Quick Hit Football Developer Interview
Posted by Eric "TheHerp" Galaviz on March 5th, 2010
Recently I got a chance to speak with Brandon Justice, Director of Game Design for Quick Hit Football which is a free-to-play football game. Quick Hit Football brings gamers a very unique experience combining strategy with RPG elements in a MMO space. The small team that created this game is compiled of people who worked on MMORPGs, strategy games, and console sports titles. Although this is new territory for the crew, everyone brings in a unique perspective and it definitely shows in the game. During my conversation with Brandon we talked about some new features recently added to the ever-growing title and we also discussed the future of the title.
For those who don’t know what Quick Hit Football is, do you mind giving us a quick rundown on the game and maybe some key features that set it apart from other football titles?
Brandon - Quick Hit Football is a free-to-play football strategy game in which you don’t control the players but instead you coach them. As you play games against the computer or another user you gain points which are called Coach Points (CP) that can be used to upgrade any player’s abilities on your team. During the game you will be picking plays and the actions are carried out by the players so your goal is to utilize the strengths on your team while trying to exploit the weaknesses of your opponent. Everything in the game can be earned though simply playing the game or you can purchase CP from the store. You also have the opportunity to add NFL Legends to your team if and when you have enough CP.
When creating the game we wanted to tap into the free-to-play market where there aren’t many players in the sports space. 5-8 million people buy Madden every year, yet 20 million people play fantasy football and 40 million people watch it every Sunday. It’s a small amount of people who play football games and even smaller gaming online. What we wanted to do is find a way to tap into the 20 million people who play a very stat based football product but won’t ever get on Xbox Live or PSN but love football. With Quick Hit we wanted a game that was accessible, intuitive and at the same time authentic. We tried to make the game less about being good with the controller and more about knowing the game of football. If you get the basics of what football is about and the chess game behind it, then this is really the game for you.
Was it difficult to create a football game with the mindset that you won’t be able to use the NFL License?
Brandon – When we first started we did a lot of surveys of users and obviously using the license will help. We found in these surveys that a lot of people, especially with the younger generation, care less about the license and more about the fact that it’s a free game and an authentic experience. We are rapidly approaching or just past the million user mark in less than six months. I think the work that we’ve done so far proves that theory and it wasn’t a random sampling of people who were trying to be nice. Obviously there is a challenge but they don’t call it the No Fun League for nothing. The license can often times be creative handcuffs and what we have is the opportunity to build whatever we want. In the short term, for us, the hardest thing is rethinking how the game of football is played, how to make it more casual, more so than worrying about the license.
When I first started playing Quick Hit, I noticed there were some ads mainly during time outs and in between quarters. Since then there has been the addition of ads whenever you are waiting for the opponent. Is this something that can be disabled with a paid subscription?
Brandon - We’re in the process now of doing some testing of what works and doesn’t work for the users. We’ve actually increased the frequency, decreased the frequency but increased the display time and now we working on making more event driven like after touchdowns, during time outs, after first downs rather than seeing them all the day. Free to play for sports games is completely new territory. We want to make sure we are able to monetize the product and keep it free but by the same token we don’t want to annoy the gamers playing the game. Subscriptions are something we are looking at and a lot of our customers are asking for that as well. We are looking at different options, what we want to do with it and what will a subscription entail. Would it just be add free or would there be special subscription services only available to subscribers? We are basically looking at different packages and focus testing all of those trying to figure out what makes sense.
I understand that you guys were able to meet with former Steelers coach Bill Cowher to get some insight about coaching. What was the one thing you learned from him, and more importantly, how intimidating is he when he’s not on the sidelines?
Brandon – The chin is legendary and I’m a big Cincinnati Bengals fan in real life and I made sure to give him the business but honestly Coach Cowher was a class act. He was very friendly very receptive and the one thing I really appreciate about him is he is a consummate professional and wants to be great at what he does. He’s just a very genuine guy and he’s very hard working. Everything we threw at him he just took it like a champ and put everything he had in him to do it well. In that sense if he ever came out of retirement and wanted to coach the Bengals I would have a little bit of a problem with it but I’d get over it. As far as what we learned from him, I think we learned a lot in our short time with him. Every single conversation we had he gave us good insight about what it meant to be a coach what it meant to build a cohesive unit as a team, how to evaluate talent and how to take that talent and make your team effective. In a lot of ways those themes is really what Quick Hit Football is all about. I’ve worked with a lot of different folks throughout the years that were cover guys for products and I would have to say working with Coach Cowher was probably one of the most insightful experiences I’ve had in my career.
Is a Facebook- or Twitter-type of integration something you are looking into adding to Quick Hit?
Brandon - Right now we are at a crossroads with the product, we’ve obviously got our first version up and there is a lot of different opportunities for us. For us finding a way to get on Facebook and to get more people is definitely what we are looking at. There aren’t any majors players in the sports arena in Facebook, there are folks like EA trying to get into that space but it’s a lot easier for us to get into that. Their entire market is based on disc based games. If you look at the reaction they received from micro transactions they tried to add in their games it’s much harder for them to establish themselves with that strategy having already established the disc based game. For us getting on these social networking sites is something we always wanted to do and not only that our product is free, just like these sites. The big challenge for us is what are the things that we can add to or take away from the game to make it a bit more appealing to the people who are only used to playing games like Mafia Wars or Farmville. We have some cool ideas for how we can do this but I can’t really get into that right now.
The best part about flash games like Quick Hit Football is being able to jump in and out of a game. Right now there isn’t an option to quit a CPU game and complete it at another time. Is this something that will be added in the future?
Brandon – That’s something that we are definitely looking at. In the interest of a short experience we are looking at training modes, mini games, sudden death mode and shorten quarters. We are looking at all of those things and seeing what makes sense. The ability to save the game and pick it up later is kind of a no brainer when we get into a season mode or franchise mode or ever tournaments. I think it’s something you’ll see from us.
This game seems like a fantasy football fans dream come true, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I would love the ability to import a fantasy league to Quick Hit and play it out in real time. With the EA exclusive license this isn’t an option but if that were to expire would this be an option in Quick Hit Football?
Brandon - That’s something that honestly we’ve already gone pretty far down the line in terms of designing it out and how we do it. It’s one of things were EA has the license but if that agreement ever came up and we had the opportunity to do that I think it would be something that would be mad cool.
After our interview we went into a game and Brandon showed me some new features recently added to the title. The first thing gamers will notice when they sign in to Quick Hit is the Team Page. This brand new profile page will show you everything you need to know about your team. You will see expanded stats, player info and you have the ability to access other Coach’s profile if you want to scout your opponent. This new Team HUB allows gamers to access the best coaches on the leaderboards and see how they train their players, what plays they pick and try to learn from them by looking at their stats. Along with that they also added daily rewards. Every day you log in you will get free CP, you can earn anywhere between 1-50 CP points, giving you an incentive to log in every day.
In terms of gameplay there are a ton of improvements and new features. During the game you will notice there is a FP Meter on the bottom bar now which will show you how much longer you have to go for the next level, in real time. It’s centered at the bottom of the screen and I hate them for doing this. Now that you can see, in real time, how far you are from leveling up you’ll just want to keep playing if you are only a few FP from leveling. Definitely something that kept me up at night in my WoW days and will keep me up when playing Quick Hit. Play-by-play text display has also been added to the in-game hud. Since you are looking at the game from a top down point of view and the players names don’t show up on the screen, the play-by-play will tell you exactly who caught the ball and what the result of the play was. You can toggle this on and off along with the ability to chat in the same window. Again you are seeing the influences of the development team who has worked on MMOs.
There were also some balancing tweaks that were done for offensive and defensive lines along with improvements to pass coverage. The game itself is constantly evolving with updates releasing almost every two weeks, which can be found here. Brandon and Samantha (Director of Communications) stressed the fact that they are very hands-on with the community and they both actively play the game. In fact Samantha and Brandon are proud coaches of high ranking teams in the leaderboads. This is something I can attest to, as Brandon was able to mop the floor with my team.
The one thing I got from the conversation was the team at Quick Hit Football loves what they do and it shows up in the final product. When you have everyone actively playing the game and talking to the community like they do it’s no wonder the free to play title works as well as it does. Quick Hit Football lets fantasy football players utilize their knowledge of the sport and take it to another level. Being able to coach a team and groom your championship squad is something that I’ve always wanted in a football game. Quick Hit is quickly becoming by favorite football game on the market and for anyone who loves the strategy of football but can’t handle the complicated controls, this is the game for you.
I’d like to thank Brandon and Samantha for taking the time to discuss the title with us at Spawn Kill, and if you want to learn more about Quick Hit Football you can always visit their home page or you can head over to the developers diary for everything you need to know about the updates.
The NFL Arcade genre has pretty much been dead for a while now. Just a couple of years ago we had some really great titles in Blitz and NFL Street, but the NFL wanted to clean up their image thanks to the Bengals and Adam “Pac Man” Jones. Even the famous Blitz games went away from their standard Arcade style in favor of a more “realistic” game. EA Tiburon had a nice run with NFL Street each title receiving critical acclaim but then they stopped making them because the game was too gritty for the NFL. In 2008 they put out a much tamer title in NFL Tour but the game was terrible to put it lightly. After almost two years EA Tiburon is once again trying their hand at an arcade title, this time with the downloadable title Madden NFL Arcade. Although it is very apparent that they are trying their hardest to get back to what made NFL Street so good, the game lacks depth and customization even for a downloadable game. The title can only be enjoyed in small intervals and for that price tag I feel like I should be getting more.
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