Ring of Steel
How a small Sheffield indie was entrusted with the future of boxing videogames
Boxing is home to the one-on-one: that primordial, binary drama promising either total victory or abject loss. It’s a setup that favours the underdog, allowing them to tip the established order with a single knockout – or, if they can keep up the momentum, set win ratios that would leave Call Of Duty players dumbstruck. It’s a model Steel City Interactive has followed as only a real boxing aficionado could. In less than two years, the fledgling Sheffield company has built a roster of top-level licenses that take several scrolls down its official site to appreciate in full. After a decade of boxing game drought, the biggest names in the sport have lent their endorsements and likenesses to the innocuously named eSports Boxing Club, making it impossible to ignore. And it’s a feat that’s been achieved in the fashion of all the greats: one-on-one.
“Over the last 18 months we’ve been going and speaking individually to the agents, the managers, the boxers, to try and get them into the game,” studio head Ash Habib explains. “There were some hard obstacles that we had to cross to convince people that we’re in this for the long haul and we’re going to see this through.”
This is not how sports games are usually made. Typically, sports have central bodies that own and regulate the use of their licences, leading to partnerships with major publishers. EA, for instance, has long enjoyed sweeping deals that enable the use of famous names and faces in FIFA – to the growing frustration of footballers themselves, it has to be said. Get Zlatan Ibrahimovic started on Twitter and you’re unlikely to get him to stop.
Boxing, by contrast, is the Wild West, with no single governing body. That could have been bad news for an unproven studio attempting to build trust, and Steel City met understandable scepticism during its early overtures. “In the past, boxers have been taken advantage of,” Habib says. But the frontier was also an opportunity, leaving the sport wide open for a handful of enthusiastic fans to claim.
Wisely, Steel City pitched a concept that was already playable – winning over boxers who come from a gaming generation. The developer invited potential signees to Sheffield to appreciate its game’s nuanced footwork system, which allows players to precisely plant their feet and find shrewd angles of attack, rather than simply float across the floor to their opponent. “That was missing for us from previous combat sports games,” Habib points out.
By sheer fortuity, 3D scanning and photogrammetry specialist Ten24 (Death Stranding, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II) is also based in Sheffield. The two companies now share a building, and boxers who have passed through the scanning rig have later become consultants, hooked in by the development process going on beneath their noses. Current cruiserweight champ Lawrence Okolie is plotting to top the leaderboards. “For him, it’s almost that to become the undisputed champion of the world now, you’ve got to have the eWBC belt as well,” Habib smiles. “It bodes well for the community that the athletes we’ve got involved in the game aren’t treating this just as a licensed product – they’re actively participating.”
Hoarding licences from across the sport isn’t only a bid for legitimacy, but lends authenticity in a game that models events around the fight. “Some of the fighters we were speaking to said that half the battle takes place outside the ring,” Habib says. “We have licensed trainers in the game, with different attributes.” The career mode of eSports Boxing Club incorporates management elements, asking you to think about injuries and the longterm condition of your fighter. If a boxer has a low discipline stat, for instance, they’re likely to show up to training camp overweight, forcing you to focus on shedding pounds rather than improving their speed or agility. “We felt that just by showing you fighting straight away, it did a disservice to the sport,” Habib explains.
The studio head believes eSports Boxing Club to be the most individually licensed game in history, and the numbers suggest he’s right: over 226 licences cover fighters, coaches, promoters, cutmen and all the title belts – not to mention CompuBox, which provides punch stats, and BoxRec, the database managers use to find future opponents for their charges.
“We thought if we create the foundations of a good game, because there hasn’t been a boxing game in ten years, people will come,” Habib says. “That’s essentially what’s happened.”
The plan now is to pay that trust forward, to other underdogs of the sport. “I’ve had boxers’ agents on the phone saying, ‘I’ve got this kid, he’s undefeated, he’s continental champion, but he’s not getting any airtime,’” Habib says. “They’re in the game as part of our up-and-coming roster. For us, as boxing fans, we’re not a bunch of suits in a boardroom – this was about promoting the sport that we love. It’s a journey we’re on together with some of these younger fighters.”
“The athletes we’ve got involved aren’t treating this just as a licensed product – they’re participating”