Hello everyone!
Yes, the time has come. We're doing a football game.
About 2 years ago we decided to expand our product line as Sebastian (our iOOTP programmer) introduced us to his buddy Malte and told us about their hockey game, which they had been developing in their spare time - Franchise Hockey Manager. Now, the game was released a few months ago, and apart from a few hiccups and lessens learned, FHM is a big success for our company.
Early in October 2013, Andreas and I discussed why we shouldn't try the same approach with the most popular sport in the US, football. I personally enjoy watching football games on TV, but my knowledge about the sport is far from good, so I wouldn't be able to develop a good football game. But, sometimes in life things just fall right into place, and a couple of days after Andreas and I had the conversation, we found out that a very nice and clever English chap named Francis Cole, who is a lifelong football fan who I've known from my days working for Sports Interactive in London, has been developing his own little football game for about a year. And after talking for a few days in October, Francis agreed to join Out of the Park Developments and develop a football game with us.
The game is called Beyond the Sideline Football. Trust me, it was quite a ride until the whole team managed to agree on a name. And this is it. We feel that it is a good match for our product lineup and "BTS" sounds like a pretty tasty sandwich (in Daniela's humble opinion), and what can possibly be wrong with tasty sandwiches?
BTS will be based on the complete OOTP code base, which means that the GUI of BTS will be very similar to OOTP and that it will have all the great technical functionality that we've developed for OOTP in the past (FaceGen, online leagues, HTML output, text engine, storylines, world database etc.) and which are tested & verified to work quite okay, I guess.
Obviously, football is a different game than baseball, so the game flow will be a different too. After all, the teams just play one game per week, so there has to be stuff to keep you busy on the 6 days that you are not playing. But we'll talk about all that once we reveal more info in the coming months.
There is no scheduled release date. We will release the game once we feel it is rock solid and has a good set of features. Francis already had an impressive football code foundation with an awesome 2D engine and saves plenty of time because he will use parts of the OOTP code, but still it's way too early to make a good estimate on how long this whole project will take.
I am really excited. We are now covering three major sports and have a tremendous foundation for many years to come. Out of the Park Developments has a bright future ahead and all its games and fans will benefit from that. So, tell all your friends about Beyond the Sideline Football, it'll be a fun ride!
I think I'll have a beer (or two) and a Bratwurst sandwich tonight
Cheers,
Markus