Manager simulations have been picking up a lot of steam lately. Football Manager and Motorsport Manager have been hugely surprising hits given how niche it would have seemed like those games would be. The reality is that a lot of people love simulating things they love watching, playing or participating in. Well, in the case of basketball… Cyanide Studios and Umix announced that they would be trying their hand at a professional basketball simulator appropriately called Pro Basketball Manager 2017.

Blues picked up the news from the official announcement they made, where they indicated that gamers would be able to form their own basketball brand within the game, taking on the role of a manager. The object of the game is just like any other management simulator out there: players will need to recruit team members to play on the court, they will need to hire in coaches, assistant coaches, staff and work on playbooks, training, offensive maneuvers and defensive strategies.

The game takes pride in recreating more than 70 different real life basketball competitions. However, they don’t mention having any kind of licenses for actual team names or professionally sanctioned leagues, so don’t expect them to show up out of the blue.

According to Blues they’ve been making Pro Basketball Manager games for a while, and sure enough if you check Steam’s listings it appears Umix has worked with Cyanide on a 2016 edition of the game as well as a slightly different version of the game that came out back in 2014.

None of the basketball manager games that Cyanide and Umix worked out gained a whole lot of positive feedback from gamers, but sometimes it takes a few iterations to really synch up in a groove and find a working formula that attracts the kind of audience looking for the kind of game they’re attempting to deliver.

They mentioned in the press release that various aspects of Pro Basketball Manager 2017 have been revamped and that the game will feature Steam Workshop support for the first time in the series…

“Scouting, recruiting, 2D and 3D matches were also remodeled. Pro Basketball Manager 2017 will also, for the first time, integrate the Steam Workshop that will allow players to easily exchange game content, such as customized databases.”

if they can improve on the core mechanics, fix up some of the issues that gamers complained about in the previous entries, and provide a solid gameplay experience, they might be able to win over their own niche audience the way Sega has done with the Football Manager series. For more info on Pro Basketball Manager 2017 feel free to visit the game’s official website.