Front Office Football Eight
The eighth installment of our signature product, Front Office Football Eight, was released on November 23, 2016. It is only available through
our Steam Store. The most recent version is 8.4, which includes the 2020 rosters, coaching file and schedule. Version 8.4 was released on February 20,
2021. Steam will automatically update your installation.
Front Office Football is designed to represent a snapshot of professional football as it exists under the current salary cap system. You play
the role of the general manager of a team. In order to succeed in Front Office Football, you need to perform as well as possible in four different areas.
- Team Performance. On the field, your primary goal is winning the coveted Front Office Bowl. Your fans, players and staff all want to see that
championship banner raised to a new position in the ring of honor surrounding your stadium.
- Financial Performance. Off the field, your team needs to show a profit, or the owner will become angry and threaten your job. You need to
control salary and staff costs while balancing the need to spend money to build and upgrade your stadium against the risk of facing stagnant
ticket revenue with an aging arena.
- Roster Value. You need to negotiate contracts, sign free agents, make wise decisions in the amateur draft and outsmart opposing general
managers in trade. Building a strong, capable roster means everything in Front Office Football.
- Franchise Value. The bottom line is that a happy owner has a franchise that's the envy of professional football. Nothing means more to the
owners than seeing their franchise on the top of the list of most valuable franchises. You help put your team on that list by excelling in the
three other categories, but the best general managers look for opportunities to move the team in order to find a home town with a strong
economy that will support your team like none other.
Each season, Herb the Referee evaluates your performance in these four categories, and presents your grades on his chalkboard.
New Features for Front Office Football Eight
The new version of Front Office Football includes dozens of new features, designed to enhance your simulation experience. This is our most ambitious new product to date, and you'll find it a much more realistic professional football experience. The new game features the following:
- Custom offensive playbooks. Each year, during training camp, you can create a book of up to 200 offensive plays to use during the season. Of course, as with all the management features in Front Office Football, the game's AI can create a playbook specifically for your team if you like.
- New player participation charts. You can select your starters based on personnel groupings. This gives you much more control over who is on the field in every situation.
- More realistic game planning. Rather than filling out extensive charts, you can write scripts for the plays your team will run in every situation. Create a list of plays for use in the Two-Minute Drill. Save your best plays for those critical third-and-three situations. This is much closer to how professional teams handle in-game play-calling. On defense, your plan will cover how you react to what your opponent is doing. You'll have fewer choices to make, but the choices will have a big impact on performance.
- Instant history (or at least history created as quickly as your computer can run). At the press of a button, you can generate up to 50 seasons of "history" for your league, with the AI running every team.
- Enhanced Multi-Player Support. A fuller set of options for maintaining your multi-player games. Additional security features to prevent "hacked" stage files and file compression to shorten load times and reduce the FTP space needed to run a game.
- New player cards with quick access to all the information available about each athlete.
- Create graphs showing how many wins each franchise has over any time period in your league to highlight potential dynasties.
- A playoff probability simulator so that late in the season you can determine each team's chances of reaching the playoffs or gaining a first-round bye.
- A brand new menu interface. Front Office Football will never be the prettiest game in the world, but the the new menu will quickly get you any place in the game.
- Interface improvements. Switch between using various screens within the game. You can even take advantage of multiple monitors and have all sorts of varied information available at once. Front Office Football has always been about displaying as much information as possible.
- Sports Radio. Are there any quarterback controversies in the league? If so, you'll find them
here, and that may explain a team's current difficulties.
- Quote of the Day. Every day, you can read a quote from the vast store of collected wisdom within the Front Office Football universe.
- Many other internal changes. Little was left untouched. As always, the long-term value
of Front Office Football is the simulation itself. Much of development includes continued
refining of the statistical engine, as well as continuing to improve the game's AI so that
you can have a competitive single-player experience. This is the heart of the Front
Office Football experience.
Please visit the
Front Office Football Eight Steam Store
for more information and to purchase the game. You can find a large selection of screen shots
and a brief trailer describing the game.
EA SPORTS
Electronic Arts published versions of Front Office Football in 1999, 2000 and 2001. While they
are no longer for sale, this was a great experience for Solecismic Software and resulted in
tremendous exposure for Front Office Football. For more
information about EA Sports products,
please visit EA SPORTS.