Front Office Football : Highschool Dreams

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Why hasn't anybody mentioned "Front Office Football : Highschool Dreams"... A highschool football sim, the first of it's kind... Think about it, what if you could follow a guy from HS to College then Pro's.. Now that would be something different, something I would like to play...Front Office Football : Highschool Dreams

[vex]

If you can think of it, its been mentioned. That being said, I still like this idea.

[Easy Mac]

but then it wouldn't be front office football, it just be a game about football. no wants wants a game about football, they want one about mundane financial details.

[vex]

You could still buy equipment for the team using the schools budget. The budget for the team is decided by how much you win. Certain equipment helps the players in certain ways.

[Cuckoo]

This idea has been mentioned several times in various "What will Jim's next game be?" threads. (At least twice by me). I think besides the prospect of watching a player from high school to the pros, the most appealing possibility here is the base nature of it. You would have a set of students with little say in who signs up to play for your team. You may have the option to "recruit" kids from other areas to come to your high school or convince that 6-7 guy to come out for two-a-days, but for the most part you're handed a group of kids and told to make them winners. You get to decide what position a kid is most suited for. Of course, you may have help making this determination based on what he played in junior high, but everyone knows that kids grow and change in high school and may move from a wide receiver one year to a linebacker the next. Without venturing too far into micromanagement, I think several people are intrigued by this idea of creation from the ground up. That being said, don't count on this to be the next Solecismic release.

[RPI-Fan]

Consider, though, that we are pretty certain TCY has no sort of import function, or is even coded for the possibility of that. While this product could be pretty interesting (although the variables are much harder to code - they aren't numbers-based as much), it doesn't seem very practical.

~rpi-fan

[Easy Mac]

I'd think a high school sim would be the hardest to create. There are just so many things that you have to look at just to set up your team, seems impossible. Plus the size if you wanted to include every high school. I mean wow.

[Senator]

I advise a group trying to do this very game, but the caveat is that they are going to make the game state by state. They are starting with Texas and going from there. Development seems slow but promising.

[Darkiller]

I could't care less about something than a high school sim honestly.
If Jim stays in football (which I hope obviously) I'd rather have him continue to improve the FOF series or develop TCY2.

That being said, I'm pretty much certain his next game will be on different sport.

[jamesUMD]

Considering the fraction of players that go on from high school to play Big Time College Football, and then the small fraction of those that go from aforementioned College Football programs on to the pro's, I think it would be pretty boring, IMO!

[sachmo71]

How about FOF High School: Wet Dreams or somesuch? You can be a virtual teenager, and you would have values such as:

1. Acne coverage
2. Teen Angst
3. Parental Resistance Factor
4. Opposite Sex Reaction Factor

Naturally, logic and maturity would be pitfalls for a player of this game. I think it would ROCK!!!

[Honolulu Blue]

One of the problems that I see with developing a game like this is the sheer number of high schools. I think there are around 10,000 high schools in the U.S. Assuming that that is correct, then during peak football season, you'd have a couple of thousand (or more) games per week. Even with the fastest processor, it would take awhile. The obvious solution is to limit the game to one state at a time, at least until 10 GHz processors become common.

The concept does intrigue me, though.

[dacman]

There are about 13,200 U.S. highschools that play 11 man football. I'll be damned if I can remember the source.

[cheese]

I think there's a game coming out like this called division rivals. it's been compared to football pro, except with high school as well. i think there was a thread on it in the old forum. www.divisionrivals.com

[Daimyo]

I don't know how it works in big football states, but where I grew up the high schools didn't get much choice of who played for them... they just got whatever the junior highs spit out. Seems like it would be incredibly boring to me. Like if you took free agency and the draft out of fof and it all came down to roster and gameplan micromanagement.

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Maybe this is Jim's Next Game?????????

[clintl]

Where I grew up, it was only the area Catholic high school that really had an opportunity to recruit people (which it did very successfully, and usually won the league and section championships).

[Bee]

Jim has said he's not doing football this year.

Talking about high school sports, I remember early in the development of Coaching A Dynasty (Arlie's college basketball game before TDCB) there was someone who was working on a high school basketball game that wanted to be able to import it to CAD. They had a website up for about a month and then it went down and I never heard of it again. Anyone else remember this?

[JonInMiddleGA]

[quoteLike if you took free agency and the draft out of fof and it all came down to roster and gameplan micromanagement.[/quote]

What? You mean it might actually be a game about gasp football?

Oh the horror ...

[scooper]

Yes, but the game is called FRONT OFFICE Football, not football coach. It's pretty clear what it's supposed to be about.

[Fritz]

zzzzzzzzzzz

[scooper]

Originally posted by Fritz
zzzzzzzzzzz

Man, he is lethargic.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Scooper, my line of reasoning included the possibility that the previous games referenced Front Office but that a future game(s) might not.

Bear in mind, I don't believe there's a snowball's chance in hell the next game or the next 3 games will be HS football, but there's certainly some possibility however remote.

[Tigercat]

You guys who think a HS football management game would be boring obviously did not grow up around good HS football.

Areas where 12k plus come out to support your little school.
Areas where every team in your local division has their own TOTALLY different offense implimented. (I once saw a game between a WingT offense running a 3-5-3(my old school) against a Run and shoot offense running a 4-1-6.)
Areas where POWERHOUSE private schools exsist, schools that not only recruit out of region, but out of state
Areas where POWERHOUSE public schools exsist, schools that compete with said private schools through great coaches and unbelievable weight and training programs.

If done right HS football is more than coaching pee wee football, a lot more.

[Anrhydeddu]

...and that is different from college football/TCY how? It's the same boring gameplay mechanics except the names have changed. I sorta like the idea of going from HS to pros but with most of the decision making comes from financials, HS and college would only have limited appeal besides simming game results. HS and college, imo, are the two areas that would work better as a graphics game rather than a text-based game.

[JonInMiddleGA]

"HS and college would only have limited appeal besides simming game results."

Hell, I thought that was the part that mattered most, y'know, the whole winning & losing thing.

The financial aspect is part of the equation but personnel management is by far the most interesting to me. And that's the biggest part of HS football, determining who belongs in which slot in a given situation.

[Marmel]

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
[Bexcept the names have changed. [/b]

Watch your step there, my friend.

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by Fritz
zzzzzzzzzzz

That is exactly what I had planned to add to this thread, before I saw yours. Exactly my reaction.

What I want in a "front office" sports sim is making decisions. Preferably challengins ones that have some bearing on the game outcome.

Find a version of the game where more and more of the decisions are taken away from me... and you're removing my interest piece by piece. It's how I basically felt about TCY, and this would be another major step in the same direction.

Not for me, thanks.

[Anrhydeddu]

Jon: But as we have seen, there has to be more than that because the decisions you make in that area seem to have questionable value. In other words, a perception is that it really doesn't matter how you arrange your roster and gameplans, 1) you will likely have good results and 2) even if you do a 'bad' job, it certainly will be better than the AI. With that, you have to have other decision-making features that would cause you to see direct consequences of your actions. Financials go a long way in that regards but I feel there must be more in order for it to be a game.

Marm:

[JonInMiddleGA]

there has to be more than that because the decisions you make in that area seem to have questionable value.

Agreed. But does it always have to be that way?

yes, I'm drifting into hypothetical territory here but that's what this discussion mostly was anyway

I mean, just because the AI or "coaching" elements have been unsatisfying in the past, do we assume that's always going to be the case? Obviously, whether it's from Solecismic or someone else, a good HS football sim would have to tighten it's on-field decision-making impact and radically redesign it's position management process, not to mention the development of a pretty creative AI.

Honestly, I don't hold out much hope that the genre could be handled all that well as it seems to call for focusing on some of the weaker areas of many existing sports sims, but for the purpose of pie-in-the-sky discussion fodder, I can suspend disbelief for a little while.

[mckerney]

A highschool football sim would be total shit. Budgets are almost never set by the school board based on winning, better equipment doesn't really help the players, and if you're in a shitty program where no one in the school is really interested you can be a great coach and it won't matter the team will be shit. Also, football games seem to have the need for 'static' positions, meaning you couldn't turn your back up corner into a backup nose guard, and if you could he wouldn't be able to do anything.

[tucker342]

Originally posted by JonInMiddleGA
"HS and college would only have limited appeal besides simming game results."

Hell, I thought that was the part that mattered most, y'know, the whole winning & losing thing.

The financial aspect is part of the equation but personnel management is by far the most interesting to me. And that's the biggest part of HS football, determining who belongs in which slot in a given situation.

Agreed

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Do Budgets really even matter in FOF4, no...... Player contracts and the salary limit are all you have to worry about.... Yes, you do set the ticket prices but I don't think it does anything for your budget. So, front office football really doesn't have a one you have to worry about....

A high school FB sim would be a change from the other sim's...The game would need some features like;

1) More interaction with your players
2) Get feedback from the players parents
3) Players could play multi-position's
4) High school Seniors would receive scholarships from different colleges
5) Players would grow from freshman to senior year
6) Players could play both offense and defense
7) State championships
8) School records
9) Coaches call plays
10) Play as head coach and hire a complete staff
11) 2-day practice in summer, practice everyday in fall
12) Stat read out's for all practices
13) Big scrimmage after 2-day's, stat read out of scrimmage
14) play freshman, sophomores, juniors or seniors to make your team
15) A lot of interaction with the local media

Here are some idea's I've had about a high school football sim

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Does anybody like the Idea of a High School Football Sim??????

[albionmoonlight]

Originally posted by A-Husker-4-Life
Does anybody like the Idea of a High School Football Sim??????

I don't dislike it, but I don't think that I would buy it. I just don't follow High School football. I follow pro football a lot, so FOF is a must-have. I follow college football to a lesser extent, so I own TCY, but will never enjoy it as much as FOF. I don't follow high school football at all, so I doubt it.

CM is considered to be hands down the best sim on the market, and I am still deciding whether to get it or not because I don't follow soccer at all. A high school sim would have to approach the level of CM before I considered getting it.

[scooper]

Actually the thought of in-game management in a sim doesn't appeal to me. The aspects I enjoy most in Jim's games are personnel aquisition such as drafting, signing FA's and recruiting. There is little of that in high school. (Some but not much.) The game planning, etc, is just part of the game and not the draw for me.

I love high school football. I enjoy the pagentry and emotion. Both would be tough to portray in a sim.

I can see where such a game would be attempted, I just would not buy it.

[ahbrady]

I would love to see a high school football sim. I do think that it would be difficult to make one, but it could work. I thought A-Husker-4-Life had many good points that would help make it different from a college or pro sim. I enjoy the simming and playing of games in FOF and TCY much more than the free agency, and while I think I would like the recruiting in TCY it just seemed a little too tedious for me. I'm crossing my fingers that Division Rivals will make it, but I'm doubtful.