American Football in Canadian Football 2017

While it was teased at over the past few weeks (a screen shot and a quick mention in the Update notes published on the 21^st of September) today we formally announced the addition of another new feature coming in the October Update of Canadian Football 2017.

We’ve added the option to play under a subset of American football rules. So along with the traditional Canadian football rules, you’ll now also have the option to play with a 100 yard field, 4 downs, 11 men per side, 3 time outs per half, goal posts on the dead ball line, and a couple of other minor rule differences are included as well.

But to be clear, this is a subset of rules, it’s not a full reproduction of professional US football rules. While playing under this rule set, you will not be able to score a Rouge or be penalized for No Yards, but you will not be able to fair catch either. A kickoff going out of bounds uses the same rules as Canadian football. Some of the penalties are Canadian football as well.

If the addition of US football rules proves popular we can look at expanding the ruleset in future editions of the game.

One of the first questions we were asked when this was announced was ‘Why? You should keep it Canadian’. Well first, it is still Canadian. The game still supports the full suite of professional Canadian football rules as default. - Canadian Football 2017 continues to be the only video game on the market, for any platform, that uses the complete Canadian football ruleset.

US football rules have been included in an attempt to expand the audience for the title. It’s no secret, and doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize, that a Canadian football game that is not licensed has a very limited market.

The purpose of including these US rule options is to open the game to a larger market and hopefully put the game into a position where we can continue to grow, improve, and add new features that appeal to fans on both sides of the 49^th. 

The first thing game players will notice with this ruleset in place is the game scores are generally much higher. The extra down, the removal of one of the pass coverage defenders, and the shorter field, results being able to move the ball down field faster.
 
The game’s difficulty level impacts blocking duration and pass coverage buffer (how close the defender gets to the receiver). This combined with adjusting the pass percentage slider should allow you to adjust the game to your liking. 

Canuck will be posting more updates and information on this and all the new features as we get closer towards release at the end of the month.

Thanks.