"I played the original Football Mogul and then this new version and the differences are few and far between."
Just so my head doesn't explode, I'm posting the list of new features. I know what you mean -- the features added are subtle for people who already had FB Mogul 1.
- Updated rosters and stats for 2002 opening day rosters
- Real 2002 schedule, plus realistic schedules for 2003 and beyond
- Contract Negotiations and Contract Extensions
- "Trading Block" for shopping unwanted players
- New stats and ratings for Offensive Linemen, including sacks allowed
- Blocking ratings for Running Backs, Tight Ends and Wide Receivers
- Improved interface including resizable window, and full screen option
- Improved League Editor
- Year-by-year stats recorded for every player
- Complete college careers shown for every draft pick (and displayed throughout a player's career)
- Fantasy Draft: Start the game with a Fantasy Draft or declare one in the middle of a season. It's your choice!
- Random Players: Choose to create a league of entirely fictional players. Can you build a team without any preconceptions of today's players?
- Shuffle Players: Keep the real players but shuffle the teams and see how you do.
- Draft Screen: Tracks every draft pick in every round of every year. Player records also track draft pick round, year and team.
- Team History: Records up to 100 consecutive years of play, with both on-the-field and financial stats recorded.
- Import Stats: Use a text or spreadsheet editor to create your own players and league. Or import stats from any historical season.
- Contracts Dialog: Shows all player contracts in one place for easy roster and salary cap management."
No, it didn't take us 7 years to get Football from there to here! If Clay had spent 7 years just working on football, all the other baseball sku's wouldn't exist, and we'd be broke and living in a 1986 Nissan Sentra.We've spent much of the 4 years (we released FB in 1998) between then and now doing baseball, and we only had 1 programmer for most of that time. Clay's the only sports programmer in the company.
So, we haven't devoted as much time to football in that four years. But, we did add a lot of necessary improvements, and now we can go even farther. I personally especially like the scaling windows thingie. (Since I don't know about football, and I do understand things like "Window BIG! Window small..."
But, I think you're right in thinking that this release was not specifically targetted to the owner of the previous FB Mogul version. Here's our thinking:
Football Mogul itself isn't really available anywhere these days (beyond maybe Ebay). So, for people who haven't played FB1, this is a chance for them to get an improved product when they may never have tried any Mogul Football product at all. So, our thinking on that score didn't revolve around the players who already had FBMogul, which is definitely playing into your dissapointment there. (But hey -- Some other companies do release just roster updates as whole new sports products...!) At least we got the foundation rebuilt on the game, and lowered the price from the first version. And, we give the demo so folks who won't enjoy this game won't buy it just to find out it's not the game they wanted.
I know this isn't the game you wanted -- and I'm really sorry that it isn't. When we get the right funding, the right opportunity, and Clay can focus, we still want to get a more perfect Football Mogul out there. This is a much stronger foundation for whatever next Football Mogul release Clay can do.
We hear you. We want to add headlines, and a view screen so you can watch the game (much trickier than for baseball, where it's just lights on the basepath... we'll have to get really clever with that, but I'm looking forward to it. Little animated football guys will be fun to do...)
-Dee
