A game about football supporter culture

What supporter culture is

Supporter culture is everything that happens around a match rather than on the pitch: an end that sings for ninety minutes, a banner a month in the making, an away day in somebody else's city, your own pub, your own crowd and your own history with theirs. The football is the reason and the calendar, not the content.

Russian has one word for all of it — околофутбол, literally around football. English splits it into parts: ultras, casuals, football firms. Every country runs it its own way.

Ultras Online is a multiplayer game about exactly that. You do not manage a team and you never take a shot: you arrive as nobody, pick a club and start on the district.

Who the ultras are

Ultras are organised supporters who treat backing a club as a job: a fixed place on the terrace, banners and choreography, travel to away matches, their own hierarchy and their own rules. What separates an ultra from a spectator is that they come to do something rather than to watch.

In the game that is your club. You pick it when you register and it decides the rest: your stand at the ground, your pub, your place in the league table and who your skulls are counted for. Clubs play a season — rounds on Tuesdays at 20:00 and Saturdays at 18:00 game time — and anyone holding a ticket is in the stand, fighting there in person.

Football hooligans and firms

Football hooligans are the part of this most people have heard of. A crew is called a firm — the word travelled out of England with the thing itself — and a firm has a name, a roster, a crest of its own and a record against everybody else.

In Ultras Online a firm is up to fifteen players: a treasury, a charter, a motto, an emblem, join requests, tasks and awards held in common. Firms settle things on the wasteland, in a showdown: one hour, put the other roster down, up to three targets at once. The winner takes the loser's flag and their place in the table.

All of it is invented. No real club, no real firm and no real person is named anywhere in the game: the clubs, the crests and the names are made up, and the crests are drawn as plain geometry.

Football fans: the stand and the pub

Fan is the widest of these words, and in the game it is about where the time between fights goes. Every club has a pub with its own chat, and once a week, on Sunday at 18:00, every club meets in one battle for the pub — in rooms of two levels, no more than five from a club in a room.

A place in the battle for the pub costs 20 gold, and if fewer than two clubs, or ten people or fewer, turn up by the first bell the evening is called off and every place refunded. The bank goes to those left standing, and they get Scourge of the taverns for a week: their talismans fire twice as often.

How the game is built

The district is where a day starts. Live players and locals fight there, wins bring skulls, skulls add up to reputation and rank, and the loser leaves their coupons to the winner. At midnight game time the day is settled: every club gets its Hero of the Day, and the firm with the most skulls becomes the Terror of the District.

The rest is what makes a fighter. In the gym, skill points go into strength, stamina, agility and charisma. Work pays coupons for energy. Ultras Shop sells clothing and gear, the stall sells provisions, amulets and talismans; a talisman is never worn, it fires on its own with a chance that grows as it levels.

A newcomer is walked through all of it by Фифтифедя — the district, the gym, the shop, the job board, table football, the pub, the stadium and firms. Anyone who sees it through gets a week of premium.

Where to start

If you were after a game about football fans or a game about football hooligans, this is it. Pick a club, take your first level and step out onto the district. The game is free, it runs in the browser and on Android, and the account and the wallet are shared: start on the phone, carry on in the browser.