomly match first and last names, give them all a generic 1.2.1900 birth date, an appropriate nation and contract them to a team (or not). As most players are, as I said, irrelevant, once that's done, most players are effectively done after this step. Those who are contracted require further attention; they can be updated progressively, over time. The actual number of relevant players (i.e. players with at least a CA and/or PA) will probably be closer to 70 or 80,000. Again, a fair amount of randomization is involved so that the process takes a reasonable amount of time and "skill guidelines" have been calculated for all leagues, in order for them all to be of appropriate strength when compared to each other. More on that in a future post.
Current state of progress
- All leagues created;
- All teams created;
- Most players created;
- Affiliations between the various clubs largely left to do;
- League rules imperfect, but working;
- Players with at least a CA/PA for 20 leagues at this point;
- Financial aspects and other such important details largely left to do.
There we are! I hope this project interests you guys; as far as I go, it's fascinated me for months now and progresses are steady.
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