Re: Sociable Soccer - Jon Hare's new football game is on KICKSTARTER!

At times like these...I need to get a credit card

Very very interesting. Hope he ll make it.

Why go with Kickstarter then? Haven t you tried to get a Sensible Soccer game off the ground?

Jon Hare: Sensible Soccer is owned by Codemasters and it has been since 1999.

Yeah, I know. Did you not have a chat with them about doing a new one?

Jon Hare: I ve had chats with them, but they ve never offered me reasonable licensing conditions. I ve been talking to them for 10 years about it. It s just not worth my while.

You saw what happened with Cannon Fodder on PC. I offered to do a Cannon Fodder before that deal was done, and they said they didn t want to do the deal with me because they could get a much better licensing deal with another developer and they made that instead.

When you say a much better deal, are we dancing around the fact they went for the cheap option?

Jon Hare: Yep. I wanted a decent percentage because, why not? And because I could do a better job. They said they could get a better deal with another company. Well, you saw what they did.
When you saw that game, how did it make you feel?

Jon Hare: I was glad I had nothing to do with it. That s it.

My point is, Codemasters is entitled to do what they like with Sensible Soccer. It s their license now. I understand why people associate me with it, because I designed it. But I can t control that license any more. And I ve not been able to for 16 years. So, I think now is the time to say, okay, I made Microprose Soccer. That was the best football game on Commodore 64. I made Sensible Soccer and Sensible World of Soccer. They were the best football games on Amiga certainly, Atari ST maybe, Mega Drive for a time. It s time to do it again with a digital game. Just set up a new franchise and go from scratch.

Best part of that interview is that he stated he wants to do a franchise. So make sure something works and then build from there. Sounds Sensible...uhh...Socialble

Although Sensible Soccer is a great game, and a lot of people say, we just want SWOS totally converted to now, which a lot of the old SWOS fans will say, the point is, that s 20 years old and it won t be as good as you think it will be. There are things that don t work, because we didn t design it to work for modern technologies and modern online systems. So although it sounds nice in theory, it won t work.

Won t work? I disagree, and I am very disappointed.

Reason: Look at what Zlatko did to PC SWOS, without ANY source code...
Come on, what could be done with the Amiga source code?

Same old story, again and again... :-\

The biggest challenge for us is getting the online multiplayer to work fast enough. That s going to take up most of our time once we ve got the game playing well on one machine, which I would suggest we re 50 per cent of the way there with that. Getting the online multiplayer to work is the biggest challenge for this, and it s the biggest difference to something like Sensible Soccer, or SWOS, which has never been able to offer that.

No comment! :-X

As hardcore fans and experienced players of the original game I think we would be more than happy with an Amiga SWOS for modern machines with in-built online capability (hopefully as good as the simple but effective Kaillera) and a few optional tweaks.
I d be fine with the Amiga graphics which in my opinion could just benefit from more colors and a larger visiblie portion of the pitch thanks to an hd-like resolution.

Anyway, as we said in another thread, it s clear that Jon wants to do something different and new although reminiscent of Sensible Soccer/SWOS, which is totally fine...and who knows, they could do a very good job on this one (remember that what has been shown it s early prototype footage )...it s just that it s not what most of us would ask for, or so I think.

Some quotes from the last Eurogamer interview are indeed disappointing, to say the least, as Playaveli just said.

Although Sensible Soccer is a great game, and a lot of people say, we just want SWOS totally converted to now, which a lot of the old SWOS fans will say, the point is, that s 20 years old and it won t be as good as you think it will be. There are things that don t work, because we didn t design it to work for modern technologies and modern online systems. So although it sounds nice in theory, it won t work.

The game is 20 years old and is as good and even better than we thought it would be. The online community gave it a whole new dimension as players from all over Europe had the chance to refine their skills and develop various playing styles thus improving the level of competition and highlighting the outstanding qualities of this game.

The biggest challenge for us is getting the online multiplayer to work fast enough. That s going to take up most of our time once we ve got the game playing well on one machine, which I would suggest we re 50 per cent of the way there with that. Getting the online multiplayer to work is the biggest challenge for this, and it s the biggest difference to something like Sensible Soccer, or SWOS, which has never been able to offer that.

Ehm...well, that was before Kaillera.