The biggest Sjarel interview ever

Hello Sjarel

First of all, thank you very much for cooperating on this interview. We have had quite a few questions from the forum-members, and we also like to thank all the people who contributed!

To start off the interview, we will ask you some personal questions.

Turns out the people want to know WHO you are. So, can you tell us something about yourself?

Sjarel: I’m a 29-year old programmer from Belgium. My nickname simply was the first thing I could think of when I first had to choose a nickname on the Internet, I’ve been using it ever since. I don’t have many hobbies besides SoccerProject, but I do play some chess, participate in a contest similar to pub-quizzes and enjoy having a drink with my friends when I have some time. Lately that hasn’t been much however since my wife gave birth to a baby-boy just last month. A few years ago I moved to my own place, but before I lived in Westerlo, which is why I’m a fan of football club KVC Westerlo, a Belgian Premier division team which even won the national cup a few years ago. I try to visit a few games each year, but this year I’ve seen only one so far. Lately I’ve picked up reading since I’ve been in the train a lot for my regular job and I do enjoy a good glass of wine. I think that’s it

How were you as a kid. Were you a good boy or a little rascal? How and where did you grow up?

Sjarel: I think I was a good kid, never had any complaints

I grew up in a small rural town. Did a bit of athletics and played some basketball. I never did anything bad, or at least nothing I would like to share with the community

As for my dreams, I never imagined to be a programmer. I guess that word didn’t even exist at that time!

You are married for a few years now, right? And you became a father recently. How is it to be a father?

Sjarel: Yes, I married in 2006. Me and my wife were together for 10 years already, I guess you could say we married as a 10-year anniversary

I also just became a father. It’s a completely new experience, but so far it has been all positive. I’ve been getting less sleep, but that’s the same for all parents I think.

Your wife, how does she feel about SoccerProject? Does she sometimes feel like she is married to SoccerProject instead of to Sjarel?

Sjarel: My wife has learned to live with SoccerProject. Although she would like me to spend less time on my PC and more with her, she understands and hardly ever complains. Nowadays she sometimes even likes the anecdotes I share with her, maybe she’s even reading my blog…

What was the reason you started SoccerProject? The market is loaded with soccer managers, so what made you and ReesinG decide to make another one?

How much time do you spend on SoccerProject on average?

Did SoccerProject change your life a lot, and did you ever think it would be such a success?

Sjarel: When we started working on SoccerProject the market wasn’t loaded yet, and we never even heard of games like Hattrick and others. We were playing another game ourselves and felt we could create a better game. When the other game stopped to exist, we put our words into deeds, and one year later SoccerProject was released. We never had any expectations and could only be glad to see it grow so fast. I also never expected it would take this much time from me, but so far I am able to keep it going. I really hope we’ll never have to end like www.roekoe.be, a game about pigeon racing that grew so fast that the plug had to be pulled.

According to my wife I ‘m spending about 20 hours on SP every week, and she might be right

So, yes it has changed quite a lot for me. Not only has it taken a lot of time, I’ve also met a lot of new and interesting people, be it mostly online only, and of course I’ve learned really a lot during the years. Not only technically speaking, but also about marketing, advertising, languages all over the world, etcetera.

Do you think you will ever be able to generate enough income from SoccerProject to stop working? Would you even want to be in that situation?

Sjarel: All depends on the numbers of managers, which countries they are from and the numbers of paying SPFA-members. On the other hand I also like my current job, so that is not necessarily one of my goals.

After three years of SoccerProject, and all the good and bad times that come with it, did you ever feel like you had enough of it, like you wanted to quit it? Has it become a duty or is it still a lot of fun for you? And did you ever consider starting another online game?

Sjarel: Sometimes it’s a duty, if the website is down it’s a must to get it online asap. Also solving problems in the community and fixing very minor hard-to-find bugs are not really what I call ‘fun’. But most of the time I enjoy working for SoccerProject.

Creating something completely different could only be done, if managing SoccerProject would take less time. At the moment I’m not adding really much new features, yet it still takes me a lot of time. A week has only 7 days for me as well.

In your position, you have to try to stay neutral and keep some of your thoughts to yourself. Does that drive you crazy sometimes? Managers as well as forummers do stupid things and behave badly, but you have to behave good at all times. Does it ever want to make you scream? Do you have a special something where you can release such frustration? Like a sport or a computer game?

Sjarel: Not really, I only find myself telling about such occasions to people I know IRL, I think that’s how I cope with it.

Many managers are competing for Isis’ love and affection, yet she seems only to have eyes for you. What is your secret?

Sjarel: She has been begging for player portraits ever since I told her about SoccerProject. By delaying the introduction of this feature I guess I just keep her ‘always wanting for more…’

To finish this part about you, how do you picture your own future and the future of the game?

Sjarel: I have no idea really, no long-term plans. I take it day-by-day and always try to do what’s best for SP imho. By that I mean what is best for SP in the long term of course.

The T-shirt is a gift from reesinG.  It is actually an acrostic with the letters of my son’s name.  It says: SoccerProject fan, caressable, natural talent, little rascal, angel, mess maker

Now for something different. Some managers are pretty interested in what it takes to create a website like this. Would you like to share some knowledge about this? Are you educated in web-applications?

Sjarel: I’m just your regular 13-in-a-dozen programmer, but there is one thing I learnt over the years. The only way to learn stuff, is to try it yourself. At least that’s how I learn new stuff, also for SoccerProject.

SoccerProject is completely written in PHP, and the data is stored in an MySQL-database. Currently 2 public web servers and 1 database server are sufficient to fill the needs of this application, but we have been looking intensively at DB-replication, which means we are ready to add some extra DB-servers if needed, for example if we would have to add an I-division. Adding an extra web server shouldn’t be too hard either, as we already have a load balancer set up to divide traffic between the two current web servers. In total we have 4 dedicated servers all running Gentoo Linux.

Sometimes the website gets into trouble, like the server-crashes last season. Are these crashes mostly to blame on external factors, or are they also human errors within SP or programming errors? What can you do to prevent this from happening in the future?

Sjarel: Crashes mostly have different causes, because most causes are fixed after they occurred once. Last month for instance we had problems with the hard-disk. Of course some crashes are caused by human (programming) errors, I guess you can’t rule them out completely. There have been some changes however in the process. Hard to explain exactly, but it would take even longer after a crashed simulation if it wasn’t for these changes.

But external factors can happen as well, we’ve had badly-plugged-in cables causing severe troubles as well in the past. I can tell you it’s really hard to find that out being hundreds of kilometers away from the actual data center.

Lots of managers are curious about what the future will bring. First of all, do you read all the suggestion-posts in the Requested Features forum? Do you give them a lot of thought?

Sjarel: I do, at least I try. Some of them are really good. If possible I implement them immediately. Otherwise I write them down. Unfortunately my list has become very long. Other suggestions are not good, those I ignore.

As you noted, the Romanian community badly wants a Sheriff of their own. This would solve a lot of communication problems, since not all Romanian managers speak English.

Do you plan to improve this situation in the near future?

Sjarel: I just have

Talking about Sheriffs, what is your opinion on the current system of fighting and punishing cheaters? Did you think al lot about changing the system?

Sjarel: Any good ideas are welcome, but so far it turns out really hard to make good additions. The sheriffs have made some suggestions of their own, but not all of them were possible.

A few managers were curious about the staff- and stadium-options.

Both are fairly limited in diversity and function. Do you think this will be improved in the future?

Sjarel: We might change that a little, but it really should not become to complicated for new users. I think SP is hard enough already for newcomers. On the other hand I don’t think that is the part where SP needs improvement the most.

Discussions on this subject always show lots of people for it and fairly many against. However it always generates a lot of interest: do you see National Teams in the future of SoccerProject?

Sjarel: I would really love to implement this, but the consequences are huge. How to handle injuries, fitness, moral and costs for example. Can a manager be obligated to give his player to a National team risking an injury. Or who will be the National manager and what are his options ? This will really take some thinking, implementing and testing…

Some managers think the tactics in SoccerProject should be improved. What is your opinion in this matter, and are there any ideas to make SoccerProject even more challenging?

Sjarel: I can agree with them to a certain extent, but tactics only really matter if teams are more or less alike. The A-division would be a good example for this, but I’m not sure in how many games this would be influential enough to change the outcome of the games.

Do you have great changes planned in the near future? Would you like to share some of them with our readers?

Sjarel: Except for the IBP (Instant Buy Price, already implemented), raising my son will be my most important concern for the near future. I will be very glad if I can keep SP up-and-running during this period.

Maybe I can share one future feature in this interview. One of our translators is busy translating the site into Persian. Just another one, you might think, but it’s not as simple as that. Apparently these guys want their texts from right-to-left instead of from left-to-right like we do. In order to be able to create a complete Persian (or in the future e.g. Hebrew) version of SoccerProject, almost all pages will need to be adjusted.

Were there ever big changes that you wanted to make, but couldn’t due to technical problems or a lack of time/resources?

Sjarel: Only lack of time. So far nothing else, except maybe for the money to advertise during the Olympics

And now a question that worries lots of addicted managers: What if, for whatever reason, you and ReesinG are unable to continue your work on SoccerProject. Did you ever think about that? Do you have a back-up plan for this? Would someone take over, or would the plug just be pulled? Needless to say, many lives would be destroyed if this would ever happen.

Sjarel: Chances of both of us giving up at the same time seem very small. There is no backup-plan, but like one of our former prime ministers used to say: “I only try to solve existing problems, not the ones you make up”. What I mean is, we’ll do our very best not to let that happen.

Now to finish the interview, is there any message you would like to send to the managers?

Sjarel: I suggest you all invite 1 extra manager to SoccerProject, if that works we’ll soon be able to create that I-division I was talking of.

Thank you for the Interview, and infinite thanks for SoccerProject J

Contributors to the questions:

Ultimate, Wojt, bats1903, robstje, saman13, Woko, Sex Pistols, snowflake, Maximoesje, el stino, Lexicus, mcmagik, oslicek, SBroccoli, Ivo08, and speaking for a bunch of Romanian managers: Bunicutzu. Thank you all!