ESPN Videogames has posted a Q&A session with Rob Donald, Associate Producer of Backbreaker.
Jon: "What are the game modes we can expect to play?"
Rob: "Obviously we have the normal Exhibition games, then we also have two season modes which are very different. The first one we just call Season mode, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from a standard season where you take a team and insert them into a custom 8, 16, or 32 team league. Then basically you play your way through the season, it's multiple seasons, so you draft new players and do everything that you'd expect from a Season mode. You can also fill the slots of those teams in Season mode with the teams that we ship with, and we're shipping with over 60 teams. You can also create your own teams and fill the Season mode up with them. You can create 32 teams and put them all in a league against each other, whatever you want to do.
The other season mode is the mode where I see a lot of people spending the majority of their time, and that's Road to Backbreaker. This one is designed around a real sense of originality, and you owning your team and actually progressing your team and taking that team as far as you can. In Road to Backbreaker, you always start with a custom team, so you can start completely from scratch or you can take one of the existing teams, change the name and play around with it. This gives you the ability to do as little or as much customization as you want to do. Then you take that team and you start off in a lowly eight team league. The idea is that if you finish in the top three, you get promoted into a 16 team league then you keep trying to work your way up. It's not what people normally play in a football game, and I think this brings extra value. We're pretty excited about doing something different. In fact, we were kind of worried at first about adding promotion and relegation to the game because that is not something that is featured very heavily in North American sports leagues, but being a U.K. developer, we see the kind of drama this adds year in and year out. From a basketball standpoint, I'm a huge Raptors fan, but I end up every year hoping we tank down the stretch so we get a better draft pick. This never happens in leagues with promotion and relegation. You always have something to fight for, and that's what we want to bring to "Backbreaker."
Rob: "Obviously we have the normal Exhibition games, then we also have two season modes which are very different. The first one we just call Season mode, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from a standard season where you take a team and insert them into a custom 8, 16, or 32 team league. Then basically you play your way through the season, it's multiple seasons, so you draft new players and do everything that you'd expect from a Season mode. You can also fill the slots of those teams in Season mode with the teams that we ship with, and we're shipping with over 60 teams. You can also create your own teams and fill the Season mode up with them. You can create 32 teams and put them all in a league against each other, whatever you want to do.
The other season mode is the mode where I see a lot of people spending the majority of their time, and that's Road to Backbreaker. This one is designed around a real sense of originality, and you owning your team and actually progressing your team and taking that team as far as you can. In Road to Backbreaker, you always start with a custom team, so you can start completely from scratch or you can take one of the existing teams, change the name and play around with it. This gives you the ability to do as little or as much customization as you want to do. Then you take that team and you start off in a lowly eight team league. The idea is that if you finish in the top three, you get promoted into a 16 team league then you keep trying to work your way up. It's not what people normally play in a football game, and I think this brings extra value. We're pretty excited about doing something different. In fact, we were kind of worried at first about adding promotion and relegation to the game because that is not something that is featured very heavily in North American sports leagues, but being a U.K. developer, we see the kind of drama this adds year in and year out. From a basketball standpoint, I'm a huge Raptors fan, but I end up every year hoping we tank down the stretch so we get a better draft pick. This never happens in leagues with promotion and relegation. You always have something to fight for, and that's what we want to bring to "Backbreaker."
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