Re: *** Call to Action: New Sensible Soccer Game ***

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8 years 5 months ago #130353 by steviebwoy78
Hi guys,

I ve been thinking an awful lot about Sensible Soccer lately and, buoyed by the news that Dino Dini will soon be announcing a new Kick Off game, I wondered whether or not we should try and approach Codemasters to try and prise the Sensible license from them. Either that, or we could get on side with Jon Hare and put our weight behind him against Codemasters.

Looking at Jon Hare s Tweets at the start of the year, it looks like he was somewhat interested in a spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer. Any thoughts further than that, I do not know. Here s the Tweet I m referring to;
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I don t know whether Jon has thought about Kickstarter to fund a new game, or whether the feedback from his Tweets was such that he decided against it, but surely Kickstarter is a very low-risk way of assessing the demand for a new Sensible Soccer game?

It just strikes me that there *has* to be something we can do. You guys are an amazingly strong community. We all want a new Jon Hare football game, so I really think we should try with all our might to contact Codies to release the source code or even the Sensible Soccer name back to Jon. I sense that he s primed to do something, and I really do believe we need to send him a positive signal that the community is right behind him.

FIFA and PES are not the football games we are looking for - we want a new *FUN* football game, and maybe now the time is right for Sensible Soccer to rise again.

Would love to hear your thoughts; positivity encouraged! Let us not be defeated! :D!

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8 years 5 months ago #130361 by Playaveli
I m in constant dialogue with Jon.
After all, it s a matter of cash. You can quite rely on the following numbers.

To make it short: It would cost around 100.000 pounds for a new SWOS.
That includes:
- License from Codemasters (around 30.000 pounds in advance)
- development cost (around 50.000 pounds)
- creative director, promoter and validator -- Jon Hare (20.000 pounds)
- Distribution deal
- Extras

Income:
- Royalities from game sales, around 60-70%! (Codemasters will demand 30%)

Now you can calculate how many game downloads one would need to get the 100.000 pounds back in.


That s the reality.

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8 years 5 months ago #130364 by steviebwoy78
Replied by steviebwoy78 on topic Re: *** Call to Action: New Sensible Soccer Game ***
Those costs seem perfectly valid, Playaveli, but who s to say that we need to contact Codemasters? Why not call it Simple Soccer and have nothing to do with Codemasters at all? That way we don t have to worry about licensing the name back, or handing any royalties over to Codemasters.

In Jon s Tweet, he mentioned that the community could submit their own teams to the database. Thus, there wouldn t be a licensing issue since there aren t any officially licensed teams.

I think the key is that it doesn t have to be as big as SWOS. It can share the same scope as the original Sensible Soccer game. At least to begin with. Then, if it s successful, they can work up to a game like SWOS once they know they have a market.

We have to learn how to walk before we can run, but with a community like us behind him, Jon has a lot of people holding him up. Let s be positive, there are ways of making this happen, we just have to find them.

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8 years 5 months ago - 8 years 5 months ago #130365 by HairFU
I am not really into that marketing thing, but nowdays a lot of remakes or new versions of old games was fund by a kickstarter campaign. Is that no possibility?

For the Idea oft Simple Soccer , I think it is fine if you want to have a new fresh Soccer game. But if you want to have the complete same feeling in gameplay, then you need the code of the old SWOS game.

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8 years 5 months ago #130366 by lemonheadiv
I think Kickstarter would be a good idea even if 100.000 pounds is a relatively big sum to ask.
A lot depends on how well you can promote your campaign during the funding period. Maybe it would help to launch the campaign in the summer, around Euro 2016 (then again maybe not, who knows :) ).

How about rewriting the original code instead? I mean something like Cannonball, which is a rewrite of Out Run in C++: github.com/djyt/cannonball/wiki/Cannonball-Manual
This way we could have a proper version SWOS, eventually with a few enhancements such as online play (if that s possible) and widescreen, for modern systems. Even without any enhancement to the original game it would be like playing on Amiga, without any lag introduced by emulation.

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8 years 5 months ago - 8 years 5 months ago #130367 by Playaveli
@ stevie:
We need the license, in other words: The source code.

Why? SWOS gameplay, ball physics, and feel cannot be duplicated!
How many have tried? How many have failed? 100% fail rate...
It s a magic thing about it, not even Chris Chapman and Jon Hare can explain (quote from the Sensible Software book).


@HairFU:
Kickstarter is legally a pain in the arse. No option. Plus, the pressure and the expectations raised by it.

How about rewriting the original code instead? I mean something like Cannonball, which is a rewrite of Out Run in C++: github.com/djyt/cannonball/wiki/Cannonball-Manual
This way we could have a proper version SWOS, eventually with a few enhancements such as online play (if that s possible) and widescreen, for modern systems. Even without any enhancement to the original game it would be like playing on Amiga, without any lag introduced by emulation.


This is in the making, by Zlatko Karakas (check PC forum, about online play).
Means: Perhaps we don t have to worry about money and Codemasters, at all.

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8 years 5 months ago - 8 years 5 months ago #130369 by steviebwoy78
Replied by steviebwoy78 on topic Re: *** Call to Action: New Sensible Soccer Game ***
I don t know man, do we *really* need the Sensible Soccer source code? I think SS06 was a fairly good attempt at re-capturing the magic. I know it was very different from Sensible Soccer, but at the core of it was a really good football game. It was buggy as hell, really rushed and the lack of licenses really hurt it but again, it was a good football game. What I m saying here, is that it s possible to make a good football game from scratch.

You re right that not many games have captured that magic Playa, but they haven t had Jon Hare on board.

I genuinely think that if Jon Hare launched a Kickstarter for a new Simple Soccer (or something else!), it really would work. I m not saying that he could retire as a millionaire, but we would at the very least have a spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer.

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8 years 5 months ago #130373 by Playaveli
Jon has rather rejected or dismissed Kickstarter. He does not want that. (reasons delivered above already)

Sensi 06, in my eyes, was no attempt to re-capture anything. It was an attempt to cash in on the World Cup 2006 with as less effort and expense as anyhow possible.

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8 years 5 months ago #130374 by Redhair
Not sure about the source code. However, Sensi 06 failed, just like Sensi 98, so having Jon Hare involved is not enough. So, we need a programmer who is understanding the gameplay of SWOS ECE and 96/97 and is able to reproduce the right feeling which is the most important thing at all, otherwise it will be unworthy again. Yes, no one was able to do that yet but impossible is nothing.

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8 years 5 months ago #130376 by lemonheadiv

How about rewriting the original code instead? I mean something like Cannonball, which is a rewrite of Out Run in C++: github.com/djyt/cannonball/wiki/Cannonball-Manual
This way we could have a proper version SWOS, eventually with a few enhancements such as online play (if that s possible) and widescreen, for modern systems. Even without any enhancement to the original game it would be like playing on Amiga, without any lag introduced by emulation.


This is in the making, by Zlatko Karakas (check PC forum, about online play).
Means: Perhaps we don t have to worry about money and Codemasters, at all.


I read about that and that s great but you re talking about the PC version, aren t you?
I was talking about a rewriting of the original version, the Amiga one.

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