Jon Hare is a figure whose name is likely to conjure up warm nostalgic feelings in the hearts of many who grew up playing computer games in the UK in the '80s and '90s.
As one of the co-founders behind the influential software house Sensible Software, he helped design some of the best football games for home computers like Microprose Soccer, Sensible Soccer, and Sensible World of Soccer, as well as a bunch of other non-sports-related titles too, such as Parallax, Wizball, and Cannon Fodder.
Over the years, many of his games went on to become best sellers and have rightly become regarded as classics in their respective genres, yet the man himself seems unable to rest on his laurels, always looking out for the next big thing. Since selling Sensible Software to Codemasters in 1999, Hare has held many positions during his career, with the latest headline-grabbing role being as the head of a new UK developer, based in Bournemouth, owned by the sports media and betting empire Sporty Group.
In this position, Hare will be responsible for leading the development of his Sensible Soccer spiritual successor Sociable Soccer, and is also working behind the scenes on a mysterious new football project for mobile that is scheduled to release later this year. This new project will be free-to-play, according to Hare, which will potentially turn off fans of his earlier work, but it's a move that he insists is now necessary to keep up with changes in the market and stay in the game.
Earlier this month, we had the opportunity to speak to Jon on the eve of the console release of Sociable Soccer '25, with the goal being to talk about the latest entry in the Sociable Soccer series and what fans can expect from its as-yet-untitled follow-up. You can read our conversation below:
Time Extension: First of all, could give us some background on yourself and how Sociable Soccer initially came together?
Hare: As most of your readers will know, I was one of the two founders of Sensible Software. So we did Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, and all those games between 1986 and 99. Then we sold the company to Codemasters.
Then I started doing a bunch of consulting for different companies on game design and business in games. So pretty much what I do is design games, lead the team, and do some of the business deals as well. That's pretty much it. I used to do art in the old days but not anymore. I do a bit of music still. But those are the main things.
Anyway, in 2004, I set up Tower Studios — initially as a company making old mobile games with two of the guys from the Bitmap Brothers. The three of us were running the company, and it was terrible in those early mobile times and none of us were making much money out of it, so we stopped. The company fell asleep and then at the end of 2008, my consulting business fell off a cliff when the stock market crash happened. I lost three customers and I lost them all in the same week. I said to Mike and John, 'Do you mind if I pick up Tower because it's asleep?' And they said 'No'. So they just gave me their part of it, which was worth absolutely zero.
I picked it up and I worked with a few companies, and ended up spending a bit of time with a Polish company called Vivid Games and did a few games with them. Then after that, I started working on a new football game. I met a company in Helsinki, Finland, called Combo Breaker, and with them, we started to make Sociable Soccer. We worked together for about seven years, and there were many ups and downs.
At one point, we got an Apple Arcade deal and we got a big injection of money, and that was great because we were living on nothing for a while. But then, of course, over time that disappeared away and they were getting tired of it so we moved development to a new studio in Bournemouth, called Amuzo.
Time Extension: There was a recent announcement that you would be heading up a new UK studio, based in Bournemouth launched by the sports media company Sporty Group. Is this the same company?
Hare: The studio in Bournemouth until practically last week was an independent company. But what happened was last year, almost exactly to this day last year, my company Tower Studios was acquired by Sporty. And then actually last week, this studio in Bournemouth was also acquired by Sporty.
So, previously Sociable Soccer was kind of like Tower Studios working in combination with Combo Breaker, which was a team in Finland as a separate company, and kind of splitting the money up and stuff. And what Sporty's done is acquired Tower and acquired this new studio that we're working with, who are based in Bournemouth. So we're all part of the Sporty group now.
Time Extension: How has that been so far?
Hare: Sporty's been great. To give you an idea of the difference, if you talked to me a year and a bit ago when we were still working with the guys in Finland (before Sporty had come on board), we had gone through some ups and downs and we were down to a three or four-man team. We had to reduce it down because there was some money that we didn't get.
With Sporty coming in, not only have they acquired the company, which has been good for me, because I've got some money for my company being acquired, but they've massively increased the team size. We're now between 25 and 30 people in development and publishing. We were considerably weaker than that until very recently. So they've given us a chance to now compete somewhat.
That doesn't mean we instantly have a team the size of EA's team making EA Sports FC or whatever you wanna call it — the ex-FIFA. But it means we can now start to have a team slightly smaller or not too dissimilar in size to the guys that make Dream League Soccer, who obviously make a great product.
Other than that, we still have our license with FIFPRO, which gives us all the football stars. And it just gives us a chance to just do this properly now. It's been really hard working with a small team for 10 years on this. It's taken ages to get this latest one out. It's been really hard, but it's been great to finally get Sociable Soccer out on all the platforms, we said we would do, in 2015.
Time Extension: The press release about the new studio in Bournemouth mentioned that you guys are working on a new football game for mobile as well. Is that something that's going to be coming to consoles too hopefully?
Hare: Very much so. We've always wanted to do a full-platform game, like all platforms. But you can't do them all simultaneously. You have to cycle through them.
The market's quite aggressively free to play at the moment. So we're kind of looking at taking a free-to-play view on the mobile space, and then over time, we'll look at bringing the new stuff that we're doing across to other platforms. That is the way games are going right now. You don't have any choice. You have to go with the games industry momentum or die.
Time Extension: One thing you've been vocal about in the past is games like FIFA that have stuff like loot boxes. We're guessing that's something that you'd still try to stay away from completely.
Hare: Absolutely! Yeah, we don't have anything like that at all in the game. Within the game modes that have team collection, it's more about the rhythm of how you go about that.
I can't say for definite, but I mean, in the current plans, there's no plan for anything like lootboxes. Unless the market twists again and suddenly we get all AI-driven monetization solutions that we haven't even thought about now. And who knows, that could actually happen. We have to move with the times, but right now there is no plan for loot boxy stuff at all.
Time Extension: How has your approach to designing football games changed over the years?
Hare: From my perspective, the approach hasn't ever really changed. It's kind of like Sensible Soccer mentality but for the current machinery. Back then, we put all the proper football teams in.
If you look at Sensible World of Soccer, and you look at this, there are a lot of comparisons to be made. What you don't have though currently in the game is the career mode like Sensible World of Soccer. We looked at doing a career mode more akin to Ultimate Team. And, right now, it is an interesting challenge to take some of those pieces of Sensible World of Soccer, which would be nice to stick back in but to get it working with a current monetization model. So, that's kind of our challenge. And there's also a bunch of other great stuff. I mean, there's a lot of good new stuff that's gone into football games since Sensible World of Soccer.
I don't want to give away too much, but I will let you know we're looking at some interesting features that have been in other games for a long time that we've never put into Sociable Soccer. And to be clear, the new game we're working on has a different code base, but with influences from Sociable Soccer. Mixing that up has enabled us to do many exciting new things we couldn't do with Sociable Soccer. So it's like a rebuild from the ground up.
Our focus is on local multiplayer. And what people used to do with Sensible Soccer when you play against your brother, your friends, your dad, your sister, your cousin, or whatever. It's about bringing that back to people now, on their devices. So I think that's where we feel we are at our strongest and our game is at its best. It's about then bringing to the player more variety in that local multiplayer space. I think that's where we can be quite dominant across all the platforms.
Time Extension: Sociable Soccer has obviously been around for 10 years now, and it's got to a point where there is some name recognition in the market. Does that kind of help soften the blow a bit that you don't have access to Sensible name?
Hare: Not really. I was offered the chance to call it Sensible Soccer nine years ago. I could have cut a deal with Codemasters before they were acquired by EA.
No, from my perspective, I didn't want it to be called Sensible precisely because people would compare it to Sensible World of Soccer, which is the best game I've ever made, and they would almost inevitably compare it negatively.
Fawlty Towers is a good example — there were very few episodes made. By using a name that's your own thing just to make money outside of it and weaken it creatively is a negative step for any artist. Maybe commercially, it's a good step, but for me, I'm the last person who wants to fuck Sensible Soccer up.
Everyone else, they don't care, they make a bit of money out of it. For me, it's much more than money. So, no, it was a conscious decision. With Sociable, people will understand it's related. It's not legally related, it's a separate entity. But you know, each name lives in a time.
I made a remake of Bitmap Brothers' Speedball with Tower Studios in 2012; it was okay. We went to number one, but six months later it was nothing. It's like any band that makes a comeback. They have a little comeback tour and then they disappear again. You can't recapture that time. It's gone. Sensible Soccer's time had gone. There will come a time when Sociable Soccer's time will have gone as well. As an artist, you can't live in your past.
If you want to check out the latest version of Sociable Soccer — Sociable Soccer 25 — it is currently available across PC (Steam), PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.