http://community.sigames.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=21019056&f=39919517&m=9021906695 On the second page of this thread a SI rep says that there is a possiblity that MLS will not be included in CM4. He infers that the hold up is with the league. Personally this would be a huge disappointment. I hope that MLS gets their foot out of their ass and doesn't mess this one up. I don't know if this would affect the A-League's inclusion or not.
This would be unfortunate. I prefer MLS instead of Europe. But I still need to buy a more up to date version.
Honestly, there's no way I would play in the MLS anyway so it doesn't really make a difference to me. I'd rather manage a lower league European club if I was looking for a challenge.
Same here, though I do always run it as a background league, I just never actually manage in it anymore. The last time I did, I got fired in my 2nd season after winning the US Open Cup and being in the semi-finals of the MLS playoffs (I won the 1st, lost the 2nd vs San Jose as Chicago, and they fired me after that loss). I had also won one of the non-US Cups the season before, as well as the Open Cup the season before. I remember thinking WTF?, and vowed to never coach Chicago (or anywhere in MLS) again. No promo/rel, so no real fun, IMO. But having MLS in the background seems to help produce more quality US players.
good advertising chance for me then! US Soccer Manager - it's not CM but the MLS runs flawlessly... (almost, it's a beta, and A-League and D3 are only with the registered version coming out later unless you have the password) http://www.geocities.com/stattonet For a list of improvements since the version was released in September, go to the forum. but I don't see why CM wouldn't have MLS
LOL. Umm... How is this the fault of the MLS? The hold up I'd assume is because SI doesn't pay the liscensing fee. It's not like by having the MLS in the game, it helps out popularity becuase anyone who's dorky enough (myself included) to play CM is no doubt already a fan of the league. The MLS isn't messing anything up.
Re: Re: MLS possibly not included in CM4!?! The MLS? Come on Lucid you sound like Brent Musberger. I don't know the logistics but there is no other league to my knowledge that there is a licensing holdup with. MLS is messing up in two ways: I think that MLS is missing out on quite a bit of exposure overseas if they stop inclusion in CM. Also, I want to be Ray Hudson. Maybe CM is including team logos in CM4 and that's the problem? I have no clue. Like you said, including MLS isn't selling many copies of CM so I don't understand why there are prolonged licensing fee discussions. I have $12 in my pocket that should cover it.
Not including MLS will increrase the value of the game. and maybe make room for a more well respected league such as the uruguyan or the K-league.
Respected by who? Europeans? Lets assume for a minute that WAS true (which its isnt-not that you dont believe theyre more respected, but that they deserve it-Ill take the quality of MLS over those leagues ANY day), do you really think including those leagues would make more of a difference in sales than having the MLS would?? Thats daft.
Actually, seeing who wrote it, youre probably right. Ive seen a few of these same arguments on other boards though, so I jumped the gun and assumed it WAS another US/MLS hater airing out his prejudices...
The inclusion of the K-league would generate HUGE sales in Korea. Korea is already known for being hardcore gamers (Blizzard has already cashed in on this) and add the WC frenzy to that and CM will see monster sales there. Front Office Football isn't a big title here despite being the top american football sim out there, do you really think a soccer sim would sell any better?
The problem, from a developer's standpoint, is the way the MLS functions. It is a league, there are no Man Us Arse-nals or Juventuses in the USA, not even the Galaxy. I don't know how CM3 handled the old version, but if there was no superdraft or league handled contracts and those were being implemented that could hold them back. It's not because they hate us, really - it's very hard programming work. I haven't finished it yet.
SAAP Those wanting MLS management may want to check out Sick as a Parrot. http://www.users.bigpond.com/machoward/ I've been playing the game for a bit now with both European teams and MLS and it's replaced CM as my management game of choice.
Hey, I've been on the newsletter list for SAAP for a while (though on an old NetZero account I rarely use), the last one mentioned a demo of SAAP 2003 being available, but I can't find it on the site? Do you know where it is?
You can email him about it, the address for the message board is http://pub126.ezboard.com/bsaaponline and see if you're a 'missing member'
You can geta demo of SaaP from the SaaP online site at: http://www.users.bigpond.com/machoward/ Just follow the links to the demo page. It has a full-featured MLS module based on the 2002 season (2 conference, 28 match + playoffs season, superdraft and waiver draft, salary cap, squad restrictions to 18 plus 4 developmental players etc) However, I'm about to release SaaP with updated European leagues, clubs and players. Hopefully I'll release it this weekend as SaaP 2003 release 3.0. The news page on the SaaP Online site will tell you if it's been released. It'll certainly be released in the next week.
Re: Re: Re: MLS possibly not included in CM4!?! Ok, do we know that SI is actually trying to pay the liscensing fee? They haven't in the past and I don't know how many leagues they actually hold rights to in the game. Any? If they couldn't pay the $ amount the MLS is asking for they'd just include it like they had in the past I'd assume. Maybe the MLS actually found a way to block them from including it period? I don't know, I'm just guessing here. It just seems weird that they'd completely cut the league out when they had included it in the past without paying.
Adding the MLS isn't just adding another league. Everything about it differs from other national leagues. The combination of the salary cap, the draft system, the contract system (players contracts with the MLS not the clubs), the league structure etc means that the "under the hood" processing of data is vastly different. To produce a stable multi-season game requires enormous amount of testing hours to reach the stability of the European style leagues (a stability reached over many years of design). When I set out to include the MLS in Sick as a Parrot I thought it would take me 4-6 weeks. It took me more than 6 months! Even now I can't be sure that the long term stability is as good as the rest of the game because only thousands of hours from genuine gamers can tell me that. But because SaaP has upgrade releases regularly then I can respond to user feedback in a way other games which have new releases every couple years can't.
Re: Re: Re: Re: MLS possibly not included in CM4!?! Yeah, I'm just speculating as well. SI keeps talking about legal issues and perhaps we are barking up the wrong tree. Anyway, no matter what the hold up is my inclination is to blame MLS until I hear otherwise solely because SI hasn't said there is a hold up with any other leagues.
machoward, I'm going to check out the demo for SaaP but I have a question about ordering the game. You have an Online Lifetime Membership available for $25 and then a CD-Rom version for $35. I'm not clear what the difference is? Is it just that you get the game mailed to you instead of online? BTW, if your game is any good then $25 is ridiculously cheap for lifetime updates.
>You have an Online Lifetime Membership available for $25 and then a CD-Rom version for $35. I'm not clear what the difference is? There's no difference whatsoever in the game you get. The downloaded game is exactly the same as the cdrom. I only produce the cdrom because some users don't like the idea of the downloading the game so I made one available. My American agent also likes to have one available for its mailing list customers. >BTW, if your game is any good then $25 is ridiculously cheap for lifetime updates. Supplying the game through download is virtually free of cost as far as delivery is concerned so I share the cost saving with the user. The $12.50 membership for 12 months is even cheaper of course. However, supplying the cdrom is back to the old costly way of delivery, particularly as I'm in Australia, so the conventional pricing is used. A second part to all this is that it costs me nothing to supply upgrades, updates etc to users, so I don't charge for them. It allows me to develop the game continuously and not spend too much time reinventing the wheel - when you release a "new" game every couple of years about 80% of it is the same as the old game. Some of that 80% will have been redesigned because you can't charge the user for a "new" game when it's patently the old one with a few additions. So you start to redesign what really doesn't need redesigning. You start wasting design time. I concentrate on developing the game with new features then make the upgraded game available to buyers of the game free of charge. The upgrades are made available to users (members of SaaP Online) via download from the members' web site. The whole idea of SaaP and SaaP Online is to use the advantages of Internet distribution (cheap, immediate world-wide distribution) and share the gains with users. I get to move the game on rapidly and compete with larger teams like the CM team and the customer gets an ever evolving game at a great price. Suits us both. SaaP, incidentally, is not a new game. It's a development of the very first soccer management game designed in 1981/2 called League Division One for the BBC Micro. I wrote it for my own amusement and found a lot of people liked it. The Collyers, the original designers of CM, have kindly said that my games inspired them to write CM. They were customers of mine for around 8 years before releasing CM. The success of LD1 has meant that I've made a comfortable living for 20 years and hopefully will do for another 20 'The game now takes a different approach to CM concentrating on the training, motivational, tactical side of soccer management. It's not as "big" a game in terms of leagues etc but it has much more managerial control over team and player performance. It has been described as "the thinking fans soccer management game" and does require that you put more thought into the game than usual. As that's not to everyone's liking then it's best to get hold of the demo and see if it's for you. It also tells you if you have any PC compatibility problems though SaaP is mercifully free of them. But you never know with Windows. So download the demo and check it out.