Jon is now fully committed to delivering a new and fun footy experience across PC and consoles in the form of Sociable Soccer and it's iterations since 2017.
When I was given the opportunity to ask Jon a few questions I obviously leapt at the chance and then thought what the hell do I ask the guy who created one of the finest football video games to ever be created...
So I regressed to 12 year old me and all was good...
Sensible Software made some awesome sports video games, Microprose Soccer, Sensible Soccer, Sensible World Of Soccer and Sensible Golf, and they are all games that I played to death on my Amiga 600 (with 1mb RAM). Was there ever any plans for other sports games to be developed by Sensible? (I would have devoured Sensible Cricket!)
Jon: We designed several sports games that we never made.
Top of the pile was Console Olympics for the SNES and Megadrive, it was a multi-sport event with many different events and many different characters to choose from… you had like tall skinny guys and big fat guys etc to pick from and then you were told which events they had to do afterwards, so you might get the big fat guy doing pole vault or whatever.. It was a really fun idea but it never made it off the drawing board.
At Tower studios we made British Lions Rugby 7s for mobile, which was very much like Sensible Rugby.
Sensible Cricket would have been great to make too.
Rich: I read some cool stories about you playing cricket in the offices with an Amstrad keyboard, what was your highest score at keyboard cricket?
Jon: Wow that is going back to 1991 and I can't remember, I doubt it was much over 10… runs were hard to come by :)
Rich: The game that has always always intrigued me over the years was Sex ‘N’ Drugs ‘N’ Rock ‘N’ Roll which never came out. Do you think nowadays with the tools that are available to devs that it would be easier to get this made? Have you ever been tempted to give it another go?
Jon: I put 4 years of my creative life into that game and I was very sad when we had to pull it back in 1998. The music was nearly completed and a lot of the art and scripting was done too, but the code was seriously not fit for purpose, unfortunately.
We were trying to take point and click adventures to the next level, about 10 years later Heavy Rain came out and basically delivered a system very close to what we had designed.. I wish we could have come out first with Sex ‘N’ Drugs ‘N’ Rock ‘N’ Roll.
It was a game of its time, very Spinal Tap and Viz Magazine in humour and looking back very British. But the time to release that game has long since gone…. We must move on to pastures new.
Rich: Have you ever been tempted to make a direct sequel to Sensible Soccer/World Of Soccer. For example a version of SWOS with more presentation and story line but with that same sensi soccer gameplay? (SWOS struck a great balance between manager game and arcade soccer but I always yearned for more player reward for winning things or maybe more narrative around players etc in the vein of Footballer Of The Year / New Star Soccer type games)
Jon: Sensible Soccer was sold to Codemasters/EA in 1999. I am always focussed on making new games. Sociable Soccer has been one approach, we are currently looking at new features to put into a football game and a SWOS like approach has been discussed, but storyline was never the strong point of SWOS, it was more about the huge world of football and player/manager style approach.
Rich: I assume that you have come across the work of SensibleSoccer.de and how they have attempted to keep Sensi Soccer relevant in 2024 with some amazing additions to the community which keeps SWOS alive and kicking with some amazing additions. Do you ever still play Sensi and are you any good?
Jon: Yes I know the Sensiblesoccer.de guys, I am very grateful to them for keeping the Sensible Soccer series alive. I have been to one of their World cup events in Berlin and go to an offshoot event in London most years... I always get beaten soundly these days.
Rich: What was your biggest influence when you guys made Microprose Soccer? For me that game was like nothing else around at the time. It was fun and it was fast whereas most footy games at the time seemed to be plodding affairs.
Jon: It was heavily influenced by an arcade game at the time called Tehkan World Cup.
Rich: Also where did you get the idea for the crazy banana shots, when I discovered those in Microprose they blew my mind and had me rolling around laughing with my mates as we attempted these ridiculous banana shots!
Jon: Well these were also in Tehkan World Cup, but later we discovered that they did not intend to bend the ball in their game… it was actually a bug :)
Rich: What was your favourite soccer/football arcade game from the 80s or 90s and why? (I was always partial to Football Champ with it’s overstated goal celebrations and madcap referees and I loved playing Tecmo World Cup 90 in the local Chippy)
Jon: Apart from our games and Tehkan World Cup the only other arcade football games from those times I really liked were Kick Off and Kick Off 2.
Rich: What was your favourite Custom Team from Sensible Soccer? (I loved making my own teams and had a Porn Mag XI which had the likes of Men Only in goal, Escort in defence, Fiesta in Midfield and Mens International up top with Razzle, the simple pleasure of Razzle scoring a hat trick was a joy to behold)
Jon: Well I made all of the original Custom Teams with the help of the Sensible Team. When we were working late at night I would say, OK now we have a team called Essex Girls, for example, and they would all shout out names which I would add to the data.
I think my favourite was probably Rude Words.
Rich: Did you ever play any football management video games and were you ever tempted to create your own manager sim?
Jon: Oh yes I have played all of the football management games. I have toyed with making a full on management game from time to time, but to beat Football Manager now would take something extraordinary. However something more player/manager style along the lines of SWOS could be much more interesting.
Rich: Do you ever play any current gen video games or are you too busy? If you do play , what’s your game of choice at the moment? (I'm chipping my way through GTA IV as it bypassed me when it came out as I think I was too busy playing Tiger Woods golf on my PSP at the time).
Jon: I am far too busy to boot up a console and only play versions of Sociable Soccer and our other new games on PC. So my main format for playing games is my mobile as it is always in my pocket and I can play in small gaps in my schedule, my current favourites are Geo Guesser and Risk, but I change games around every 6 months or so.
Rich: I’ve played Sociable Soccer and it’s heaps of fun and feels like an attempt at an antidote to the boring drudgery of the FIFA game that comes out every year that has miniscule changes to the way the control system works that the average player would never notice. Has there been a soccer video game that you can point to that you have really enjoyed playing in the last 10 years? (for me the last truly great football game was Pro Evolution Soccer 4, 20 years ago. Since then there’s only been a handful of soccer video games that have put a smile on my face)
Jon: The two football themed games I have liked the most in the last 10 years, apart from my own, are New Star Soccer and Football Chairman. I agree with you, I have never observed a single smile on the face of anyone who plays FIFA.. the old PES yes.. But not so much any more. Putting the fun back into football games is a big part of what we are trying to achieve at Sporty.
Rich: I also played the initial version of Sociable Soccer back in October 2017. What did you learn from that release that shaped how the game plays in 2024?
Jon: The release in October 2017 came out a bit too early, but we needed it to keep the team going, by that time we had been 2 years in development with nothing much to show for it. Looking back it was very much an Early Access game.. The gameplay itself had some unfortunate last minute bugs which didn't help.
Sociable Soccer 25 is a big improvement on that early version of the game as it has had an annual release now since 2019 onwards. The addition of 13,000 FIFPRO licensed players has been massive for us, also I think the difficulty settings were a big miss in the early versions, because some people said the game was too hard and others said it was too easy, but a football game is never finished, you can just go on and on improving it.
Rich: What’s the future roadmap for Sociable Soccer and what are you excited about?
Jon: We have spent the last year focussing on Sociable Soccer 24 and 25 for consoles, these should all finally be out over the next few months. Beyond that, this year has been a very exciting one for us.
We have moved most of our development team to the UK and recently tripled its size, this is thanks to our acquisition this year by the Sporty Group who are an international sports media company.
What is exciting to me is all the cool, groundbreaking stuff we are starting to work on to come out next year under the Sporty banner, so 2024 has definitely been a key year both for me and for our ability to make and market great new games far into the future.
Rich: In Sociable Soccer you have gone with a modern look to the graphics, were you ever considering a retro pixel art style or did you intentionally want to move away from pixel art graphics?
Jon: Absolutely not, Sociable Soccer was never intended to be a retro game at all, it was always meant to have Sensible Soccer style gameplay for modern platforms, with online play and eventually card collecting too. As a pixel artist myself from 1985 - 1993 the thought of going back to pixel art was ridiculous, believe it or not my little Sensible Soccer guys were top of the range art back in 1992. For Sociable Soccer we have settled on a Fortnite style characterisation of the players.
Rich: I think the sign of a good footy game is the Goalkeeper AI and how tough it is to score. How hard is that kind of stuff to code into a game? (I'm guessing you want the player to be able to score goals but not too many that it becomes boring.)
Jon: Balancing the keeper AI is absolutely key to getting the playability just right. If it is too easy people say the game is not a challenge, BUT if you make it too hard they end up hating the game. To be honest every 6 months or so we have to thoroughly tweak the keeper AI as any change to the onfield players can also affect the keepers.
Rich: What’s been the toughest challenge for you and the team during the development of the original Sociable Soccer, Sociable Soccer 24 and now Sociable Soccer 25?
Jon: Most of the challenges we have faced have been technical, I would estimate over the last 9 years we have lost maybe 2, or 3 entire years simply in fixing game architecture related problems. As a game designer this can be incredibly frustrating as progress goes so slowly whilst tech issues are being fixed. Also the console versions have taken at least double the time we planned to develop and get through approval, we have spent most of 2024 hanging on the console manufacturers every word waiting for approval and submitting version after version to overcome small technical hurdles.
Thankfully with our new game engine now ready to roll we can anticipate far less of such problems in the future.
Jon: Having just been acquired by Sporty our future looks like we will be continuing to make bigger and better football and sports games for the next while. But I also like to look at the designs of other totally unrelated games from time to time.
Rich: What’s the best sandwich filling and why?
Jon: I would say beef and horseradish is hard to beat
Rich: What’s your favourite cuisine and which dish must you have every time you order it?
Jon: The choice is very tricky as I like pretty much all food, but it has to be Indian cuisine… the order always starts with a pint of Lager, two poppadoms, chutneys and lime pickle
Rich: What’s your favourite alcoholic drink?
Jon: Again a tricky choice and it depends on the situation, for simple refreshment it has to be lager, to go with a French meal a decent glass of Pinot Noir, after a couple of pints a gin and tonic and late at night a shot glass of Bowmore (Whisky) (I collect shot glasses from all over the world as I also love to travel)
Rich: Will you sign my football if I send it in the post? ;)
Jon: Yes as long as you flatten it first
Rich: Who would win at an Arm Wrestle, Jools or Jops?
Jon (Jops): Jops… because Jops is me… and I am bigger than Jools
Rich: Thanks for your time and thanks for all the amazing video games over the years 🙂
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