Sociable Soccer - Jon Hare - Kickstarter

[Dudley]

Well I thought 2 got a bit too strange with the alien planet stuff but I would definitely play and back a cannon fodder based on the original premise, I still think the control of the team and that view worked surprisingly well which hasn't been replicated since. I always thought a DS version with the stylus could have worked well.

What he's getting at, and I'm sorry to do this to you, is this.

[b00dles]

Oh. I totally blocked that out of my mind. [emoji38] sorry all, as you were.

[mushashi]

The £1 million budget was for Sensible Soccer 98 and even then Jon is being a little generous with the truth as they were given that budget as part of a three game deal which was Have A Nice Day, Sex Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll, and a new Sensible Soccer game. Most of that money got blown on SDRR and that was in years of development.

They even changed it to a six-game deal to keep GT Interactive sweet (who had inherited it after buying Time Warner who made the original contract). In the end, GT was only interested in releasing the three Sensible Soccer games that had been committed to in the new deal, eventually letting them off with just two of those. This is all documented here.

tl;dr He didn't make one game with £1 million.

I read your link, it seems to more back up his claim than not actually:

Anyway, we didn't want to sell our company, we wanted to do what the hell we wanted creatively and amazingly we got our way. Warner Interactive (who had recently bought Renegade, the publisher of Sensible Soccer), signed us up a three-game deal, with Sensible for Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll, Have A Nice Day and a new version of Sensible Soccer. This was a multi-million pound deal, which was almost unheard of in the UK at this time, and amazingly in its eagerness to sign up the new version of Sensible's perennial best-selling Soccer game, Warner had agreed to pay a seven-figure sum for Sensible's ultimate joke game: the over-indulgent fantasy with very British humour that was Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll.

I cannot tell you how much of a dream this was to me: over one million pounds to make my creative fantasy come true.

It wasn't just SDR that was struggling, it was the other two games too. Nearly all of our problems were related to 3D technology and a total absence of middle management in our company structure, a direct consequence of our inexperience of dealing with projects of this size. By this time, we had decided to turn the deal into a six-release strategy, splitting SDR into two releases and the new Sensible Soccer into three releases in an effort to appease GT and try to get something into the market as quickly as possible.

But also at about this time GT really started to turn the screw on us by refusing to pay us anything. It waited for us to crack, as month after month they paid us nothing. We were running a team of 23 people at the time and this went on for six months.

Most developers in our situation would have been forced to have conceded something, but we were kept afloat by our excessive royalties from Sensible World of Soccer and Cannon Fodder. So we continued to develop the game as we were contractually obliged to do so, and Chris and I were scared that if we suggested that we pulled some of the games from the deal that they would ask us for the money back as they had the right to do. So we just soldiered on and, luckily, we rode out the six months and GT agreed to pay us all of the money they owed us from those previous six months on the condition that SDR and Have A Nice Day were withdrawn from the deal and no future money would be payable on those games.

So John Hare actually got over £1 Million just to make that cancelled game, the initial 3 game deal was worth multiple £Millions. His dealings with GT interactive sound like an earlier version of Bethesda/ZeniMax, another American publisher happy to use dirty tricks to try to get their way over an indie dev (see Fallout: New Vegas or Prey 2 for proof of that)

What he's getting at, and I'm sorry to do this to you, is this.

John Hare covered that one in his Eurogamer interview to promote this crowdfunding game, the blame rests solely with the publisher's wish to pay the least amount possible and hire the cheapest devs possible, which sounds familiar. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

[K]

According to the Sensible Software 1986 - 1999 book, the deal with Warner was £3m for three games - Sensi 98, Have A Nice Day, and SD&RR.

[Timmo]

This is a great article about the cost of making an indie game and making money from it. A team of 4 had £100k (from a competition) to make a game over a year and a half. They were kids, though, I guess the cost of living is more for these guys.

http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures

[hat]

Despite some strong pushes this doesn't appear to have captured people's imagination.

[Fry Crayola]

A quarter of the way through, and it's not even a tenth of the total - it's going nowhere. I hope they rethink their approach and come back with something else, though.

[Dudley]

Yeah.

I agree though, at least part of the problem is there's no compelling reason to spend more than £12/15 on it.

[Fry Crayola]

Yep. I'd probably pay to be in the game, but not £250. Not when the whole "sociable" aspect of it involves me creating a player avatar who's in the game anyway. You could get creative with the limited rewards system and offer only 1500 striker places, 750 goalkeepers, 3500 defenders and 3500 midfielders. Maybe cheaper for the less glamourous positions, more to be a striker, but averaging out at a nice £30 means if you sold the lot you'd be on £277,500 before you know it. Sure, you've now got about 500 teams to create, but the players are a reduced workload and your game is virtually paid for because of it.

And it's sociable, too.

Fuck, if I ever do a football game Kickstarter I might do it myself.

[Lorfarius]

I still play Sensi/SWOS to this day. I'd have backed something better but this is just awful and for that sort of money I'd expect better. I've dropped loads on Kickstarters in the past but I won't give this a penny

[stefcha]

This is a great article about the cost of making an indie game and making money from it. A team of 4 had £100k (from a competition) to make a game over a year and a half. They were kids, though, I guess the cost of living is more for these guys.

http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures

That was interesting, wonder how much the eventual console versions added to things with respect to ultimate cost and return.

[Rev]

I still play Sensi/SWOS to this day. I'd have backed something better but this is just awful and for that sort of money I'd expect better. I've dropped loads on Kickstarters in the past but I won't give this a penny

The players don't look great, but the gameplay looks quite a lot like Sensi already.

[mushashi]

This is a great article about the cost of making an indie game and making money from it. A team of 4 had £100k (from a competition) to make a game over a year and a half. They were kids, though, I guess the cost of living is more for these guys.

http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures

There are plenty of other indie Kickstarter devs telling you how much it costs to make a game, and they spent more than those kids did, and they did it for far below what a professional publisher would budget. Essentially most people expect a developer to move back in with their parents or friends and live rent free and survive on value range products until the game is done to meet the budget they are prepared to fund, which sounds oh so attractive and sustainable to anybody having to feed a family and pay the mortgage/rent I'm sure.

[jonathanhoey]

I keep checking on the Kickstarter to see if it's made any good gains - sadly it really hasn't. It's at £29K now - not even 10% of goal.

Jon Hare has made an update blaming the Paris terror attacks for deflecting media attention from the game (he was scheduled to appear on Sky to promote it, but his interview was cancelled due to the breaking Paris news), which may be technically not incorrect but seems a bit crass.

Hopefully they rebook him in time for it to make a difference to the Kickstarter's fortunes, but I'm not optimistic.

Perhaps JH has a contingency plan for if this campaign doesn't get fully funded. Let's hope so.

[Timmo]

A couple of TV spots were never going to make up the other 90%.

I'm on a whatsapp group of footy chat. None are big gamers but they all played SWOS back in the day. One of them posted up that he'd seen about this remake and a couple of others got excited. I don't think any of them even know what kickstarter is, though. Be interesting to see if there's a contingency should this not go through. Betcha they make it anyway.

[Fry Crayola]

According to the Kickstarter comments linking to this interview (which I haven't listened to 'cos you can't skim read audio) the graphics are all currently placeholder art.

[jonathanhoey]

I didn't really notice anything wrong with the graphics in the initial video. To me the important thing's the movement of the ball, and that already looks like it should.

[Fry Crayola]

The graphics don't stand out to me, that's the problem. Sensi had a visual style that made it instantly identifiable - this doesn't. It looks functional, rather than anything else. That it's placeholder at least explains that.

Absolutely, it won't stop the game being fun, but it's nice to do it in style.

[Lorfarius]

Some more gameplay footage:

[Fry Crayola]

Yeah, caught that yesterday and my first thought was "why the fuck is this a video of an angled screen?".

Still, it looks fun. Just not £270k in 18 days fun.

[Fry Crayola]

The Kickstarter is getting cancelled but the game will still be made:

Dear Backer,

thank you very much for your support, you’re the reason we’re making this game in the first place.

Development is continuing full steam ahead but unfortunately the Kickstarter campaign will be closing within the next 12 hours. Don’t worry, Sociable Soccer is still happening and will be coming out in due course through traditional publishing channels. We’ll be posting regular updates, so please follow our progress on the Sociable Soccer Facebook page, Playstation Blog and in the games media.

We’re currently in the office, so if you have any questions feel free to reach out here on the Kickstarter page tonight.

Thank you for your continued support, we love you all.
Jon & Team

[Timmo]

To chumps,

Shame you couldn't cough up the cash for us to get an early payday, but we had enough to make it anyway, you pricks. Buy our game.

Thanks

Jon & Team

[Blu3Flame]

Seems strange to go ahead when the Kickstarter showed there wasn't a large enough market for their game.

[jonathanhoey]

I suspect there are a lot more than 1500 people interested in the game, but a lot of people are jaded/disillusioned with Kickstarter. Specifically because of Kickstarters for games that have independent funding anyway, I'd say.

I'm still going to buy it.

[Rev]

I'd guess that they're actually a lot further down the development path than they actually claimed to be and they're beyond the point of no return. Fingers crossed they don't make a massive loss I guess.

It does all feel a bit bollocks, mind.

[mushashi]

Or he wants to make the game that badly and hopefully for him and the other devs they found a publisher who isn't going to do a Codemasters on them for the IP rights and sharing of the potential returns.

A large part of the reason to go via crowdfunding is to allow independent developers to raise finance for a project without giving up IP rights so they can fully benefit if the game is a success, like I'm sure Obsidian wish they had, if the publisher hadn't fucked them over with the small print.

[PaB]

"reach out".

[Goose]

Kickstarter campaign has now been cancelled.

[Lorfarius]

Write up here

[SociableSoccer]

Hey guys!

 

I'm the community manager for Sociable Soccer and I'd like to invite you all to come and see the latest news, blog posts, clips and videos we got.

 

Our latest gameplay video comes from the office and is from the end of March.

 

Also follow us on FB if you'd like - https://www.facebook.com/sociablesoccer/