Triple Espresso co-founder Dominik Ebebenge is a curious case of career-switching: He used to work for Legia Warszawa, the most successful soccer club in Poland, starting with part-time gigs during his studies and eventually making it all the way to Head of Sport. As an avid fan of Sports Interactive's Football Manager series, he was very proud to become featured in the game due to his position. Now, he's making a video game that fuses both of his great passions and is based on that very real management experience: Copa City, best described as a soccer tycoon experience set somewhere between the spheres of EA Sports FC and Football Manager.
Ebebenge described his career path as "maybe a little counterintuitive," but "absolutely essential" for the project he and his partners have initiated -- many connections of his soccer life came in handy to secure funding and licenses for Copa City that might've been out of reach for most other developers.
"It's been essential to be able to reach back to all those people that I've met and -- thank God -- left a good impression on," he laughed. "It's certainly the most ambitious thing that I've done in soccer."
Copa City has secured some impressive licenses for its use, signing deals with the likes of FC Bayern München and Borussia Dortmund -- in part thanks to Ebebenge's connections, but also because an immense shift in the world of soccer has occurred over the last two decades when it comes to its relationship with video games.
"In my youth, clubs have perceived gaming as a threat rather than an opportunity," Ebebenge said, likening it to a zero-sum game in which video games would sap away people's attention and time from the more traditional entertainment. "I believe this has been the wrong approach."
It's no coincidence that Triple Espresso was able to secure some of the biggest clubs and stadiums from Germany, Brazil, Poland and England to appear in its game.
Ebebenge explained that the clubs were very receptive to Triple Espresso's ideas, asking why this type of game had not been done before, and that their enthusiastic support has been the "biggest encouragement" during development.
Copa City, he said, wants "to show you soccer from a little bit of a different angle," being "fresh and new" while remaining firmly rooted in the sport's culture.
That different angle -- the tycoon aspect -- is key. Being one of the biggest sports in the world, there is no shortage of soccer games from established studios and publishers. Being different isn't simply a way to carve out one's own niche in that space, but due to a web of exclusivity contracts between soccer's principal stakeholders and some of those big studios -- EA Sports, primarily -- it's effectively the only way for an indie dev to enter the market and still have a chance at getting some of those precious licenses secured.
"From the outset, we did not want to be seen as another one of those games, the poor cousins of the existing games that are best in class," Ebebenge said. "We much rather chose a direction of complementing the existing landscape of soccer games. We don't cross paths. We end where EA FC begins."
Copa City not including match simulations or full-blown club management avoided those webs of exclusivities and that, as Ebebenge mentioned, were a crucial point for the clubs approached by the developer. As much as some of them liked the concept Triple Espresso presented them with, the presence of match simulations would have made their involvement "a no-go."
For Ebebenge, the bigger challenge is to communicate this fact to potential players: "We're trying to be very transparent and candid as to what is the focus of Copa City."
Despite this natural limit to the scope of the game, Ebebenge mentioned that internal debates on features and mechanics to include have been "very heated." Once again, his -- and other Triple Espresso members' -- experience in professional soccer helped shape the discussions, forming a coherent block of information based on which the game designers could work out a gameplay loop.
Copa City being among the first games to explore this side of the sport is "both its strong side and, possibly, its tricky side," Ebebenge summarized. He said that development involved a lot of trial and error, a lot of cutting of aspects that didn't make for good gameplay and embellishing some that are nowhere near as important in reality, but enhanced the player experience.
Ebebenge hopes that Copa City can be the starting point for an entire franchise -- or at least some expansions. He said that the team has a lot of ideas for additional layers it would love to add that are currently outside of the game's scope.
For the studio's co-founder, one of the most pivotal moments during development came when the team combined the gameplay with audio for the first time.
"It sounds so simple," Ebebenge said. "Soccer is visual, but it's also very audible, so when we saw our game with the audio already in there, it was a revelation and a smile that you can't help from appearing on your face."
Anyone who's been to a soccer match -- or lived near a stadium at some point -- will get that sentiment. But sound isn't the only way Triple Espresso is trying make Copa City authentic and immersive.
"We want to provide that real world experience by presenting real venues in real cities with real landmarks with real clubs," Ebebenge emphasized.
From Poland's national stadium in Warsaw to Berlin's Olympiastadion, Copa City will allow players to leave their mark on actual places they can visit or look up on Google Maps -- which, again, involves licenses that are hard to get for an indie game studio. Without Triple Espresso's existing connections, these may have taken "much longer" to get and "cost much more."
Ebebenge said that the studio obviously couldn't throw around immense financial power during negotiations, but managed to convince the clubs that "together we can do something meaningful and impactful that will result in great revenues." He implied that there will be physical editions of the game with club-specific branding that will directly speak to their fans and be promoted by the clubs themselves, helping the game reach a much wider audience than Triple Espresso alone could manage.
In this area, too, the choices of partner clubs were carefully made. Germany is one of the most potent markets for management games and soccer is its national sport, just like it is for Brazil and England. Germany's record championship winner FC Bayern München was first to sign on and its confidence in the game, Ebebenge says, made negotiations with other clubs much easier, causing a bit of a snowball effect.
From devoted Football Manager players to casual EA FC fans who've played Zoo Tycoon in their childhood, Copa City hopes to capture a broad variety of players with its offering. Luck seems to be on Triple Espresso's side with Football Manager 25 being canceled after trouble during development, though Ebebenge shied away from calling it "lucky" outright -- he's too much of a fan himself to find any pleasure in Sports Interactive's misfortune. The new kids on the block clearly have a lot of respect for the iconic series and its makers. Ebebenge compared it to a friendly rivalry between clubs. You may wish them hell on match day, but well every other day of the year. Still, he admitted that it "presents a certain opportunity, a certain vacuum in terms of attention."
What Ebebenge ultimately hopes for Copa City to achieve is to build its own legacy in the space. He wants young fathers, who are soccer fans and played tycoon games in their childhood, to get to play the game with their own children. Although Copa City will lightly touch upon the darker side of soccer fandom -- topics like hooliganism -- and educate players on these areas, it's a game that celebrates match day and seeks to present a positive, celebratory image of the sport that is so dear to many people.
Copa City is planned to be released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S at some point in 2025.