play-hard-sports posts

The Boston based PC sports game developer Play Hard has raised a lot of money in anticipation of its first major PC game release but today the company decided to call an audible and change its name to Quick Hit. The name change comes the same day it decided to revamp its web site, which gives more info about its upcoming browser based title, which is now titled Quick Hit Football 2009.

The site also offers up the first screenshots from the game which shows that it has a somewhat retro feel in terms of its top down perspective. The game will enter an open beta in the next few months and officially launch near the start of the NFL season this fall. The free-to-play game will allow registered players to take the role of a coach/general manager of a fictional pro football team with a number of different gameplay modes, RPG-like upgrade features and more. Quick Hit also announced that former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher has been signed to be the "voice" of the game, assisting players in their coaching decisions.

Football PC game fans (and when we say "football" we mean the American game, not soccer) got burned last year when EA Sports declined to release a version of Madden NFL 09 for the platform. We've been reporting since then on a new Boston-based game developer, Play Hard Sports, which was founded by a former CEO of Turbine and has hired former EA Sports and 2K Sports team members to work on their projects.

Today Play Hard announced that they have raised $8 million in additional venture capital funds to help develop their first large scale game, Play Hard Football. The company has now raised a total of $13 million since its announcement last April. The browser based game, where players take on the role of a coach/general manger of a football team and play against other people onlinem is currently taking sign-ups for people to beta test the game at its web site. The final game is expected to launch around the same time as the start of the 2009 NFL season (September).

A few months ago, we reported on a new online PC sports developer/publisher called Play Hard. The Boston based company was founded by former Turbine CEO Jeff Anderson with plans to fill in some of the gaps in the PC sports game genre that were left when EA Sports decided to cut back on their PC products.

Today, Play Hard announced that they have hired a number of new team members, including two former EA Sports members. Brandon Justice will be the company's new director of game design. He previously worked as lead producer for EA's Madden 2006 and 2007 titles and also worked on a number of 2K Sports titles. Also Stephen Rozner, who worked on a number of EA Sports games as lead software engineer, has joined Play Hard as their director of game technology. Play Hard has yet to announced specifics on their PC game plans.

[Via email press release]