NHL Eastside Hockey Manager 2007

[The Sultan of Swank]

I get the feeling that SDM wants to ask me out to the dance but is too shy.

I gave him my second code! Second CODE!

Basha let me get to second code and didn't even make me buy him dinner.

Edited January 21, 2007 by Basha

[IAceI]

Seriously, this game is insane.

I went into the break after the 2nd period 3-2 down to Carolina, make a quick tactical change on the third line, come out and it's back to 2-1?

[Toe]

I've never seen that happen before.

[The Sultan of Swank]

I've heard of that happening before, have you patched to 3.0.1?

[IAceI]

I have 3.0.2 installed I believe.

[CKN]

You might want to mention it on the bugs forum at si games.

Also you could uninstall and reinstall everything. Even installing 3.0.1 (you don't need to as it is included in 3.0.2 but it doesn't hurt)

[IAceI]

Should I be swapping my goaltenders for a game every so many games or so, or should I try and just stick with Kari Lehtonen all the time?

[CKN]

Well pre-season I usually book 8 games and try and divide them up between all the goalies I invited to training camp (usually three).

As for the regular season you should have an idea who is your starting goalie. Now if you have a goalie like Luongo or Brodeur your goalie will probably play 70+ games. I usually give my starting goalie 50-60 starts. Now to decide when you play your backup look at the starting goalies condition. If it is around the low 80's I would not play them.

[IAceI]

Thanks, Kari Lehtonen is my starting goaltender, but he's still young whereas back up Johan Hedberg is 33 so can bring a bit of experience at times.

Edited January 22, 2007 by IAceI

[The Sultan of Swank]

How can you offer pre-season games to other teams, I always have to wait for them to ask me.

[Guest Grapehead]

How can you offer pre-season games to other teams, I always have to wait for them to ask me.

[Toe]

With Florida, Belfour is my starting goalie. Any time there is a back to back game I give Auld the second game, unless Belfour got a shutout or played amazing and I feel he may be playing hot.

[Toe]

My Panthers lost 9 to 1 against the Leafs, and Olli Jokinen got a one game suspension for slashing Tucker late in the game.

Pure awesome.

[CKN]

My Panthers lost 9 to 1 against the Leafs, and Olli Jokinen got a one game suspension for slashing Tucker late in the game.

Pure awesome.

[Toe]

I managed to get Ryan O'Marra, so I am slowly acquiring every single player who participated for Canada in this years World Junior Championships.

For the playoff drive, I made two moves. My first was getting Tomas Kaberle from Toronto. His long contract doesn't bug me as he is a constant producer, although the cost was high enough that I almost didn't make the deal (Tyler Plante was the cost along with two or three fifth round picks). I could have got McCabe for the same price, but his contract is larger and I always see him as a more streaky player. My second move is still being negotiated, but I may be able to get Teemu Selanne from the struggling ducks. It would cost me a first rounder in 08', but I think he would be able to help Olli Jokinen break out of his mediocre funk.

[Toe]

I've been all over the standings. With 3 weeks left in the season, I have finally managed to grab first in my division away from the Hurricanes, but it is still really close between all the teams in the East.

Nathan Horton leads my team in goals, and has developed into a better player then Todd Bertuzzi (who wants nearly 6 million a year to resign). Belfour has a pulled groin, so I have to play the last 12 games or so of the season with Alex Auld carrying the load.

[NobBe Nobbs]

I don't understand this. Dominik Hasek just retired and went into the Hall of Fame with me as the Wings, and yet I couldn't retire his number. What the fuck?

[Toe]

I think he has to be with the team for a long period of time as well as during Stanley Cup wins.

My Florida game crashed after I had gone a long way, so I decided to start again with the Flyers. Managed to get Brad Stuart and Derek Morris on defence and Erik Cole up front, dumping Kyle Calder and Derian Hatcher in the process. My choice of starting goalie between Esche and Niittymaki was made for me when Niittymaki suffered an MCL injury and went out for 4 months. I went out and got Belfour for a fourth rounder to make sure my goaltending would be solid.

Edited January 31, 2007 by desiredtoe

[Big Red Fury]

So I tried to download the try-and-buy demo but it didn't work and now it won't let me try again, is there another link besides the SI site?

[CKN]

Well, there's good news, bad news, then some good news again. So....

The first bit of good news, is that we are happy to announce and make available the final patch for Eastside Hockey Manager 2007. This includes lots of little improvements and bug fixes, and you can find the patch http://www.sigames.com/news.php?type=view&...article_id=1260. We hope that this will increase the longevity and enjoyability (ooh, new made up word) for the release of the game.

Now onto the bad news. As you know, the last Eastside release was via digital download. At the time, people complained about this as a distribution method, but it was the only one open to us - the first version of Eastside did very well in Scandinavia, pretty well in Europe and just about OK in the US & Canada. The second also did just about OK in the US and Canada, just about OK in Europe, but despite great review scores and decent pre-orders, the sales in Scandinavia, that had pretty much kept the game going, dropped heavily, from our analysis of the situation, mainly due to the game getting hacked before release, and pirated. Because of this, a retail release wasn't worthwhile with the pre-orders that we were going to get from retail, so we thought we'd go digi download, and encourage people to buy that way, whilst having a lower break even point due to retail not taking their cut.

So the game came out to glowing reviews, and decent online pre-orders, and we sat and waited to see the numbers going up and up. The forums were full of people constructively criticising, and praising (just the way we like it) and we were all pretty buoyant. We had more licenses than any other hockey game in history, it was the best Hockey management game in the history of gaming ever, and Riz and his team had done an amazing job. So, despite Hockey being a bit less popular post the hiatus of the sport in the US in 2004, we still couldn't fail, right?

Wrong. The orders came in a drizzle, rather than a flood. We scratched our heads trying to work out what had gone wrong. And then someone pointed out that the game was being pirated, and was available as a torrent from lots of different pirating sites. Then sat there and watched as the claimed amount of downloads on those sites went up and up, as sales stayed static.

Basically, the game did not bring in enough money to cover the development costs, let alone the license fees on top of that. So we've had to make the decision to stop development on the game for now - it doesn't mean that it'll never come back, but for the foreseeable future, there will not be another version of Eastside Hockey Manager.

The good news is that the amazing talented people on the Eastside team have all decided to stay with Sports Interactive. Riz, Ed & Phil are going to be working on Football Manager moving forward, and Graeme has joined our R&D department to work on developing a new idea forward, which we'll be announcing later in the year.

Thank you to all of you out there who supported the Eastside Hockey Manager project by buying the game, and especially those who helped with testing and research. And to those of you who pirated it, this is what happens when you steal. There are no excuses you can give that are valid for stealing - you have lead to the demise of a game that you enjoyed playing.