With Sensible Soccer back in the charts after nearly ten years it seemed only right to have a chat with creator Jon Hare, who was heavily involved in the remake. Powdery PR puff and banal comments about how great the game is? Not a bit of it. Unambitious publishers, mobile gaming being rubbish and Subbuteo's relationship to Sensible Soccer are just some of the areas covered.
What do you think today's games industry could learn from the era when you started?
Publishers who took a chance on young talent - like Ocean - are sorely missed. They were run by entrepreneurs and were ready to take a gamble. There weren't shareholders sitting on top of directors sitting on top of middle managers, all having to justify their hefty salaries. It was just let's give it a go and see if we can make a success of this. Publishers weren't faceless corporations back then. Today's publishers lack the ambition to try something new and are scared of taking a gamble.
Can you explain the thinking behind the remake of Sensi?
Our company sold the rights to Codemasters about seven years ago. Initially I was working on a new Cannon Fodder game which never saw the light of day. I did a large amount of design work on it. But basically I've been waiting for Sensible Soccer for 7 years.
I guess Codemasters thought now was the right time. They are beginning to revisit their older licenses likes Micro Machines. The time is also right in the football market. Both PES and FIFA are in at least their 5th iteration and have been knocking around for donkey's years. They are not going anywhere and are digging their own hole. You can't change very much in either of those games. Codemasters saw the chance to bring out something different to the football market. Six of seven years ago this wouldn't have worked. People would have said what are you doing, you've changed it too much. But now people remember Sensible Soccer as an idea or a feel, which is exactly how it should be. Of course, there are still some diehards who continue to play SWOS 96/97. There's a German website with about 3000 players still playing and that's absolutely fantastic. But they look at the new game and are comparing it to SWOS when it was never meant to be a new SWOS. I'm very proud that those guys still play though.
I grew up in the 70s and Subbeteo was my favourite game at home. For me to have made Sensible Soccer, which for four of five years in the 90s was to thousands of people what Subbuteo was to me in the 70s, is as good as it gets work-wise. I was very likely to have been able to do that and am very proud of the legacy. We were the fist game to have black players in; we had 1500 teams, 26,000 players. That all came after being a Subbuteo fan as a kid. All Sensible Soccer was to me was an electronic version of Subbuteo.
What was your involvement in the remake?
My role was creative director of the game. I worked with a junior designer at Codemasters and also David Darling. We spent a lot of time looking at the old Sensible Soccer and analysing how we could make the new one emulate the older games. I was involved in the competition and unlocking structure and all the other things that help make the larger product. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot that I wanted that we couldn't get in. I was also dealing with the legal side and other areas.
Nowadays a lot of games designers come from QA and don't get the exposure to the wider areas in the business. There is a huge dearth of games design companies because they haven't been given enough respect or power. The best companies are now starting to use a creative director and producer who can manage the project effectively. It's been an interesting experience working on this first one and the main aim has been to get Sensible Soccer back out there. When we do the second one we will add in what people want. I know what people want. They want handheld, online, SWOS style management with all the teams in the world. So do I. But we can't do all this in one hit. We have to do it bit by bit. It will probably take two or three iterations before we get everything we want. Whether this happens or whether I'm involved with it, I can't control, but hopefully the sales and feedback will make it happen.
Assuming Sensi is your pride and joy which other of your games are you most proud of and why?
In terms of respect from the industry and creating something that lots of people enjoyed then yes, Sensible Soccer is the game. Sensible Soccer is an iconic game and it is my legacy. But at heart I'm an artist so games like Wizkid, Wizball and Mega-lo-mania are ones I'm very proud of. These are what I call the out there games. In the last ten years these kind of out-there games have stopped being made. I'm waiting and hoping that these kinds of games will be made again.
Aren't mobile or handheld supposed to offer the creative freedom to create these styles of game?
Mobile games are the most licence driven pile of shit you've ever seen. You can't sell a mobile game unless it has a license attached. Mobile is the worst format for gaming. The DS and PSP have far more potential. The PC, certainly in online gaming. already offers original games. Live Arcade? It's all about getting money out of them. I hope some younger companies, like we were in the 80s, will come through and be able to earn enough money to make their mark. I see it happening more in other countries than the UK.
What are the possibilities of a "Retro Sensible" compilation release? SWOS, Cannon Fodder + Mega Lo Mania altogether on 1 disc...or maybe even for psp/ds?
The recent compilation "toy" that bundled some games was fantastic. I thought those guys did a great job. But as for getting these on mainstream games formats - it's all up to Codemasters. I hope they realise the potential that these titles have.
I'd also I'd like to see the C64 stuff given a re-release. Some of the stuff we did on the Commodore - Wizball, Micropose Soccer - were groundbreaking products that have been lost in time. But that's the problem with this industry. I've had seven number one games but you can't play any of them on current formats. That really pisses me off to be honest. When the industry changed in the mid 90s it became hard for any game that had made its name before then - especially in the UK - to be noticed or picked up. The games industry made the transition from Spectrum to PlayStation in ten years, which is incredibly fast compared to other industries. But this has meant a lot of cracking games got unfairly left behind.
Any chance of a DS version of Cannon Fodder? The answer to any "can we have" question is ask Codemasters.
I would like to know why, with the lone exception of Sensible Soccer, he made games that were so difficult and virtually uncompleteable? I'm thinking the final level Mega-Lo-Mania, the skidoo levels of Cannon Fodder (I still cringe at the memory), the second half of Cannon Fodder 2, and the great bane of my childhood, Parallax, which despite my love for it was blighted by an insane level of difficulty.
We never set out to intentionally make difficult games. We always tried to judge the learning curve and add new features. The last 5 or 10% of a game you would always have to be pretty good, but that is fairly standard. Last level of Mega-lo-mania? It's easy, annoyingly easy. Cannon Fodder, to be fair, did get quite difficult. And as for Cannon Fodder 2, that was the one game I was hands off with. In hindsight I should have been more hands-on as it did get out of hand with difficulty. Parallax was our first game and we learning how to make them. It was bloody difficult to make and we were still learning.
Have Codemasters given you a clear indication of how many units have to be sold to get a decent development budget to give this latest incarnation the full swos career treatment and how are sales going?
Codemasters haven't given us any clear indication of how many units we need to sell. It will be reviewed in a couple of months to see how it does. If Codies make the decision to go for it they will go for it. It looks like the signs are good though.
I'd like to know how much testing time was devoted to Sensi 2006 - I'm sure some of the niggles people have with the game could have been spotted and fixed with just a few days testing.
With the QA process for any game you have to know when to kick it in. We had to stop the QA process for Sensi slightly earlier than we would have liked because we had a short development time of about a year. The game is not absolutely perfect but I think it offers great entertainment and value at the price it sells for. The things that people are picking up on are mainly preferences rather than genuine problems. But yes, games can always be better. Every game I have ever put out I have always had points I've been unhappy with. I don't think with the development time we had we could have done any better. From a development point of view I would have liked to have longer so that we could have added some more features, but it is always about getting the balance right.
Also, Cannon Fodder, with a 2-thumbstick control mechanism would surely be a huge Live Arcade title. When can we have this, please Jon?
Codemasters are looking at Cannon Fodder now and will assess which format this game will come out on. Live Arcade is a possibility, as are the other formats. Everything is possible at this stage.
What system have found to be the easiest to develop for? Any machines out there that you hold particularly dear in your heart?
This is easy - the Amiga. It gave you top quality games with reasonably good graphics. There were absolutely no publishing problems, no consideration for Sony or Microsoft protocols. It was a totally free publishing platform. All the publishers were up for it and it was easy to communicate with them as teams were much smaller. Games took 18 months max to make which is just enough to keep you creatively interested. We made some great games and a lot of money on the Amiga - it was great times. I'd love to see a new format which emulates this environment sometime in the future but we need independent style publishers to come to the fore again. At the moment there isn't a publishing model that allows this to happen with the amount of money taken by the hardware manufactures.
