Good news!
 

Hey guys, good news! I got sick of all the speculation and messaged Marcus himself and he said the game is still in development and an update is coming soon! So let's have faith!!!

I think a chat between Markus and Jim who makes Front Office Football would be good. The last update from Jim on their forum seemed to suggest he was trying to find a better way to develop the interface and that at the moment he was struggling to update his game or there might not be more versions.

FOF with the OOTP interface and facegen would be an incredible game. I have bought a few versions of FOF and love the game but hate that flipping interface.

http://www.solecismic.com/frontierbl.../brief-update/

I'm really hoping this means some solid progress on the game and maybe a sneak peak at some screenshots or something. From my watching of this forum since the announcement of the game, this has been a patient and dedicated group of people supporting OOTP in their efforts to produce this. Which brings me hope that they might give us something in return. Fingers are crossed here

The post is now gone, but I did find it on Google cached. Stating that the interface may be a cause for his lack of new customers is likely accurate. I have loved FOF since DAY ONE and had high hopes for a new current gen interface for it. But it still looks like the game I bought on DAY ONE all those years ago.

To see Jim and OOTP come together would be so great. The product is there is already solid and adding all the bells and whistles of an OOTP interface would probably bring in new people in droves.

I bought it but never really play it. The learning curve on where everything is is pretty steep. I can believe the interface issue keeps people away.

I would have to agree that there is a real need in this space. I think having 40,000 views (exactly 38,392) on the BTS Football preview page alone ( http://gmgames.org/beyond-the-sideline-football-bts/ ) is a solid indicator that the game will sell well.

But to be honest, if the first impressions don't go well, even though sales will, it'll be a steep road to winning back confidence.

If OOTP needs time, then let them.

We've been covering sports manager games for 6+ years on the GM Games site and not once did Jim ever reply to an email from me or reach out to me. We cover him but he's never made contact.

I think for Jim to blame the UI is not the only need over at Solecismic. He needs a vibrant social media team, a modern forum and the things Brad Cook brought by connecting the business to customers.

Jim does need user experience, graphics and UI upgrades but he also needs to put a little more work in to get the word out. If he isn't aware how, find someone who will.

The UI for FOF is outdated but it's far from the only reason I don't play that game. FOF is neat if you want to play a single team as a GM in a modern-looking league or if you want to be a part of a PBEM league, and that's pretty much it. There's just zero customizeability the way there is with OOTP or FM or even the Wolverine Studios suite of games. You can import real rosters or you can use (pregen) fake players and... that's really about it. There's also very little depth to the game outside of the stuff that directly impacts your being a GM. Coaching, frankly, is kind of a joke - the game replaces AI and a strong knowledge of how to counteract football strategies with "the defense seems familiar with this play", and, weirdly, I think that Football Mogul's coaching system is actually more robust. The worst thing about this is that Jim Gindin's been making this game since the late 1990s - even at one point getting a bit of a financial boost from EA (I think they were going to include FOF in one of the versions of Madden in the early 2000s) and, time or no time, a lot of this stuff could have and should have been expanded upon. But it never did and in some ways the first couple iterations were actually *more* customizeable (forex you could expand the league) than the current one.

I have high hopes for BTS, and while I'm OK with the notion that not everything that I want in a game is going to be there in the first go-round, I also think there comes a time when you just have to say "ok, this game does what this guy wants it to do and that's just not what I want".

This x 1,000.

I've long thought that OOTP/FOF would be a perfect pairing. OOTPD wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel to try to create a brand new football sim to compete with a game that has been in development for years... and FOF could get a huge push in areas where it is especially weak: PR/marketing, UI, customization. I'm almost certain whatever percentage of sales Jim would have to give up to OOTPD would be more than made up for by the fact that he'd have a team of people working to improve the game, get the word out and promote it once out.

NoI'm sure I'll get bashed for saying this (to me a Truth/Fact) by the long-timer FOF Central crowd, but it is my personal belief that Jim is a bit too arrogant and stubborn to allow anyone else touch his creation. Jim's sim engine is top notch, no doubt about that, but FOF is "Jim's game" and you aren't going to tell him yes or no in regards to what he should or shouldn't do with his Franchise game. I bought FOF 8 and in my own absent thinking, I had really thought that the UI and customization features were finally going to be introduced to some extent, but boy was I wrong. Unless Jim makes some serious and much needed changes, I will never purchase another one of his FOF games again. Not only because of the UI, but because of the arrogant vibe I get from his posts. He caters to a select few and I'm telling you, that isn't going to work for him anymore because most text/management type gamers are tired of buying a product that hasn't made the nessesary changes. You take what Markus has done in the time he's been developing sports sims (OOTP) vs what Jim has done in the sametime frame and it's damn amazing what Markus has been able to accomplish - developing an American sports game WHILE IN EUROPE!! Lol...

*off rant

I just said the same thing over on the FOF forums.

I will say that the fact that they kept all of their currently active games in blue up at the top of the screen and they colored BTS the same color as Title Bout Boxing which has died does not make me feel very secure...

It is not just Jim who is arrogant, it is many on the FOFC forums as well. You should see the distain many of them exude for:

1. OOTP
2. Anyone with differing views than their own.

Sounds like I will be playing FPS 97 one more time this fall.

Or maybe because the news in blue are recent -- they are all about the games that were updated in the last year, and the news in white are old. It says nothing about the status of the games in white.

This blue color signifies not a status of games but the links to the news. So until there will be news about BTS, the old link will be white. But there will be no news until developers are ready, and nobody knows when they will be ready, besides God and themselves. So put that handkerchief away.

Totally Agree.
And I thought I was the only one to feel this way...lol,,,,

It's unfortunate about FOF.

It has been the best American Football text sim on the market for the last what, 10 years? At any period during that time, including even now, Jim could take that franchise, develop the hell out of it, maybe bring on some help, and run away with that genre in the same way that OOTP has run away with Baseball and Football Manager has run away with soccer. No competitor seriously expects to catch those two franchises anymore.

But FOF won't be one of those stories. Jim hasn't put in that kind of time, and it looks like he won't in the future. He's kept everything pretty much the same and it doesn't seem like he's got much passion for it anymore to me. In a couple of years, some other developer is going to surpass him, FOF will gradually peter out, and Jim will have missed out on a big chance to make a real career out of being an indy game developer.

It reminds me of Baseball Mogul, which was once the leader in text-based baseball, and Ancient Domains of Mystery, which was once the leader in Roguelike Role playing games (Thomas Biskup, the ADOM dev, was viewed almost like a God in his heyday). I'm not a dev of that level and I don't know what the financial situations of those devs are like... maybe they don't need the money and don't care about the recognition. But unless they're millionaires and doing what they love, they have got to be, or will be, kicking themselves for letting their opportunities slip away.

I just checked out Ancient Domains of Mystery and wow, it appears to me that this game was head of its time. I love RPGs and I'm surprised I totally missed that game.

Back to your post...

You posted -
"It has been the best American Football text sim on the market for the last what, 10 years? At any period during that time, including even now, Jim could take that franchise, develop the hell out of it, maybe bring on some help, and run away with that genre in the same way that OOTP has run away with Baseball and Football Manager has run away with soccer. No competitor seriously expects to catch those two franchises anymore."

I totally agree and I don't want to turn this thread into as a "let's bash Jim" thread, but what I will say is what you posted right there (esp the underlined part), IN MY OPINION, is where Pride got in the way and he just couldn't let anyone touch his baby/creation. I guess, in a way, you can't blame him; it IS HIS game/creation. If he doesn't want a better, much more dynamic and immersive American Football sim, he doesn't have to. He choose the Path he has walked with FOF. And yes, FOF will go down in PC 'txt'/sports management games as one of the best all-time. If not the entire length of its run, at least the first 4 or 5 editions it will. Towards the end (if it's truly the end for FOF with FOF 8), Front Office Football, while maintaining a great sim engine in regards to stats and in-game plays, etc., it's fallen flat and has become nothing more than a repeats of previous years - which isn't good news for those who prefer a Dynamic and/or Immersive style of gameplay. And NO.....I am NOT referring to 'Madden NFL' style graphics when I speak of or mention "Dynamic and Immersive" style of game; I could give two craps about that. 'OOTP Style' of Game and its UI' does me JUST FINE!!! ;) :) :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: