Backbreaker Developer: "Very Unlikely That We Will Revisit Full-On Football Again"

[dcal]

You are probably right about it being a Tech Demo. I am surprised that no other Developer has bought into the Euphoria Engine for a football title though. That being said, there may be 3rd party titles in the works that we don't know about yet......hopefully.

[YanksFan4Life]

Hopefully 505 Games reconsiders this decision for the Next-Gen consoles. There is so much more potential with this franchise on consoles.

[mestevo]

Quote: Originally Posted by YanksFan4Life

Hopefully 505 Games reconsiders this decision for the Next-Gen consoles. There is so much more potential with this franchise on consoles.

Next gen consoles means fewer people to sell their title to as the platforms develop, the current gen wasn't holding back Backbreaker. If they were to continue the franchise they'd do it now.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

[ManiacMatt1782]

Quote: Originally Posted by chicagopax

How is it EA's fault that a terrible football game failed? It didn't even feel like football, football logic didn't work and it was all based around arcade gameplay. It wasn't about to compete with Madden, maybe Blitz the League, or the orginal blitzes, but it was never a sim game. Yeah it had a lot of potential but they didn't put the effort and let it collapse. Which is sad because a physics based football game that actually came out good would be beautiful.

There is only so much money and resources a publisher will give to a developer for a football game without the NFL license. Case in point, look at all pro football, do you believe if they had the NFL license, that they would have released a game without a franchise mode? Or would they have released such a bare bones game? Money talks, and unfortunately without the NFL, no company is gonna give any developer the proper capital and resources to make a proper football game. It's unfortunate for us consumers, but it's pretty foolish to even try to make a football game to compete with the juggarnaut that is the NFL. Market analysts are right, most people won't touch anything that's not the NFL or NCAA when it comes to football. Publishers know this, so they invest the bare minimum in a developer attempting such a foolish task.

[liftheavy]

Backbreaker is real football...anyone who played the games respects what they brought to the table gameplay wise. Really wish they were going to continue the franchise.

[dcal]

Quote: Originally Posted by ManiacMatt1782

There is only so much money and resources a publisher will give to a developer for a football game without the NFL license. Case in point, look at all pro football, do you believe if they had the NFL license, that they would have released a game without a franchise mode? Or would they have released such a bare bones game? Money talks, and unfortunately without the NFL, no company is gonna give any developer the proper capital and resources to make a proper football game. It's unfortunate for us consumers, but it's pretty foolish to even try to make a football game to compete with the juggarnaut that is the NFL. Market analysts are right, most people won't touch anything that's not the NFL or NCAA when it comes to football. Publishers know this, so they invest the bare minimum in a developer attempting such a foolish task.

You bring up a very good point. It is the perfect recipe for one and done football titles. Not much funding so only one shot to get it right. The dissapointing thing about Natural Motion(Backbreaker) is they could have made it work because they have recources to fall back on and a point to prove with their proprietary Euphoria technology. They just quit, took their virtual ball and went home.

[dcal]

One more thing to add about Natural Motions bail out of full on football. Even non Backbreaker fans should be a little miffed about this. NM was supposed to lead the charge into physics based football, something that is LONG overdue. Instead, they set physics based football back years because now the perception is it really did not work and we need to stick to canned animations.

They laid an amazing foundation to be built upon(remember it was the FIRST attempt, not the 25th edition of the game) and threw it away to focus on My Little Pony games. My 20 years of gaming have never witnessed a bigger fail......not because Backbreaker did not catch on, but because Natural Motion completely failed to realize ALL were waiting to see how the next edition would turn out and what improvements would be made.

Sorry for the rant this early in the morning guys, I just had my 3rd cup of coffee and I am charged up for Championship football today.

[Tad.Reez]

Quote: Originally Posted by dcal

One more thing to add about Natural Motions bail out of full on football. Even non Backbreaker fans should be a little miffed about this. NM was supposed to lead the charge into physics based football, something that is LONG overdue. Instead, they set physics based football back years because now the perception is it really did not work and we need to stick to canned animations

BB's engine was promising. But I hate how their campaign led to so many gamers concluding on false information and misunderstanding. BB had "canned animations" and they stunk. The passing animations, running, catching, all of it stunk. The only animations not "canned" where the tackles because they were physics based (collision dependent), and those were awesome although over the top too often.

You can't make a game with animations without "canned animations" unless the game is just only collisions and I don't know what kind of game that could be.The term "canned animations" is misleading because it asserts that motion capture is somehow bad when it's the standard and unless you keyframe there is no other way to animate a polygonal character.

I wish NM would've gave it another try, but in retrospect their attempt did more harm than good. Their campaign misled people whether intentionally or unintentionally with the whole "canned animation" nonsense, they set football games with physics back many years as a concept, and they only further perpetuated the idea that making a football game isn't worth it unless it has an NFL or NCAA license. NM didn't help the situation by dropping that atom bomb that was the Greathouse patch as it completely ruined the game's playability, and then when gamers tried to complain they released a public statement telling them to stop complaining, smh. Considering that, it's clear that NM never really belonged in this arena. We really need 2K to come back, but they can't seem to pull their heads out of their butt caves. As long as we're stuck with Madden we're screwed.