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On Monday 11th August 2014 Sports Interactive director Miles Jacobson joined comedian Tony Jameson and Iain Macintosh on stage at the Apple Store in Regents Street to talk about the record breaking game, that’s so much more than just a game, Football Manager. It was a small gathering, maybe 50 odd people i've been informed there were around 150 in attendance, but the intimate setting added to the moment. It was like an AA meeting, we all knew why we were there, we all had the same problem and this was the one moment, in the presence of so many other addicts, that we felt secure in ourselves. Our host for the evening, football journalist and author of Football Manager Stole My Life, Iain Macintosh, entered the stage and quickly introduced Sports Interactive Director Miles Jacobson and Comedian Tony Jameson (who is touring with his hit show “Football Manager Ruined My Life” later this year).

The early discussion concerned Sports Interactive’s recent announcement of Pro Zone. Pro Zone have a program called Recruiter, which is essentially a database of Footballers with their stats gathered from real life matches, which can be filtered and searched just like the data in Football Manager. The partnership between Sports Interactive and Pro Zone will see the data from Football Manager be incorporated into Recruiter and used by clubs all over the world to help with scouting the next big talent. Football Manager is becoming less of a game and more like real life every year and this is perhaps the biggest step yet. Miles claims that the addition of Football Managers data in Recruiter is going to make it even better. While at the moment Recruiter is focused on video analysis of players, Miles points out that anyone can be made to look good on video and having statistics and personal attributes of every player is going to improve the system immensely. Although he’s quick to point out that it’s no substitute for seeing a player actually play and any manager or scout would be foolish to act on FM’s data alone, which is what makes a combination of both FM’s database and the existing Recruiter technology so great.

Of course this isn’t the first time SI have made their database available to football clubs. They announced a deal to offer their database to Everton football club a few years ago and Miles says that the feedback they’re getting on Pro Zone is a lot better than it was when the Everton deal was announced. Miles puts this down to the growing respect Football Manager is achieving amongst those in the real footballing world. Later on Miles claims that Sports Interactive see themselves as a football company now, rather than a gaming company. Of course Football Manager is always going to be their pride and joy, but don’t expect this to be the last time that Sports Interactive make movements into the real world of football.

After this initial discussion of Pro Zone the conversation moves on to Tony Jameson and his hit comedy tour Football Manager Ruined My Life. He talks candidly about the addiction and love of Football Manager that we all hold and how this has inspired his tour and some of the funny things that fans have said to him after shows. Miles and Iain join in the banter and Miles jokes that part of the reason the ability to have children is a part of Football Manager is due to his own inability to have children. The room goes awkwardly silent before breaking out into laughter, Miles attempts to explain what he meant it but it’s too late now, rumours of Miles’ impotence will probably spread like wildfire after this.

The trio continue to talk about all the Easter eggs in Football Manager, such as the April fools jokes where you’re tricked into thinking that your club has had a massive cash injection. Miles admitted that he once pushed the idea that after a few decades in the game Alien’s should land and become footballers but with a pace of 30 rather than 20. Apparently the idea never went anywhere, which is probably for the best. Features for future games are clearly on everyone’s mind but Miles dismisses any talk of FM15, telling us we’ll have to wait until October for that. Nonetheless we find out that audio commentary is unlikely to be included as the three hosts joke about how bad it was in CM2. Miles reminds us all how it would have to say “number 9 passes to number 7 who shoots at goal” because they couldn’t afford to record all the players names at the time. Iain says his favourite moments where when the commentator would take an age to say the score, Liverpool… 2… Arsenal… 0. Although Miles was quick to point out that he had nothing to do with removing the commentary and that Clive Tyldesley is a really lovely chap. Maybe it will make a comeback one day. You heard it here first folks!

Talk of CM2 quickly leads on to how Miles originally joined Sports Interactive. For a comprehensive lowdown I recommend reading Football Manager Stole My Life, but today we find out that while Miles was working in the music industry he swapped two Blur tickets for a place in the beta testing team. 20 years later and he’s still there. Since then Sports Interactive has continued to grow and has just past the milestone of 100 employees, which is actually surprisingly low for the number one selling PC game which topped the charts for a record breaking 22 weeks in a row. Once again we return to talk of features, clearly this is what everyone’s interested in and Miles claims that there are thousands of features that have been discussed and they already have more than enough for FM2016 and FM2017. He even suggests that they might lock down the FM2016 feature list early so that they can spend an extra month actually working on the game rather than discussing features. While that would be a shame on the one hand, since presumably our feature requests would be falling deaf ears, or at least put to one side until FM17, having extra time to perfect the game is surely going to be beneficial to the end product.

Iain and Tony take over a little bit, telling stories of all the different Football Manager Fanatics they’ve met around the country. Iain says the best story he heard while researching his book was of a manager who set fire to the bin in his lounge to try and replicate the flairs of an away game in Turkey. The classic tale is of course putting on a suit for a cup final, but Tony adds that he once took it so far that he sat outside his room after being given a touchline ban by the FA. Tony then breaks into song as he recalls the time he learnt the Cameroonian National Anthem to coincide with one particularly important Cup Final. It’s safe to say that Football Manager can really make people do the strangest things.

After that the floor was opened up for questions from the audience. Once again the focus was on features and Miles was quick to re-iterate, as he has done countless times, that FM will not be adding the feature to spend the wages you earn on houses, kids, cars and what not, nor will you be able to re-invest it into the club. The first because it’s not a part of what they want to do, which is quite simply to create a Football Management simulation, not The Sims, the second, because it’s just unrealistic. In the real world managers don’t invest their personal money into the club, so it shouldn’t be happening in Football Manager either. As for Chairman Manager, were you get to run every aspect of the club, Miles recommends the Football Chairman app for Android and iOS, which he says he’s played himself. Although he admits it’s nothing more than a toilet game (i.e. one you play for the 30 seconds you’re on the bog). At least we have a definitive answer on that then, Football Manager will not be adding the ability to run your own personal life or to run a club, it’s going to stick to being about being a manager of a football club. I hope that clears that up.

Moving on Miles is asked about having historical players in the game and in particular the FM 1888 version of the game that Sports Interactive announced as an April Fool in 2014. Miles laughs and admits that it got a lot more attention than he expected, but unfortunately it will never see the light of day. The main reason is that there are some things which will be impossible to get around. Miles gives the example that when the game gets to the 1950’s everyone will be trying to sign a 15 year old Pele and they’ll be no challenge to the game. Although Miles doesn’t mention it I’m sure another reason is simply that it won’t be commercially viable. Very few people would actually be interested in it and not for any sustained amount of time and the research that would have to go into it would probably take far too many man hours to be viable.

Another question is asked about Women’s football in FM. For this we get a definitive answer; until there are 10 teams getting attendance’s equivalent to the Championship, it will not be commercially viable to include the women’s game in Football Manager. Well that clears that up. Next Miles is asked about the Premier League licenses for logos, kits and player faces and lucky for us we get another clear and concise answer; EA Sports have bought the licences for another 5 years, so they won’t be available again until 2019. Even in 2019 it’s no guarantee that Sports Interactive will stand a chance, as EA could well get exclusive licences once again. It’s a shame, but at least we have an answer and an explanation and don’t forget, you can get the kits, logos and player faces for Football Manager from fansites very easily.

As we neared the end I knew that we wouldn’t get anything out of Miles concerning FM15 features, so I asked Miles something different; what, personally, does he want to see in Football Manager in the future? The response was perhaps not a direct answer to my question, it was not a specific feature that was currently impossible to add but that he’d love to add one day, instead Miles talked at length about the importance of the game as a form of escapism. The ability to be sucked into and completely immersed in the game world, without inconsistencies that act as a reality check, sucking you back out of the world and reminding you that it’s all just a game. In particular he spoke of the match engine and how frustrating it was to see unrealistic player movements and animation glitches. The game outside the match engine is, it seems, good enough, immersive enough, for what Miles wants it to be in terms of bringing you into an alternate world. The only time you feel pulled away and snapped back into the reality is during the games and that’s what Miles wants to see improved in the future; the match engine. He’s quick to point out that he doesn’t mean FIFA graphics (he doesn’t specifically mention FIFA but it seems to be what he was getting at), he doesn’t mean wavy hair and zoomed in faces that exactly mimic real life expressions. What Miles is talking about is player positioning and decision making. He wants to get rid of those moments when your keeper dives before the ball has even reached him, allowing it to easily role into the net. He wants to stop those moments when those perfectly laid tactical plans are ruined by the match engine pushing the centre backs too high while leaving the full backs sitting back to play the central striker on side.

I have to admit I agree with Miles that this needs to be focus, the rest of the game, the squad management and tactical side of the game is good, as are the media interactions and transfer dealings. Training is something I’ve never felt they’ve got quite right despite many attempts, but the only problem with the game, the thing that makes you stop playing, the thing that draws you out of this wonderfully constructed and riveting adventure, is the matches themselves. Quite what Sports Interactive have in mind for the future I don’t know, they’ve made it clear that they aren’t interested in going down the FIFA route, I’ve no doubt that one day they might, I don’t expect to still be seeing the quality of graphics we have today in 10 or 20 years time. But for now the important thing is to make the match engine as realistic as possible, this is what will captivate the audience. When you’re leaning forward peering over a player’s attributes, or squinting at the filter for a player search, that’s when you’re truly engaged. When the match kicks off, that’s when you start to look around the room, you glance down at your phone, you nip to the toilet. It may not seem like much, but it’s oh so important and hearing Miles talk about FM as a form of escapism is great, because it means he truly gets it, he’s a Football Manager fan himself and he understands why so many people are so addicted. The only worry is that he understands a little too well and it’s simply too much power for one man. If we let him continue there’s a good chance that we’re going to be stuck in front of our monitors for another decade or more at least. Football Manager 2014 sat at number one in the charts for 22 weeks, who knows how long FM2015 will captivate our imaginations for. I for one welcome our new pixelated overlords, our family, our friends, the very fabric of society may suffer for it, but personally I don’t care, I’m just excited to see what’s to come in FM15 and beyond.
Comments
Cymro
17 years ago
4 days ago
6,379
Cracking read this. Interesting to hear about the future of the series.

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