The first thing I kept coming back to with FieldGoal was that the game needed memory.
I DIDN’T WANT
A MENU. I WANTED
A WORLD.
When I started shaping FieldGoal, I knew I wanted the basketball itself to matter. But I also knew that the games could not exist in isolation. A result should change something. A promotion should mean something. A rivalry should have a past. A coach should be able to leave one franchise, take that history with them and build something somewhere else.
That is why FieldGoal is built around the United Basketball Universe. The UBU is presented as an institution founded in 1990, with a history that stretches across three tiers and 36 franchises. The UBA sits at the top, the UBC in the middle, and the ABL forms the grassroots tier. The structure gives the player somewhere to start, somewhere to go, and something to lose.
THE PYRAMID
IS THE POINT.
A three-tier pyramid sounds simple until I started thinking about what it actually means for a career. A franchise moving up changes its opponents, expectations and resources. A franchise moving down changes the pressure around it. A coach can spend years trying to establish a team, leave for another opportunity, or become attached to a particular institution.
The season is built around 46 regular-season games. Those games feed standings, player statistics, morale, chemistry and the wider narrative layer. The playoffs then become part of the historical record rather than a disposable end screen.
I like that structure because it gives the numbers somewhere to go. A statistic is more interesting when I know why it matters. A winning streak can become a title race. A bad run can become a relegation battle. A player breaking out can become the beginning of a career arc.
HISTORY SHOULD
BE PLAYABLE.
I have been especially interested in the idea that the universe should remember what happened. FieldGoal tracks championship history, player careers, rivalries and coaching records. Head-to-head history can sit beside a matchup. A career can move between franchises. Arena improvements can remain in place over time.
That is the difference between building a collection of features and building a world. The features are useful individually, but together they give the player a reason to care about continuity.
I want someone to look back at a save and remember it as a story rather than a spreadsheet: the franchise that nearly went down, the player who suddenly became indispensable, the promotion that changed everything, or the season where a dynasty finally ended.
THE WORLD
COMES FIRST.
FieldGoal is still in development, so I am deliberately leaving room for the universe to grow. The important thing for me is the direction: basketball should happen inside a world that has context, consequences and memory.
If I get that right, I do not need to script every memorable moment. I can give the simulation enough structure to create the conditions for those moments itself.