All-Pro Football 2K8 Q&A: The Road to Rebirth
We chat with 2K Sports' Greg Thomas about the long-awaited resurrection of the popular football franchise.
December 13, 2004. Many sports game fans likely remember the date as one where the landscape of the football gaming world dramatically changed. On that date the announcement was made that Electronic Arts had secured exclusive video game rights to the NFL, effectively cutting the NFL 2K series out of the race. Despite predictions of doom and gloom, and the series' two-year absence from store shelves, it seems you can't keep a good football series down. Today's official announcement of All-Pro Football 2K8, a game long-rumored to be in the works, confirms that the team at 2K Sports is back on the virtual gridiron, preparing a football game that looks to make up for what it lacks in officially licensed teams and logos with the kind of hard-hitting, authentic gameplay the series has built its reputation on. We spoke with Visual Concepts president Greg Thomas today about the long road to APF 2K8.
GameSpot: A lot of people have been waiting for this announcement, so how does it feel to finally be "officially" talking about All-Pro Football 2K8?
Greg Thomas: Well, we're all very excited about it. We have been keeping quiet for a long time about our plan. And obviously we've been busy with a lot of other things. But we're really excited about...getting back to all of our fans who really loved NFL 2K5.
GS: So, tell me about the process of getting to this announcement. I'm curious as to how the game evolved from what was perhaps going to be NFL 2K6 to what we'll be playing this year.
GT: [A lot has] evolved. It hasn't been, you know, nonstop football work every single day since NFL 2K5 shipped. We've had a lot of other things to do, like the [PlayStation 3] launch with incredibly short time frames, and getting our NBA game to the place it's at now, which is, you know, the best NBA game out there. [With NFL 2K5], after we shipped it and we really started to think about what we'd do next for our football game, it took some time to really think. We had to really go through a lot of different processes here and figure out exactly what we wanted to do. And that did take a decent amount of time to make sure that we put something, you know, super-compelling together for all our fans.
GS: Was it something that you'd maybe come back to once a week and conceptualize ideas for the game, or was it something that all came together at once?
GT: All of the above. It was once a day for a while...then once a week. It was just a lot of different people throwing a lot of different strategies in the ring and figuring out exactly what was the right strategy. This is not about us trying to cash in on NFL 2K5 in any way. This is about us really building the best football game we can build for our fans.
GS: After NFL 2K5 and the loss of the NFL license, was there ever any thought of simply stripping everything out and creating a sort of generic 2K6?
GT: Never. We would never do something like that. This is not how we work. If we don't have something really fantastic to offer our fans, then we just don't want to be in that business. So that's why we really took a decent amount of time to figure out exactly what we did want to do.
GS: Looking back at NFL 2K5 specifically, what did you like about it, and where did you think you could go next?
GT: Like all of our games, every single game I've ever made in my entire career, they're all not good enough. But then it comes out and you start hearing people talk about it in the forums, you're watching people play it, you're reading reviews, and you start to feel a lot more comfortable with what you've released, on different levels. That being said, we had had just a huge list of things that we wanted to do. And if you look at that game, even back in 2K5, it's still light years--even just presentation-wise--where the current football games are.
So I think that we felt good about what we shipped, but again, we had a lot of things that we wanted to do, and we always do.
GS: Other publishers have made stabs at non-NFL football games. We have Midway's Blitz revamp, and Sony tried with an ill-fated football game [Road to Sunday]. How do you view the market for "unofficial" football products, and how do you go about ensuring that All-Pro Football thrives in that market?
GT: I think that we've come up with some very unique ideas on how to play a football game, and I think that there's room for both. I think those people who want the NFL are going to be able to get their fill of the NFL, and I think that there's people who are going to feel like, "Hey, with the NFL game I didn't get my fill of everything I wanted for football." And I think there's other people who are going to say, even with the Blitz game, or whatever other games are going to be made for football, "I still didn't get a good enough feel for football," when they see what we're putting out.
GS: Do you have sales expectations for this game?
GT: I think we always expect our games to do well, sales-wise. And we never talk about sales figures. But I think that we always expect our games to do well or else we wouldn't be making them. So I think that from our standpoint we're expecting this game to be a big, big seller. We're expecting our fans to be really excited, and there's a lot of fans.
We think there's a lot of really exciting information to come through the months here until we launch that are going to keep people and generate more excitement as we go, until it culminates in really what is the final kind of launch plan for us.
GS: The name of the game is All-Pro Football 2K8. Where did the name come from, and how does it reflect the game that you're creating?
GT: We went through a lot of different strategies for names and that kind of thing, and we really came on sticking with obviously Football 2K8, because that has been what we've been building here since the original 2K on the Dreamcast. And All-Pro really just fits in because that's the kind of game we're trying to make. We are focused on making the best football game that a gamer can play. And there's nothing better than an All-Pro, you know, [so] it made perfect sense for us.
GS: The name also is suggestive of star players, so one of the obvious questions is: Will we see former pros in the game, and what can you tell us about that?
GT: You know, anything is possible. We're not really going to talk about any kind of specific features today, but you can look at All-Pro Football 2K8, and you can come across a lot of different reasons why we named it that. One of them is the one that you suggested. There are about four others that you can also come up and make a good argument for. And I think today we really just want to kind of talk about the fact that we're making this game, and we're going to really let the details kind of come out as we get close to the launch.
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