We’re happy to announce that we’re releasing a new Ad-supported version of MMA Manager. It’s completely free and available today on both the App Store and Google Play.


What do we mean by Ad-supported?
Pretty straight forward really, like all real sports we’ve added some adverts into the game at key points where we have the player’s attention. And by some, we mean “a few” or “not very much”, we’ve added the following:

• A full screen static interstitial advert before every fight as part of the event opening.
• A video ad lasting at most 30 seconds every 3 game months.

Why are Bit By Bit releasing an ad-supported version?
A few reasons really:

• First and foremost, we’ve had a lot of players that were interested in trying the game, but not used to paying for premium games on mobile ask about it and every one of them we’ve talked to has been happy with the approach we’ve taken with integrating infrequent adverts.
• The fact our player reviews and feedback have been so positive has given us more confidence that players who aren’t necessarily huge MMA fans, but like more general management games would give it a try and enjoy it if they didn’t have to pay for it themselves.
• We think we’ve integrated Ads into the game flow well, with them fitting the feel of the advertising actually shown during sports events. Hopefully, players should agree that it reduces the level of intrusiveness of the advertising compared to most ad-supported games and fits the general feel of a big sponsored sporting event.
• Instead of taking the already released version to be purely ad-supported, we wanted to be able to experiment more without affecting our current players. We’ve had a hugely positive experience interacting with everyone that’s actually played the game & we’re happy to go out of our way to make sure that we don’t screw them over. Our existing players are hugely supportive and have been generally awesome with feedback and suggestions and the last thing we want to do is risk making unwanted changes in the game they’ve already paid for.
• Last, as with most paid games released on the App Store it’s not sold as well as we need it to if we’re going to continue developing it. Hopefully the ad-supported version should help alleviate that and help spread the word about the game.

Does this mean there will be no more updates to the current version?
Absolutely not! They’re based on the same codebase and every new gameplay feature added will be in both versions. The only significant differences between the 2 will be in terms of advertising in thead-supported version, something we’ll be closely monitoring and perhaps changing slightly based on feedback and finding what works and what doesn’t for our players.

We’ve got another positive review!  This time from Zero1Gaming:

http://www.zero1gaming.com/reviews/mma-manager-review/

Another fair and even handed review pointing out that MMA knowledge helps and having Female fighters would be great.  Along with some bits we’re really happy about:

• “being developed by a talented, but small, studio.”
• “MMA Manager is a great management sim to pass time or any train journey or whenever you get a spare moment. It is deep enough to allow you to feel like you are running things without ever being too overwhelming and will keep you entertained for many an hour. A must for any MMA fan.”

To go with this great news, we’ve also submitted our next update to both the AppStore and to Google Play.  We’re hoping for around a 7 day turnaround again for the AppStore and the Google Play version should be available in a couple of hours.

It’s a massive update, here are the main features we’ve added:

• Sharing screenshots via the camera button.
• Fighter stats gradually decay down to 40, if they’re not training in that discipline.
• Happy fighters train more effectively.
• Cross training now takes a little longer and only trains the specific Stat for that gym.
• Your corner gives advice between rounds.
• The Fighter’s info screen now has more complete data. This includes their complete fight history (from this update). Also, the number of times they’ve failed PED tests or missed weight.
• Coach negotiations now only allow 2 attempts to recruit them. Also, coaches will never accept a pay cut.
• Training Dilemmas Changes: Giving your fighter the day off will mean they don’t train this month.
• Gameplan Techniques are now explained better.
• On changing Leagues your Fighter’s new Rank takes their old Rank into account.
• The end of the month will now always show your monthly finances and will show any fights booked for the coming month.
• Miscellaneous fight system improvements.
• Various bug fixes, including a very rare crash and a small issue where you could get stuck in the Objectives screen.

There’s also a whole bunch of small fixes, tweaks and changes under the hood and we hope you enjoy them!

The latest update for iOS has passed Apple review and been released for iOS today.

This brings the iOS version up to date with the Android version and includes:

• Metric Measurements Option so you don’t have to work in Feet/Inches/pounds if you don’t want to.
• Explanation why your fighter may not be offered a fight.
• Fights changed to No Contest only when the winner fails a drug test
• Players can now skip tutorial on subsequent playthroughs
• Fighter goals with a zero desired losses can now be achieved.
• As well as quite a few other small fixes and changes.

As we mentioned in our last blog post this will be the last week that MMA Manager is available at the introductory price of $1.99 USD/$2.49 CAN/£1.99 so we suggest you grab it now if you haven’t already.

Next update wise, we’re working away on 1.2 which will have even more improvements and changes and hope to submit to Apple and release on Google Play later this week.