Thanks much Jim, appreciate what you are doing. Here's to hoping the OOTP team can free up resources. If not the world will still spin on it's axis and the sun will rise tomorrow and we will continue to look for it when it does come out.

Last question for now if your up for it. You note multiple league formats. Is your line of thinking that they would coincide with the actual NFL league changes from way back, NFL-AFL merger, expansion periods or a break out of a few others?

Support so far (these take a long time, and I don't anticipate doing any more this year): Total Teams/Number Divisions - 9/2 (like the CFL), 12/2, 16/4, 20/4, 24/6, 26/6, 28/6, 30/6, 31/6, 32/8. They are all 4 exhibitions in 5 weeks, and 16 games in 17 weeks. Except for the 9/2, which is 2/3, 18/21 and the 26/6, which is 6/6, 14/14. I am hesitant to match the NFL going back because it was a different game before 1974 and the engine couldn't adjust properly. If the NFL changes its schedule structure for 2020, I will do my best to match it with a new template.Tie-breakers and the way playoffs are set up are static for now, but the potential exists to add that information to the templates, with versioning.

Thank you Jim for the update and god thank you for redoing the staff model. IMO, the worst part of a great game simply because of how important coaches are and how limited control GMs have over who they get. Obviously, a very small issue when you take into account how great this game is overall IMO.

This will be available for Mac, right?

This is the same thing that happened with Title Bout Championship Boxing. Year after year after year after year word came down that as soon as the new version of OOTP Baseball was wrapped up, work would resume on an updated version of TBCB.

Well, that never happened. It never will. TBCB is a dead game.

I've had my issues with FOF over the years, and was especially irritated by the response I received years ago when I emailed Jim's company begging for some improvements to the UI, especially the teeny, tiny, really difficult to read font. The person who responded was not Jim, but some person associated with him. I will keep the details private, but I will say that the response was so rude I resolved to never spend my money with that company again.

That said, I do sincerely appreciate it that Jim provided some information on where the project now stands. Even though the information is not what any of us wanted to hear, a tip of my hat to him for taking a moment away from his work to at least give some explanation.

I am astonished by this post. Could you please post the entire communication in question? I review everything that goes in or out and if something was kept from me, I need to know about it.

I think I've read previously that it will be available on Mac.

Jim,

I had been an off-and-on player of the FOF series for years and had been really anticipating the release of FOF 9 as a crowning achievement.

Just wanted you to know that when waiting for OOTP to come through on the project for you I got kind of frustrated and decided to get FOF 8 which was the one version I had not played.

I've been playing FOF8 for a couple of months now and just wanted you to know how much I enjoy it. I'm retired and probably spending a good 3 hours a day either playing or analyzing it and have developed a great appreciation of all that you have put into it. Interestingly, I've found that I enjoy the GM aspects of the game even more than the actual game play though I still play out all my games with my selected team. Your product is really a tour-de-force on the subject of football simulations and I think I've played them all at one time or another.

So, keep up the good work! I certainly hope that OOTP realizes soon what a great product they have with FOF9 if they would just devote some resources to getting it released as I am confident it will be a big hit. In fact, I think it will out-sell the OOTP baseball games. Maybe OOTP just has to realize how popular American football is.

In any case, thanks for making such a great product as FOF8 which I will continue to play to the hilt in the meantime!

Jim,

Can you comment on whether or not online play will be returning from FOF8?

This amazes me. Jim, the whole FOF community knows you've been hung out to dry by the OOTP decision makers. Keep up the great work :)

I’d support a kickstarter to hire someone from upwork to help Jim finish the game if all is needed is the User Interface.

Latest Info (3/28/20)
 

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That is a great idea to be honest


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OOTP have their own UI person so I'm sure we'll be waiting for them to do the job instead

its been 4 years of waiting for that...

With the actual football season in limbo, I would think at some point they’ll have to pour all their energy into getting this game out for the start of this season. A realistic football sim with graphics at the level of OOTP would be a huge money maker, one would think.

I doubt it will have OOTP type graphics in version one but I agree with the rest of what you said. I don't think OOTP really comprehends how much money it would make them.

Pure speculation, but I don't think OOTP is going to make a lot of money from this (in their mind)

My guess is Jim negotiated too good of a deal for himself keeping most of the sales and now OOTP has little incentive to help.

I'm still awaiting the eventual announcement that Jim and OOTP have gone their separate ways.

I think its inevitable and if that happens (I hope you're reading this Jim), I would gladly do the UI for this game LOL! You could even give me the tiniest of shares of revenue, I wouldn't care LOL

Yep, fully expect this to happen. Maybe I am reading too much into one of Jim’s earlier posts, but I thought this when he said:

“If we don't do FOF9 this year, I'm not sure what will happen. Anything and everything is on the table.”

The thought has crossed my mind on this too. I'm very disappointed that OOTP hasn't supported Jim more aggressively on this project. I'm starting to become disillusioned with OOTP because of it. If this project fails because of their lack of support, then my support of them will suffer as well.

I think Markus felt compelled to try to continue the project after what happened to Francis. This was an easy way to do it, but PT and all of the sideshow projects have tied up the limited resources.

Another issue is enthusiasm. OOTPD is definitely treating FOF as though it’s just some side project. The truth is an American Football GM simulation the quality of FOF is worth its weight in gold. I don’t know if Markus fully understands this or not since he is European.

All I know is he would be wasting a great opportunity if this project doesn’t come to fruition by this fall.

I think there is probably lots of data out there to show that GM games for all sports is a wanted commodity. Anything in the guise of OOTP and Football Manager is massive. I don’t even like hockey but I’m looking at FHM. There is a massive hole in NFL and Basketball and even F1 games that people have been wishing for a long time. The data would come from GM games website maybe, or even hits on Steam etc.

An F1 management game hit, for example, still has people playing the Microprose version from circa ‘96. Would it be that hard to pull something together to replace that? Possibly not. Biggest issue is obviously the rights.

This one's pretty good.

Not sure if he felt compelled, maybe remained interested. If you consider what they have done with OOTP and FHM why would they not consider the American Football market, especially as a management sim versus the beat the controller Madden versions.

Yes they opened the door with Francis and as fate would have it that wasn't able to move forward. So the idea of joining with Jim actually made sense, a solid foundation that they could work with, make some adjustments and then overlay their proven GUI to make an already good product even better. Throw behind it the OOTP reputation and you create a base to build from with an already enthusiastic population that can only get better.

Would it aid the community if OOTP (Markus) could outline their business approach to this, possibly with some form of schedule? Sure. Then again if you review some of the earlier responses here this hasn't always been the most receptive of communities. Still, I feel certain that internal to OOTP there is a plan and maintaining their current products may have influenced that. Add to that the current world situation and the viral hurdle that is in place one should be able to appreciate some impact to that schedule. I still believe (feel) that once the resources are free to support this the overlay of the GUI won't take long. Maybe not as quick as we would want but not another year or two.

As for Jim, I don't know him except for his responses that I have seen/read since 2007. I do sense though that this game means the world to him as does his followers and the communities that support it and he would not allow it to fail, for any reason. With that I would expect that he feels the relationship with OOTP is the right move and that it would elevate his product to an even larger population. You see this in that he mentioned that he has restructured code that is not backwards compatible to FOF8. I am not a coder, I just play the game and complain about the outcome, but I am certain that if the OOTP path is not completed a version of FOF9 would not be available for another year, and that would take quite a bit of effort and time on Jim's part to do.

Point here is that right now, IMO, the best path forward is the OOTP FOF9 solution. I still say we just need to take a deep breath, relax, ride this wave and let this run its course. In the end I have enough faith that whatever path it takes we will all be impressed.

Everything seems to go towards the perfect team....which i don't play at all. All i really want right now is FOF, an updated mobile baseball game and, ideally, a stripped down version of OOTP that is a bit more simple (see: PureSim).

Yes, you literally wrote the post that I wanted to write.

I'm a baseball-first hobbyist, but missing the fall deadline for football would be a massive missed opportunity. Football is huge in the States and a smart game with OOTP-level graphics would do very well. My guess is that we'll get something - even if it is just pawns-playing-football. It's just a shame that it looks like they won't have time to achieve the polished in-game presentation of the baseball sim this year. If they ever put out a football sim that reaches the level of the baseball game, the company will be printing money.

This is absolutely true (and I'm with you in that, while I still play OOTP 21, the two things I want to see most are the mobile baseball game and FOF; like FOF, the mobile baseball game seems to have an incredible lack of attention given to it, even though back in the day iOOTP was quite successful). But I will say, statistically, the majority of OOTP players are the casual sort who just load up the most recent MLB season and play through. These forums can distort our view of the OOTP playerbase because the people on here take the game to the next level and really get into it. Perfect Team caters heavily to that casual audience, and though I don't have any numbers on hand I would imagine that it's one of the company's biggest sources of profit. The fact that the OOTP devs have sunk so much time and attention into PT tells me they are more focused on immediate profit than they are a potential long term project like FOF. I can understand this from a business perspective, but as a football fan who wants nothing more in his life than to play a polished FOF game with OOTP-esque interface, it makes me sad.

Just very the little progress OOTPb has made since OOTP 18 I would have huge doubts about this Football project. This is exactly the sort of project that should have been Kickstarter. OOTP as a game company is nearly as big as some of the huge companies that run kickstarters. The Pathfinder Kingmaker guys that game probably out sold a decade worth of OOTP combined. Battletech from Hairbraiend Schemes and produced by Paradox. That's the Shadow Run guys and Paradox what they sell a million copies of their big titles.

Not only does kickstarter get you funds to either hire full/part/contractor help but gets the buzz going. OOTP flies too under the radar in video game land. The aforementioned Motorsport Manager is 4 years old in the fall it still gets the same daily steam users as OOTP 21 does.

I never even played the Patherfinder but I backed their sequel that raised over 2 million because I follow the Trese Bros and I backed their game.A much smaller title. But they crossed posted each others games and many fans backed both without ever playing a game from the other company. Rock Paper Shotgun covered the Trese Bros kickstarter and it generated huge buzz in the Indy scene they are only 2 bros after all. Yes it does take a lot of work to run a kickstarter but its rewards when done right are huge boons to the game.

Just think Football Manager gets over 100k users per day. I'm not even sure if OOTPb sold 25k copies. It is relatively unknown still especially in the larger gaming community.

OOTPb has almost zero youtube and twitch fan content creators. Quuill18 is doing a current series of Motosport Manager (yeah 4 years old) he is getting over 10k views per video and he is almost on episode 40. If you add up all the OOTPb videos ever and combined them, they probably don't have 10k views combined. Motorsport Manager in its prime had hundreds of thousands video views.

And video game content creators drive the consumer market. But no one knows about OOTPb. They split their user base between Steam and stand alone and bottom line it hurts sales numbers in terms of shear quantity. And those numbers are how many content creators pick which games to showcase.

A successful kickstarter campaign is the gift that keeps on giving when successful run. It continues to generate buzz and get attention from fans and online media.

I've never even heard of FOF and I'm a gamer. Dozens of new game each year. I only stumbled onto the forum because of OOTP.

In my opinion OOTP doesn't do a good job showcasing their work to the video game market. They go after sports fan who love the sport and are casual players. Maybe an OOTP game is the only game they have ever played. And now perfect team helps bring in the daily/weekly fantasy gamblers. But those segments don;t drive the market. Real gamers do and OOTP ignores that entire segment.

I now have zero faith in OOTPb ever improving as a video game and severely doubt any new "game" project they take on. FOF is a gigantic longshot at this point.

I also would help fund a speedier development of this game, either through a GoFundMe page or as a direct investment. Let me know how I can help. This game will be one-of-a-kind on the market, and I'm eager to get it out there! Thanks

I'm confused so school an old man. How would a gofundme page help here if what is needed is for the OOTP graphics team to modify their format around the FOF code? Markus still needs to release them so they can dedicate their time and energy. I don't think anyone thinks it's a manner of money slowing them down, more the resources are dedicated to other functions.

That is the number one problem. Unless and until Markus gives Jim the interface resources we'll be stuck in program development limbo.

Pretty sad.

So glad we have incremental changes in OOTP and a silly baseball card game instead of what was promised of a football game.

Jim would be better off abandoning OOTP and just giving his community % of the sales to work on the UI and design (we've seen some good mods). It may not be quite as good, but it would actually exist.

I've been getting back into the Wolverine games, particularly basketball. The basketball games are MUCH stronger than the football, in my opinion, probably due being a thing for a longer period of time, but it's getting me back into the football side of the house too.

I feel like Wolverine is the way to go, and I've pretty much fully accepted that. They have work to do on their forums and number of improvements to their current games post-release, but they just seem more reliable.

I dunno...I tried Wolverine pro football and while it has much that is good, it never quite 'captured' me the way FOF8 does.

I either need a management sim game to be as deep as football manager or as fun/entertaining as Motorsport Manager. If not it's a pass for me now. I don't even care what sport it is anymore as long as the game meets my standards then I'll learn the sport. I don't know 1 thing about European Football/US Soccer or the racing world. Didn't stop me from loving the games.

While the 4 major american sports are my favorites a lot of the sim/management games honestly just don't look fun or entertaining as video games. I can care less about setting up my own fictional or historical or all time great games. Or just lining up players to get results.

I've heard of the Wolverine games but I just don't know if they are fun. None of the American sports management games get any sort of creator content. They are non existent on youtube and twitch. Almost no one knows of them or covers them. The Wolverine games only look to have about 50 Steam users all time the daily count is a handful or 2.

Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2020 all time daily peak was 49 users. The game is $35. You can get a AAAA quality game or maybe a Tier 1 AAA game for that price.

Hey Jimmy. Recently, Wolverine's 14th anniversary sale was on, where all games were $14. I've played all their games, college & pro, and bought their Pro Football game on sale. It's a good game, if you don't expect it to be like OOTP21, which has spoiled us all.

Still work to do, but that always seems to be the case with any developer. And Gary and his team are always responsive, and seem to consider suggestions from their customer base.

And being an avid soccer fan(Manchester United-Premier League), and La Liga and Bundesliga, not the MLS, I've played the heck out of Football Manager, and also have Motorsports Manager as one of my many games on Steam. I'm all over the place with sim sports games, playing all four major sports in the US, as well as racing, horse racing, soccer, boxing, but I always find myself coming back(or never leaving), OOTP baseball. Just my two cents, which probably is only worth a penny.

Everything about this thread is frustrating.

The FOF community is just -aching- for a new installment. It really seemed like good news to get a development/marketing "team" behind a former solo developer who seemed like he would really benefit from that. Given where we are now (where is that again?) I'm not so sure any longer.

And for those of us who would be delighted to fiddle around with a different well-done football management sim... the alternatives are just...paltry. If you like Football Mogul at its skin-deep level, then it seems like there are lots of options to play games where a player's entire skill set is encapsulated in a set of ratings like 7-4-6-6. With no realistic cap management, gameplanning, career arc, etc. But, in a world where Football Manager (soccer) is a monstrous international industry, there is literally NO space for a second player to get in with a legitimately serious game like this? It's just jarring.

Alas...that's apparently where we are.

I think there could possibly be space for a second develop on the scene. But they would either need to be partnered with a pretty big publisher if not a AAA publisher then a big AAAA publisher. Paradox or say Deep Silver would be publishers that are in the AAAA world.

And even then a lot of the AAAA game titles still go through the entire Kickstarter process. I can't stress how important it is for modern games. It just generates so much buzz.

Or the game devs would need a really good PR firm. A small indy dev the Trese Bros, which is basically a 2 man shop, has a very good PR outsource firm. Their games get covered by all the Indy media. Of course they do Kickstarter. They even got to showcase their game off at the Kickstarter booth at the last Pax that happened right before covid shut everything down.

Most of these larger games also either use Steam exclusively or have jumped ship to Epic to ride that bandwagon. That depends on the publishing house.

Think about it the Kickstarter lasts the entire time the game is in development maybe 2 or 3 years for a smaller title. The publishers and PR along with Kickstarter try to create a steady wave of buzz that builds until release. Exclusive alpha, open betas then Early Access.

All of these mechanics helps push sales and since the majority is kickstarter the funds come up front to the devs. Then more up from once the game hits early access.

This is how the modern Indy game gets released these days. It does feel like OOTP is either not on board the modern video game bandwagon or maybe never was in the first place.

Look how good Motorsport Manager did. Small devs that only were in the mobile game area but they had Sega as their publisher.

FOF was probably the wrong game at the wrong time for OOTP. I remember posting on here in 2018. And then it was 2 years late. Now its like 4 years late.

I love what Markus has done at OOTP. He has taken my 41 year hobby to a place I never imagined. If he doesn't have time to do a football sim, I understand.

In that case, however, I wonder if he'd be willing to release Jim and allow him to partner up with a company like Wolverine Studios. Gary's game has just enough graphics to get things started, and his college and pro football games would greatly benefit from the depth of FOF's statistical/roster management engine. (Of course Jim and Gary would have to be on board with this, I'm just highlighting the idea that their are other enterprising game developers who might be able to give FOF the time and UI it deserves.)

Gary has a football guy already. That's how he was able to add football to WS games.

All I know is I've been waiting for 20+ years for a game to fill the Front Page Sports Football void and I'll probably go to my grave still waiting. My experience on sports forums over the past two decades would indicate that tons of people want a pro football game that treats the off-the field and on-the-field game with equal importance but no developer wants to make a game like that.

Correct, he basically did this already except with a different indie football game developer that was swallowed up by Wolverine.

This exactly! No game, sports or otherwise, has filled me with the excitement level and game time played than the FPS series. I wish to this day that someone somewhere would release the source code to that game so someone could pick it up and work on it (the 96//7/8 version, NOT the 99 version).

#freejim?

Is there specific reason to believe either side needs/wants a separation?

I too complement Markus on what he has done with OOTP - he has shown that a small studio can be wildly successful in this genre but I don't think it would have happened without a community that was willing to get behind a game they felt had potential and do whatever they could to help make it better.

Anyhow the only reason I popped in to comment here was that while I certainly think very highly of Jim and consider him a friend, I am very happy with the development job Brooks has done at Wolverine. Every year his games get better and PF21 is going to be amazing! We're working with the new interface platform and it already is incredible. You mentioned roster management and I know for a fact that is an area Brooks has told me he is making adjustments on based on feedback. That's one thing we really try to focus on - if someone has constructive feedback we're happy to listen and see how we can make it better. That is how the basketball games have come so far and why the football games are on the same trajectory.

I know Jim will make a great game here with OOTP but I think that the DDSPF series shows tremendous improvement every year and PF21 is going to be fantastic. It won't be FOF - it's not meant to be - but I think there is room to have two great football sims especially if each has its own strengths. In fact if you have any feedback to make it better now is the time as we are in the midst of coding it. This may not be the most appropriate place for it but join our forums or slack channel and get your wants in while we can do something about them!

My comment was mostly in jest, but to answer your question, I did read some frustration in Jim’s last post. Might well be wrong, but that’s what I took from it.