Bump. This thread should not get too far down on the forum.

I am in.

So say we all.

Yes! So say we all! Haha. Thats awesome.

im in

im in

I also support this petition, although i knwo it wont chance anything.

Add me in, I'm from Portugal, a huge fan of hockey and just love playing EHM.
Chances might be slim but I'm all in
BRING EHM BACK

Add me as well

I'm definitely interested.

FHM had almost reached the point that the features included made an interesting simulation. One more iteration would have been enough IMHO...

Count me in

Bump.

I need a new EHM! I am willing to pay the game 150$$$ each year!!!

Add me too

Count me in,ive taken fm08 back to the shop to get my money back it's just too time consuming to play.

I'm in. I'd love a new version of the game.

Count me in!

Put me in. This is one of my fav games of all time.

you can definitely count me in!

Bump. Let's keep those signatures coming!

I'm ready for new stuff too, maybe they could do a add-on without linceses (and imaginary player names too), I bet there would be 2123431 guys who could make new db with right names

count me in 100%

Count me in for sure. Cant believe hockey isnt the most popular sport in the world: things like that wouldnt happen.

Bump. Come on!! It's gotta happen eventually. I'm sick of playing fake simulation console hockey. I WANT A REAL HOCKEY GAME!!! NEED A NEW EHM!!!!

I'd definitely be up for a new EHM - I'm in.

quote:

SI really need to do the cross selling they should have been giving free demos with the fm games yes the demo was available online but people would see it with their game and give it a try. I seen very little announcements on the fm pages about ehm news but on the rastside ones every few days they have stickys promoting fm.

It was on the FM disk, I believe. In among "Sega Extras" with the rest of the demos/videos etc.

quote:

It is interesting I have just researched a bit on OOTPB and they broke away from SI and went back to making the game independently. Would be great if EHM could have gone down that route. EHM seems more popular than the baseball game so why not.

OOTP already had a paying userbase for 6 versions beforehand, I'm not sure which game was more popular but with an already established userbase compared to EHM freeware, OOTP was more viable to go it alone.

quote:

I guess the problem at this time is no one is stepping up to do that the EHM developers decided to take a job on FM which is fair enough it is less risky and more secure job wise.

Bills to pay etc make this a no-brainer really. Splitting off and working on EHM alone would have been a massive financial risk. Too risky for youngsters like myself and Riz. As much as I love the game, it would have been stupid to give up my career for the pipedream of working along on it. Maybe in 20 years when I am old, bitter and hopefully rich .

quote:

What I would like to know is what happens with the code would SI just hold on to it whatever happens. Really I would like it if they could have an open approach about the game perhaps licence it out to someone else who wants to put resources into it. Really though for the cult following we have here some sort of direction from SI could go a long way.

I'm not sure about this to be honest. I expect that if Riz and I won the lottery and wanted it, we could get it. But I don't expect it will ever be open sourced, it's not really like other games where they put out a version, it dies and they forget about the code. Lots of the code/technology is part of a shared codebase that is used across different games we make. Just the other day I was thinking about how some low level platform code used to work in EHM, when I was about to code it for FML, and I decided just to steal it from EHM because it was done the way I wanted it to work anyway.

quote:

If SI can tell us what needs to be done for them to go back to it that would help even if it is near impossible it at least gives us all a chance to group together and organise ourselves.

It just isn't going to happen, I'm afraid. We'd need a guaranteed 10x the sales amount, we'd need a way to bypass the licenses (i.e. make the game have no licensing, which may mean that some league structures etc are wrong, or that leagues are user-created downloadable content) and we'd need to cut out any middle men such as marketing, distribution or anyone else wanting money .

quote:

Other than that someone could start from scratch. Riz started the dream a good few years ago why not someone else? With the community that has been built up it would be a bit easier for them with the community backing them and helping to build up the game. Perhaps we could group together and make a group say call them 'end the hockey manager lockout' and contact developers and companies to try and encourage them to think about the possibility of producing a hockey manager game. Such a process would take a long time years so we would really need to be dedicated and committed and patient to see it through.

Yeah, absolutely, someone could do this. But in America we've found that basically nobody is interested in it - hardcore gamers like yourselves, sure, but stores, magazines, publishers and even the leagues themselves just weren't interested unless it is an action game with fancy graphics. Maybe that will change, I hope it does. EHM is a brilliant game IMO, and even if it never comes back then it would be a shame to say that there would never be a new mainstream hockey management game. If anything, a new game in this genre would only improve the chances of EHM making a comeback.

That was truly depressing statement made by Grame. Well, this thread was an effort anyway and I do thank you for your honesty.

One thing that doesn't make any sense is the fact that there are a lot of games which do get published...and I doubt these game do sell even close to what EHM did or is capable of doing.

Yeah, that's true. The games industry is a very volatile business though, studios go under every day and people lose their jobs and have to start over again. I don't know where the money comes from, just some big corporate machine along the line somewhere I guess. But continuing a game that is costing money to produce is just like having a big hole in your pocket. When it comes to the bottom line, tough choices need to be made and that is what causes many "good" games to just disappear. It is a great shame, I really miss working on EHM.

NB: I forgot to correct the poster in my above quote. Not all of the EHM development team moved onto FM. I didn't move to FM, I chose to move to the new forthcoming MMO, Football Manager Live after I got fed up of Riz

man graeme

i been playing riz game since early free versions of eastside. was already then a huge game.

fun as hell and no other game was like it.

i played another game called cm back then to. when riz moved to england and eastside got a retail version i was thrilled. it was a great game the 3 versions of it.

i thank of all my heart for the work u have done and made it availbe for us to play enjoy and have fun.

atm i am not to happy with fm devolpment as it has no real feutures and ai is very bad.i realy like eastside due to players wage cap draft system and all the fun and good things american leauges have to keep a whole leauge running.they are nicely implemented in eastside 2007.

to bad all kids nowadays like to play fancy shooting games and have never learned to play managements/strategy games like we old players have. back then all parts of the gaming bransh was booming.

its very seldom i find a new game to play and i still play vanilla eastside 2007 3.04 almost every day.