NCAA Football 10: Custom Conferences
Hey Everybody, I'm Ben Haumiller and I'm a designer on the NCAA Football series. I've been at Tiburon since 2000, starting out as a tester in QA, and I've been a member of the NCAA Football design team since NCAA 06. Since joining the team I've primary worked on our career modes (Dynasty, Campus Legend, etc.) our Online features, as well as a lot of the features you'll find when checking out the My NCAA and Team Management sections of the Main Menu. You would be hard pressed to find a more passionate college football fan than myself, so working on the NCAA Football series has been a dream come true.
On NCAA Football 09 I was the designer for what had been long considered the "Holy Grail of NCAA features", Online Dynasty. I couldn't have been more excited to get this feature into the game. Dynasty is without a doubt my favorite feature in any sports game, and bringing that experience online brought a tremendous amount of life into an already great game mode. Based on the feedback from the community I was not the only one that was able to resurrect gaming rivalries with old college roommates that now live on the other side of the country, increase my desire to sign the recruits in the nation for no other reason than to force the other dynasty members to settle for a 3 star prospect, and feeling the pressure of knowing the result of your head to head game will mean the difference between a BCS berth or finishing your season in December.
When it comes to any Dynasty (online of offline) it all starts with which team(s) will be human controlled. One of the most difficult decisions to make is which conference will be used. If you are all about the head to head games and want that BCS tie-in then the PAC-10 and Big East are great options since you know for sure you will play everyone each year. If you have a full 12 members and want to decide the conference title in a championship game, or if you want the challenge of taking a "mid major" and turning them into the next powerhouse you have a number of options.
However, sometimes it's not that easy, sometimes it can be next to impossible to find a conference with the right mix of teams to make everyone happy. Well in NCAA Football 10 we have made life easier on commissioners across the nation with the addition of Custom Conferences. Now you will be able to swap any school in or out of your conference and replace them with another FBS school. Each conference will keep their current number of members, so if you feel it's about time that Notre Dame joins the Big Ten you've got to decide which school will become an Independent. Since there are 120 FBS schools in real life, you will need to keep 120 FBS schools in your dynasty. While Michigan fans won't be able to prevent Ohio State from ever playing football again, they can take pride in relegating them to the MAC.
Custom Conferences will allow for increased flexibility in your dynasties. Now it's entirely up to you how the college football landscape will look in your dynasty. If you can't play with anyone but your Cornhuskers, and your friend feels the same way about Clemson don't just duke it out in a non-conference game, put a conference title on the line.
Wanna create a super conference with the top schools in the nation? Go right ahead. Do you miss the days of the old Southwest Conference, dust off the old wishbone playbook and put them all in the WAC, Mountain West, or Sun Belt. In NCAA Football 10 it's up to you how you want to set it up.
-Ben