Fantasy Sparkball (FSB)
In 'Fantasy Sparkball', your favorite heroes serve as the 'athletes', with each of their cosmetic skins representing all new iterations with varying stats and talents (think of it as Sparkball Ultimate Team or Sparkball Sorare!). Players acquire these heroes and equippable items independently to the mode through Eggs and mode-specific pulls acquired from ecosystem activities like playing Sparkball or staking tokens/NFTs.
Your knowledge of Sparkball plays a key role in FSB as you construct your team, efficiently use (or just increase!) your current assets, and perfect your team comp. Players can put their squad to the test by creating or joining either Official or Player-run leagues, each with their own set of rules and rewards.
FSB matches are primarily AI driven using bots trained via Machine Learning on all active player data meaning that Kana on your Ultimate Team will play just like Challenger-level Kana's do in real matches. Taking it even further, players can acquire specific bot profiles based on famous players match patterns. Understanding how heroes behave together is key to winning your Fantasy Leagues and you'll even be able to watch in real-time how your team performs. Note, some leagues will allow players to control a single hero in the match, creating teams of 3 bots and 1 human player, finally giving you a chance to pilot that legendary-tier, 99 overall Hotpaws!
Lastly, an Ultimate showdown wouldn't be complete without something on the line. Players can wager on AI vs AI matches and even create prop bets based on fun stats like frying pans hit or less fun ones like goals scored. This extends especially to the official Opti-run league, where we'll broadcast our AI overlords in their full glory, creating narratives and storylines pro wrestling could only dream of.
Why we're excited
EA generated over $1.6B in revenue from Ultimate Team related modes in 2021 - a whopping 29% of their total revenue that year. While we more than disagree with many of the predatory decisions made in the design of these modes, the fact remains that Fantasy and Ultimate Team style game modes are incredibly popular and putting pieces of their economy in player's hands has massive potential value.
Beyond just the economics, Fantasy Sparkball can take place entirely asynchronously through a Web Browser because sometimes you need to get your Sparkball fix at work! With all matches able to run as a simulation, you can participate concurrently in as many leagues as your brain can manage without having to worry about spending your time playing in hundreds of individual matches.
FSB provides the ever-important progression angle to a cosmetic system without disrupting the balance of the official Sparkball experience, while simultaneously introducing a massive secondary market ripe with demand.