THE FOOTBOARD STORY

The idea for Footboard came from watching two people playing chess whilst walking to watch the football in Italy, but it was born out of a childhood love for both games.

MEET THE TEAM

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

DREW GEPP

DREW@FOOT-BOARD.COM

Drew is a half-decent chess player and an awful footballer. His background is in digital tech and strategy, where he’s been working for the last 15 years… that is, before Footboard.

FOOTBOARD SKILL LEVEL: 2 STARS

CO-FOUNDER & CTO

QUIRINO BRIZI

QUIRINO@FOOT-BOARD.COM

Quirino is a technology leader and former CTO with over 20 years’ experience in software and gaming. His first iteration of the AI was so defensively sound that he named it ‘Baresi’.

FOOTBOARD SKILL LEVEL: 5 STARS

CO-FOUNDER & CPO

CARL MILLIKIN

CARL@FOOT-BOARD.COM

Carl has 20+ years’ experience in SaaS and ad-tech and a bit longer playing a decent level of football. However, the dice (and the ref) always seem to be against him.

FOOTBOARD SKILL LEVEL: 4 STARS

HOW IT ALL STARTED

AN IDEA, AN AMAZON BOX, AND £3 ON COUNTERS & DICE

After getting back to the UK, the idea of combining chess and football played on my mind. I’d spent countless hours on classic football games such as ISS Deluxe (SNES), Championship Manager (PC), and Actua Soccer (Playstation), among others, but the problem with these games was that you either played as one player at a time or you managed the club with little gameplay (and some very frustrating losses).

The game I wanted to play was strategic, where managing the team in real-time dictated your chances of winning or losing. In my imagination, it combined chess, Risk, and even some of the elements of classic D&D games, such as Baldur’s Gate. The only problem was that it didn’t exist.

The only solution was to create it from scratch, so I took the back of an Amazon box, drew up a crude grid, did some maths regarding player/space ratios, wrote up some rules, and headed off to the pub to meet my first co-founder to be.
Unsurprisingly, the first iteration was… not very good. But, there was something there and over the next six months, Carl and I met every week to solve one problem at a time. The game got better and better until, in September 2021, it was ready to take to the next phase.

Back to Italy

Though we had the core tabletop game ready, we always intended to make Footboard something that people could enjoy wherever they were. Football, after all, was rarely more than the next thought away. So, Carl and I took his (now wooden!) prototype to an old friend and colleague of mine and someone whom I knew would be able to turn the dream of Footboard into a reality.
After a long lunch, we got to the grist and started taking our other co-founder to be through the game. We were tentative, but Quirino was excited about the prospect. “It’s going to be difficult”, he said. “Yes, but if there’s one thing you like it’s a challenge.”

We agreed that, given that players can choose what to do and when (unlike chess) and the sheer size of the board, that the AI would need to be more complex than Chess and Go put together. Again, that didn’t stop us, so for the next few months, we went about building the technical and company infrastructure that would make Footboard a real thing.

Leaps and bounds

Since then, we haven’t looked back, but the road to making Footboard something that people could enjoy was far from simple.
We’ve had teams from Ukraine and India help us to build the app, but the real step changes were in the design (UK and Colombia) and in the development of the AI.
There are lots of people to thank, but also still lots of work to do to make sure anyone, whoever they are, can feel Footboard is the game for them.