SI / OOTP part ways
 

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=154647

not exactly a huge shocker.

Nope, I'm not surprised in the least.

I helped out with the beta testing with the last OOTP release. I enjoyed the experience, but the idea of putting OOTP into a FM-style interface just didn't work for me. Seemed like a square peg in a round hole situation. Hopefully Markus and his crew can get back up and running with a new interface.

Please put a good MLB roster file (with or without messed up names) in OOTP 9 kthx.

Man, the amount of stuff that happens in this small market boggles my mind at times. And it's because all of it happen in a small time frame. It wasn't that long ago that they joined forces.

AS LONG AS I CAN STILL SCOUT IN BELGIUM I THINK THIS WILL BE OKAY FOR ALL OF US!

I know. It's really crazy.

And I hope I can still run a 24 team Madagascar league;)
All joking aside I am happy to here this and hope that Markus goes and gets away from the SI FM interface.

best of luck to both. I think it was just a marriage that didn't fit.

hopefully this foreshadows SI having some space for another game in their stable...like say....a combination college/nfl American football style game. You know, I think there's a developer who could do a really great job with something like that...

Westside Football Manager ?

no, i hope this doesn't ever happen. SI has a lot of great guys, but they should just stick to making soccer games. they don't have the ability to take an American sport/league and implement it well. even MLS in their FM series feels like it was tacked on for us pesky americans who want to play an inferior form of soccer.

jim just needs to add more people to his staff. his way and SI's way just won't work. we'd be going from not enough of an interface to the goliath that is SI's interface. and no one cares about European football. for SI to spend their time on these horrible minor leagues would be a waste of their resources. just let it go. jim will get it right on his own. just needs people who have a flair for eye-candy and design.

Daivd?

Hopefully this'll mean a return to an interface more like OOTP 6.5's.

so, can we start the Jim to SI rumors now?

I agree with this 100%. And is exactly how I felt after laboring through OOTP07.

They ended developement on EHM and cut ties with OOTP. Obviously going the multi-sport route hurt their business in some way. Either financially, management wise, or some other reason. Something caused it to just not work for them, so I think this is exactly what SI will do. Just get back to doing soccer and only soccer.

I'm sure they have the ability, I think the problem would be that they don't have the desire. From the beginning SI have been staffed by people who love soccer. It's part of what makes FM so great. In fact, I think Marc himself has mentioned this at some point.

For SI to do an American football sim with the same success as FM, they'd need to bring people on board who a) loved American football and b) intrinsically understood the nuances that would need to be coded to make it work. (PM me for contact info, Marc. ;) )



This is more due to MLS being screwy than SI not caring about it, I think.


This is probably true.


Do you mean European soccer, or the now-defunct NFL Europe? If the former, then :rolleyes:


I'll guess that what happened is this: SI saw some like-minded sim developers working on other sports they felt could benefit from access to SI's greater resources, and so brought them into the fold. What SI found out, however, is that their ability to bring resources to bear on the "new" games was limited by their own staff's interest in those sports, which wasn't as high as soccer. In the end neither collaboration was as mutually beneficial as had been previously hoped.

But also bear in mind that I believe part of the reason EHM "ended" was due to the whole piracy thing resulting in a lack of revenue.

Partnering with SI was a bad idea from the beginning. I'm glad to see this.

One major difference between OOTP and FM is that OOTP is highly customizable in its league structure, whereas FM is as rigid as it gets. From a realism standpoint, it is much easier to develop accurate results against a known structure than is it trying to adjust all of your algorithims and calculations to various league structures.

sorry flere, should have clarified - football in Europe.

NFL just doesn't lend itself to having all these feeder leagues. we want our players being staffed from the college ranks or at worst the CFL/Arena League (even then those people at some point came from college ball) - this is not baseball where you have hot stud foreign free agents from Japan or Latin America. we just don't care about minor football leagues, which is exactly what SI would try to do to a FOF product. they'd SI-ize it so that we would have to scout the Scandinavian Office Workers League or some other boring/miniscule foreign entity and that's just not how football in America works.

so instead of putting resources towards the aspects that would enhance the FOF experience they'd work on including these minor leagues to appeal to their international customers, but football is the one sport where there is extremely little, if any, international influence. what makes FM a great game would not correspond to what makes FOF a great game. FM's style works cuz soccer is a "world game". NFL (american football) is USA's baby.

Thanks for the clarification, HA.


I see where you're coming from, but honestly I'd be surprised if they did it this way. They're reasonably intelligent people, after all.

But it's a moot point since I don't see SI doing an NFL game without bringing in a lot of NFL fans to their staff.

Sorry to hear from Markus's standpoint, but I really agree that this could be a good thing. I bought the first SI/OOTP release, but couldn't force myself to buy the second. Meanwhile, I still play OOTP 6.5 on a daily basis and would love to see a return to form.

No offense to SI, but I agree with this.

I thought this year's release was light-years better than last year's, but after the beta, I can't say I'm all that surprised.

I'm kinda happy that they worked together, because this year's version works well in so many ways. So it'll be almost like, when OOTP9 comes out, that we'll have 2 different games. And to me, that's 2 more baseball games than I'd otherwise have. So I'm cool with it.

So this means Sega's killed two SI titles?

It all came down to sales. No game sells like Soccer in the text sim world.

I actually liked the interface of this OOTP baseball. It was by far the best version ever made IMO.

Football Manager 2007 sold over 90,000 copies in the first week after release in the UK alone. The only PC games ever to better those figures are FM2006 and CM4.

I expect that FM 2007s worldwide sales in the first week of release are higher than the total number of OOTP sales over the last 8 years or so.

Gratuitous "Jim should do a baseball sim" post...

;)

Dola, and CraigSca should finish his...

Fixed.

OOTP wasn't an SI title, technically speaking. Markus is still making OOTP.

whs

I don't understand the criticism of OOTP's interface I read often on this board. There's a lot of information out there and usually only two or three clicks away.

I call it the spreadsheet addiction. If it isn't just a plain looking spreadsheet these guys don't like it.

Agreed.

The SI versions of OOTP were absolute trash as far as I was concerned, and that was mainly because of the horrific interface. It made FOF look like a work of art.

I haven't bought the most recent OOTP title, but I do own all the others back to v1. The interface in v2006 was just awful, it was like a step back to the first release, and it was sad to see OOTP take such a huge step backwards in a department they use to get hammered on. That being said, I've felt all the versions after 6 were awful. I'm hoping the latest one is better.

PS: Does this mean next year's version will have H2H???? Hahahaha jk.

Has anyone got Joe Stallings opinion on this? Just curious.

Bull. The SI interface is one of the best things that happened to the game. If nothing else, future versions of the game will be enhanced by this experience, because even with the bugs or the penchant for trying to do "everything", the game has grown leaps and bounds from where it was before.

I can understand that it's a fundamentally different game from say, 6.5 to now, but people who haven't played it or just have a strong preference for the old one, aren't ever going to come around no matter what you do.

I think it's overly complex, sure. But...this is hands down the most functional version of the game and rife with the most customization.

It'll be smart for them to go back to the drawing board and appease the folks who were alienated with the past two versions, but I don't think the playability of this latest release will be diminished by any stretch.

Sorry, you lost me with that statement.

Sure, interfaces are always a personal preference, but I don't think that even SI fanboys would say that the best thing about the new game is the interface.

Sorry, that just blew my mind.

Just my opinion but the best idea for ootp 9 is go with a simple design as far as interface and especially customization. OOTP 07 tried to be too many things for too mant people. Have major league baseball with the full minor leagues and allow some "major" international leagues e.g Dominican, Cuban, Venezuela, Japan, Korea and maybe one or two others. Down the road throw in all the obscure legaues both in the US and internationally. Th e other big problem was just starting up the current version and setting up a league is simple but at the same time confusing. There is like 4 ways to make the same league it seems. Just have a straight one way linear interface leading you into the game.

Yes.

My vote is to use the v5 interface, v6.5 engine and v2007 openness.

I love the interface in the latest version and I'm by no means an SI fanboy (I played one version of FM nearly 5 years ago and haven't played the game since). Everything you could possibly want is a couple clicks away which is no small feat in a game that big. The biggest problems with the game right now are engine problems that need to be tweaked.

IMO, a lot of the problems with OOTP could be solved by shipping the game with real players and having several league templates that people can quickly choose. A full MLB, a classic OOTP (MLB with 3 levels of minors), and some variation on league sizes for those that want to go the fictional route.

The last thing OOTP needs right now is a huge list of new features. Markus needs to get real MLB rosters in the game, focus on steamlining the interface a bit more, and make necessary engine tweaks. Thats it.

I loved v2007, but if the game ships with a massive list of new featues and the same problems it will be the last version I consider.

I think this is a good thing for OOTP. Markus walks away with the code and will continue to make the game. He is rid of SEGA and their lawyers making him a small target without deep pockets for MLB to think about. I think this will open the door for him to use real players like Jim in FOF. If not that at least a return to the days of real players with fictional names that can be edited in short order.

I've never played any FM, and have played ootp 5 and 6 (but not 6.5), and 2007. I absolutely love 2007's interface and depth. I've probably spent as much time playing it this year as I have FOF, and thats saying something.

I do not regret joining SI one bit, I have learned so much and OOTP 2007 is at a level that I couldn't have reached without the help of SI.

Anyway, next years version will be called OOTP 9, as we go back to our previous naming convention. And it will definitely NOT use any OOTP 6.5 code/interface. We own the complete OOTP 2007 code, and we will continue building on top of that, so the interface system will stay the same, but of course we'll always try to make it easier to use.

Thanks to SI, it was a pleasure working with them :)

Oh, and we'll have some more interesting news the next few days ;)

Cheers,
Markus

ITP2? Please make my dreams come true :D

Well, I guess for those such as myself that never really got around the change to the FM interface we will have to see how much improvemnet is made as to ease of use in the interface since as Markus stated above it isn't going away.

Interfaces are definitely personal. I think it's more a case of where one begins when playing a genre than anything else. I started playing text sims with the CM/FM series and then started playing OOTP at 6.5. Some may find this hard to believe, but I had to put it down as I found myself clicking far too many times. I skipped '06 and bought '07 and find everything easy to find. It seems we just tend to like what we grow up with when it comes to interfaces.

I'm sure there will be other things that bug me, but the two must haves for me to buy OOTP 9 will be some sort of MLB rosters out of the box and a much streamlined MLB league setup. I'm exclusively single player and all of the options just got in my way.

The challenge for Markus, outside of the engine, is to find a way to provide the options to those that want them while also providing a simple one click setup for those of us that don't.

JPhillips hit it on the nose for me. I bought the latest game but probably played it for only a few hours. The tedium of starting a game and no rosters really hurt. I really like the X Factor that is present in FOF2007.