Old Face New Times

It was interesting to see Marc Duffy from Sports Interactive give his view on UFL on the forums yesterday. For those who have not read his post he basicly has 2 peices of advice for both the community and the developers. The first quite obviously is that UFL should try not to make the same mistakes as FML. You have to wonder why he would post such a thing at this stage in development. If you take a step back and re-read it he may be implying that something with the Comprehensive Game Guide will take you down the same road that FML took. In all fairness I think he has a reasonable point here on two grounds.

The first reason where UFL may be making an error is that the features are being predominantly decided by what you can describe as the hardcore players. As Miles Jacobsen (also from SI) said in a recent interview for the Telegraph: "... We tried to reboot the project, and we went in a more hardcore direction than we ever envisaged the project being in, because that’s what the people playing wanted. But we just couldn’t turn it around...". This in many ways could be the same direction as UFL is heading. It is certainly a tricky issue trying to balance the needs of a casual user with those who are fortunate enough to play all day everyday. Now this should not be seen as an attack on the more active users or the people who tirelessly give their views on the forums each and every day, although I can understand why it could be perceived in that manner. But it does need to be kept in consideration that the casual players are the ones that keep the overall manager numbers up.

The other piece of advice that Marc gives is one of patience. It comes as no surprise that everybody is really desperate for alpha to commence so that the end goal of a fully finished product becomes available as soon as possible. Whilst there is no evidence of direct rumblings on the forums there does appear to have been a lack of interest or posts on the forums more recently. Keeping the momentum up whilst also ensuring that everything is done properly and to a standard that the developers are happy with is going to be difficult. In fairness the official UFL backstage blog has been open as to why this has been and its good to see the loose ends are being tied up before testing begins. But the long term goal has to take priority and it's good to see the developers are not in the business of being rushed.

Marc deserves great credit to take the time to give his view to the general forum. But the important thing is to take any advice that he is willing to give on board. From the warm reaction he has received (on the whole) this looks likely to have been the case.