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

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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.