This post will be updated with each of the official feature videos as and when they're posted.

Hello and welcome to the one and only Sports Interactive studio, the place where Football Manager is created each and every year.

You'll notice that this is a shiny new office a new space for a new game, which is exactly what we're here to talk to you about today.

As I'm going to be bringing you an insight into the Football Manager 2022 headline feature set from inside the studio.

Across two episodes I'm going to be talking to the people behind the game, from the studio itself to figures from the wider footballing world to explain how this year's key additions came to life from ideas within a database to detailed game features.

Here I'll be chatting with key members of the SI studio across a variety of departments and game areas beginning with none other than the Studio Director, the gaffer, Miles Jacobson.

Miles, it's lovely to meet you in person.

The last time we spoke was in the middle of a pandemic.

This is a year on, of course, from FM21...

Where is the company a year on, what's changed?

Of course the world's changed a lot, but what about the company specifically?

Well we're still in a pandemic at the moment so we're being very careful with the pandemic because the team here are very important to us

So we are still mainly working from home, it's actually lovely being in the office today its' such a fantastic new space and we're not in here properly at the moment

But it's meant we've changed so much in the studio in the last year because we delivered a game during the pandemic last year in the real heat of it which a lot of other studios weren't able to do

So many games have gone back.

And we learned a lot about pain points and pressure points last year

And it was not an easy game to release, FM21

So we've changed a lot of practices in the studio for FM22

And it's meant that we were able to start working on new features a litle bit earlier this year

And get them to a more polished state earlier

And hopefully we're going to be delivering something brilliant for everyone in the near future

So the future we're going to dive into in these couple of videos and the insights are going to be fascinating for all of the fans of FM22...

Or they will be fans of FM22 (hope so).

Me too. But of course you have to say goodbye, I guess, to FM21

When you look backwards and reflect on that as a game what are your overarching feelings on the game?

If you look at the playtimes on the game it showed that people loved it.

And that's the thing that means the most to us when people are really getting into their games and when their saves come to life in their head.

And particularly in the last year because it has been so tough to people.

For FM22, what do you want people to think and feel?

Kind of the same. We want people to be escaping into their own fantasy world where they are a football manager - an escape from the real world - a suspension of disbelief.

This year we've got a lot more interaction and information in the game to really help that world become alive, even more than it normally does.

We've got the data hub and all the extra information there...

And then there's even things like the value revamp changes which are going to change the way that people do transfers inside the game.

It looks like a small change at first but is actually quite a big thing.

Plus loads more changes as well that you'll find out more about in this video and over the next few weeks.

Absoliutely, Miles. So before we get stuck into all of that detail let's go back and take a look at how the Football Manager features process starts.

I'm joined now by Johnny , the Visualisation Director at Sports Interactive.

Thank you for sitting down and having a chat with me I'm fascinated to, first of all, understand your role and then understand the process of working through features and getting them into the game

Especially FM22

So let's start off with you role - Visualisation Director it's stunning to say, but what does it mean?

It's a lot of syllables, but essentially I head up the creative disciplines at SI

So that's teams across art, animation, design, UI, UX, audio, anything creative

And so the features within the game, they change every single year it develops, it evolves. How does that come about?

Because I would imagine, having seen on Twitter or on YouTube or wherever it might be...

There are a lot of opinions, there are a lot of ideas...

First of all how many ideas are there around features for FM lying about?

Gosh! That's a great question.

So, we're very active to invite ideas and feature requests not just from the SI team, but also from the broader FM community.

We have a live backlog of, I think it's, 7,000 ideas and that's always being managed and being reviewed.

In terms of the design process... that usually starts with Miles and myself and some of the designers will sit down and understand the priority of perhaps what aspects we'd like to see in a given cycle

And then the design team will usually run... or I'll run, an ideation session

And you can imagine that like a Post-It slam

We've been doing that virtually in lockdown, of course

But on those Post-It notes will be... we'll collate some of the ideas that relate to a given feature

From the community and from the team and then through a process we'll refine that into a high-level design document

Then into a full technical design document and the goal of that document is to allow the developers and the engineers to implement that feature

It's time to talk about one of the headline features in FM22...

The data hub. Sounds serious... kind of is.

Elliott the Junior Software Engineer joins me right now.

You played a huge part in the next stage of bringing in analytics to the next level that happened in FM21 with xG.

How does it go beyond that this year with the data hub?

So the introduction of xG and the analytics stuff we did last year was pretty big for us.

We think that Football Manger is quite important for how people in the community in general view sports and statistics.

We saw a big uptake... we saw a lot of people really liking what we did with xG.

We wanted to really push on this because we think it's important not just for fans and not just for representing reality, but because of our aim to make Football Manager an accurate representation of what being a manager at a football club is like.

We know from conversations with football clubs...

We know from the perception of what football clubs are now that these data teams and analytics in general are very, very important for the function of modern football clubs.

People credit analysts in interviews, people talk about the fact that they're making these marginal gains.

We wanted to be able to push that and make sure that our users are getting a similar experience.

So what I loved when looking at the data hub was, like you say, that 'painting of pictures'.

That can allow you to take in things quickly.

If we go on to the data hub... what pictures are we going to see during the game and how can they help us?

Which new elements will we see in FM22 in the data hub?

We've introduced 'momentum', which gives you a perception of the flow of a match.

It might give you information about this team has been performing particularly well in these time periods.

You've had a load of shots, you've had a load of touches in the final third.

This gives you a way of diagnosing match performance that's agnostic from the result

And I really like this one, by the way, because people who've ever seen me play FM know that I can tinker on occasion.

And so the momentum map was fantastic because I made a couple of changes when I played the game...

And it started to go awry and I was like "Okay, you can learn as a player within the game... don't do that."

Don't make those changes or be careful in how you make those changes.

That's what I really enjoyed from the momentum map.

What other things will we see? Elliot: There's another thing. Obviously they've always been in the game, but we've made improvements to pass maps.

So, as you talk about systems, you talk about tweaks

You'll be able to see in much more detail, much more intuitively, the way a game is played out between your players.

You might see that your centre-backs are circulating the ball between each other really well but they're not getting it up the pitch because there's a strong line between them.

It's just giving users more ways of diagnosing what's going wrong with their team, or going really well, without having to dig into huge repositories of information they might not know about.

James: With so much data in the Data Hub, some people will want to look at it on face value.

Some people will want even more - is that an element you've featured in this time round?

Elliot: Yeah, so we've tried to make sure we cover all bases. We've got this 'Ask For' system, where users can literally ask their analysts for pieces of information.

As we've talked about, the momentum map, the pass maps, you can request these for matches.

You can request your Shot Maps, the xG timelines you saw last year, but we've also added a few different things, so you can dig into specific information about a metric you really care about. You care about how well you defenders are heading the ball, you ask your analyst for a graph on Heading.

It shows you where your players and you know straight away how well they're doing.

There's also stuff like Zone Map information.

It breaks down the pitch and shows how frequently you're doing things in different areas.

It's just ways of turning existing, large amounts of data into something someone can learn something from and make changes because that's what we care about. We care about users.

Like you say, being able to tinker, being able to learn from seeing all this information that can be quite overwhelming. We want to turn it into something intuitive.

James: So you now know the right information, it's time to talk about your team on the pitch.

I'm now joined by Nic, the Match Producer, who deals with everything around the all-important Match Engine.

For those few people that don't understand the breakdown of what the Match Engine is, can you describe that to me?

Nic: Yes, of course. So the Match Engine itself is a realistic simulation of football.

So, we're trying to simulate the game as it is, with 22 players making decisions on the pitch, and trying to balance that with what the real world conceives as football.

James: So let's talk about FM22. This year specifically, how is it moving on? There are a few elements here that I'm privy to, which is amazing, and I'd love you to explain them to me in a bit more detail.

So, first of all, Dribbling. How has that changed in the Match Engine?

Nic: For a number of cycles, we've actually been working behind-the-scenes to bring a new animation engine to life.

We'll be debuting our new animation engine in FM22.

Our old animation engine, whilst important for the growth of improving the 3D elements of the game, we were restricted. So, our old animations were lumped on to that 2D disc but our new animation engine gives us a lot more freedom. The players aren't restricted to movement on the disc, they can move off of it, which is really important to get them in situations to make touches of the ball look even more realistic.

So, we've got this overall vision to a) make football believable and authentic

, and b) to eradicate foot sliding.

Something we've really worked hard on this year is that element of the player touching the ball.

If you've seen it in previous versions of the game, the player doesn't actually touch the ball as succinctly as it does now.

That's our foundation. The new animation engine is our foundation for growing going forward.

Because we've improved the visuals, we've also had to improve the AI and the decision of when to dribble, when to not dribble, or when to turn, for example.

So, they might be dribbling in a rabbit hole, might need to turn and get out of trouble, use the fine motion-capture animations we've got for turns and dribbles and cuts to then play it backwards

James: It's so lovely to see you so excited about it! It's just fantastic!

Ok, let's keep moving. Let's stick with defence then - you were talking about tackles and bits and pieces like that.

Pressing. Pressing is again becoming that little bit more intelligent, is that right?

Nic: Yes, so we've overhauled the pressing system and added triggers, which is the most important element of your pressing system.

Within the instructions that you had in the game already, so your Line of Engagement, your Defensive Line, where you want to show players, either down the line or inside, that all links up to the angles in which the players then go and press the ball.

The best element of the pressing this year, for me, is that players now, based on their stamina, have the concept of their sprint capacity.

They know when they can press and when they can't

So, you know, just a plug-and-play Gegenpress system is going to be a thing of the past.

You really need to know that you've got the right players, so your recruitment will be key.

You want players with obviously good stamina to fit in those systems and also your training, your work on the pitch and the training field is going to be really important to then transition into that match environment.

James: I was fortunate enough to have a little go on the game yesterday and I felt it myself.

My beloved QPR, we were doing well in the first half but I think we overpressed a bit and the guys were struggling in the second half and we ended up drawing that game. So, the consequences there are much greater and, in terms of the stamina of the players, you spoke about it there a little bit, if a team is pressing too much, that's going to affect the passing, and the first touch and all those elements as well, right?

Nic: Yeah, definitely. It's going to affect the accuracy of what they can perform, because this cycle we've actually overhauled our accuracy as well.

We've added more accuracy and inaccuracy into elements like passing, shots, first touch.

We've improved those elements because we felt like, realistically, we weren't simulating overhit passes very well, we weren't simulating poor first touches, again, to link it into our pressing.

And so, there were all those elements we needed to improve.

We were like "let's do it all in one go, let's improve the whole so that we can get those little intricate details".

James: So there's loads of different elements within the Match Engine which have been improved, but there's a brand-new role as well in the defence.

Three centre-backs has been very, very popular over the last few years but in particular, I think, over the last 18 months and there's a new Wide Centre-Back role. Tell us about that.

Nic: It's going to be a really, really enjoyable role for our fans.

They've been wanting this for a while and we could have rushed it in and just put in a role but that is really never our intention.

We want to simulate the role accurately and so we wanted to see it and watch it in different systems and setups, and we've seen the evolution of the role.

Managers have been so creative with how they've used their Wide Centre-Backs, so we've added that realism with different duties as well to suit whatever tactical style you want to perform.

But it isn't just the role itself.

That role, it performs a number of duties.

It attacks, so it overlaps and it underlaps.

Previously, in other iterations of the game, we have had those instructions of underlap and overlap but they're saved for your Full-Backs, your Wing-Backs, your Inverted Wingers, for your Wingers.

They're not necessarily used for your Centre-Backs, so for us it was about modifying those tactical instructions and making sure that we not only included the Centre-Back in there, but looked at how does your Full-Back or Wing-Back move off the basis of that Centre-Back?

How do the players in front of them move?

How do the players behind them, like a Defensive Midfielder, move and how does that cover for the player?

So, for us, it was about the movement of the player on the ball, what they do with it, and movement off the ball.

Where are they when you lose the ball? That's going to be fundamental for the whole system

It's up to us to do a bit more education as well of how you can use that role in the system because there's going to be a lot of managers, as soon as the game goes out, who go "right, I want both my Wide Centre-Backs on Attack duty". They're going to go forward but they don't have a DM in there!

Then there's going to be no cover and they're going to get hit on the counter so it's also about us doing it right and this is one role that the whole system needs to be supported around it.

That's it for today, great to get an insight into the changes to the match experience and the wealth of new information available in the Data Hub.

We're going to go and chat some more with some other guests from within the studio and the real football world about Transfer Deadline Day and better backroom communication thanks to revamped Staff Meetings which you'll see in part two!

If its presented as sloppy as this post, it is gonna be great. Looking forward. 2-3 changes, a new wide centre back, some improvements here and there and Ka-Ching!

Part 2 Deadline and Staff Meetings
 

Hello and welcome back to FM22 feature insight

If you haven't yet watched part one

Stop what you're doing and go and watch that

The link is in the description

There we talked through the new data hub as well as further improvements to the match engine

And today we'll be bringing you information on a brand new deadline day experience

And the fresh staff meeting feature that will elevate the way you work with your backroom staff

So being around the office and chatting to different people

I got to hear their thoughts on how the game is put together

I think the balance between that realism and the authenticity of the game and it being immersive

I find that really, really interesting

So for the person who's got the finest of the eyes

How do you walk that tightrope of the two?

Carefully... because there are times when I'll be sitting there playing the game

And I play the game on two computers essentially

I've got one that I'm taking notes on and one that I'm playing the game on

And I will go down to the minutest of detail on how it should be in the real world

We kind of have to balance that

And part of my job as the director rather than as a designer

Is actually making those difficult decisions

On where we have to be completely accurate

And where we can have a little bit of a licence to tweak things

So that it's more enjoyable for people

And so that it doesn't break the reality

Because there are things that happen in the real-world in football that people would not believe

They just wouldn't believe them

And anytime you see something in game that you don't believe

It takes you out of that escape, out of that world back into the real world

And we try to stop that as much as possible

We want that to be split seconds, rather than seconds or minutes

So it being immersive is a little tap on the shoulder of it being real all the time?

Yes. And the immersion is something that has taken us so long to understand how we do it

Those first few versions of the game we weren't thinking in the same way that we do now

It's always at the top... the suspension of disbelief is always at the top

So in terms of things being immersive...

I don't think there's anything more immersive in the modern day

Outside of the game itself, than deadline day

And in this video we wanted to talk about

And talk to people who understand deadline day

So there was only one person we could talk to

Fabrizio Romano, mister deadline day himself

Take a look at this

Deadline day is something incredible because the feeling you have

As a fan, as a journalist, as a director, as a player as an agent

As everyone involved in this game

Is that something is happening now, in this moment

When you have transfer rumours in June, in July

It can take days, weeks, sometimes months before the player joins the club

On deadline day everything is special because it's going to happen in some minutes, in some hours

So the feeling is something that is impossible to replicate in other sports

It's something that football only happens with big, big names moving to top clubs

And with shocking news sometimes happening because it's not always easy to complete deals on deadline day

Sometimes deals are collapsing, sometimes surprising moves are happening

So everything is really new to the fans

And this is why deadline day is something special

I still remember one time a sporting director told me "remember that sometimes in football it's happening that in June a player is untouchable, in July he's available for big money, in August he's available for normal money and on deadline day he's available on loan and they pay part of the salary."

So this is why deadline day is crazy

Sometimes the situations are going to change and the opportunities are real

This is why they are waiting until the last minute sometimes

It's not about the strategy sometimes, it's about the domino

But this is why deadline day is crazy and it's so opposite.

From what I know the agents are now really active in proposing players and meeting with clubs

Of course we also have clubs who prefer to decide by themselves and to decide their targets

But sometimes agents are offering top players also

And you have big opportunity of big names moving to top clubs thanks to agents offering the players

So I think it’s something that now is part of the transfer market

For me it's like Christmas Day when Football Manager will be out because having a deadline day in Football Manager so transfers in the best way and Football Manager in the same moment will be the best moment of my year and will be amazing to try this new feature to have transfer market with such a new update for the game and trying to spend deadline day on the game to have the right strategy to find the right opportunities to plan for my areas so I really love this feature i'm already planning for my signings

I have all my names on one note on my phone to have everything ready for when the game will be out to start playing

So we spoke to mister transfer window himself, Fabrizio Romano

Tom Bray, the senior UI/UX designer for Football Manager joins me right now

To really dive into how FM22 has revamped deadline day

Before we get into that, tell me about your role at Football Manager

So, as you just said there, Senior UI/UX Designer is a crossover

The UX side of it is the user experience

So how people play the game, making sure that we cover off usability

Making sure it works basically

If it doesn't work then users are going to get frustrated with it

So there's that side of it

And the UI side of it is the user interface

So we've got to make sure that the designs we’re creating

For Football Manager are nice polished screens

That users are really engaged with and they want to get more out of

So going into that deadline day coverage and again I think it's a thing that I'm realising

The I didn't realise before chatting to you all

Is that you want it to feel like real life
'Feel' being the important word

I've been able to experience it and, from my point of view,

It does feel like something that you're not working along your Football Manager

You get to this day and then you dive into it

Is that what you're getting across and what can people expect from deadline day?

There's a lot of things that we want to introduce

Before you get to deadline day there's always talk about rumours

Who's doing what, who's going where

So we did a few build-up bits that lead up to it

Like a week before and then the day before

And also the press conference questions that we build into it

Trying to bring some personal touches to it

That allow the user to tell the press what they're looking for

And when you enter it, we wanted you to feel...

You've got all your club colours there as your main interface

As soon as I go into deadline day

Boom! I've got the familiarity of the gold and black

And everything goes into that mode

There's that... countdown timers...

A processing bar telling you you've got seven hours left

Just to give you that familiarity and add that pressure to it

You're under a timer here and you've got to get those deals done

You use the word 'Boom!' there... that is it, isn't it?

When you think about deadline day

Anything could happen you could bring anyone in

And it could be those last-minute moves

That's what I really like about it this year

There's an overview of the chaos

How did you go about creating something that people can take in and understand

But still giving you that little element of chaos?

It's kind of reworking it

Our job is to give a user experience

It's to make sure that we're giving you the right content at the right moment

And giving you that level of doubt, maybe?

But at the same time you've got to cause chaos in this, you know.

You've got to say "So you were signing a left-back the other day, what about this left-back? Then the agent offer comes and says "my client is looking for a move".

Then you're saying "Oh, I've got to move for this player now".

There's an element of that. We're just dangling carrots, basically, to say "you haven't thought about this player, why don't you?"

It goes for the transfer news as well.

If agents aren't offering you players, you're going to read about what's going on like we do in the media and see that a player is linked to another club.

You're then going, I quite like that, I didn't realise they were up for sale or whatever.

So it's just making the user think that there's more out there than they think there is and that kind of surprise element is what we want.

It's people thinking that Deadline Day has made a real change to their saves because they did something slightly different from normal, basically.

James: So we've covered the brand-new Data Hub, Match Engine improvements and Deadline Day, so now's the time to introduce you to a new way of collaborating with your staff.

In addition to the Recruitment Meeting introduced in FM21, you'll now have a weekly Staff Meeting with your team to cover a wide range of topics, including Coaching, Development, Staffing and Squad Planning.

To talk more about how this feature takes inspiration from the way managers speak with their teams in the real world, we caught up with Chris Wilder.

Chris: Communication is key, however that's done.

Whether it's as simplistic as a chat over coffee with a member of staff, group meetings with that particular department or an overall team meeting with all departments brought into the picture.

So, you know, it's huge that the communication levels are right from manager downwards so the relevant information gets passed through.

The meetings that we have when we're talking can be of all different kinds and natures.

One-to-one meetings, meetings with departments, individual departments that make up a football club.

From the Sports Science deparment to the Video Analysis department to the Coaching department to the Academy department, it's all bringing that together into one major weekly meeting which

I should imagine now that the majority, if not all, football clubs do.

Especially at the highest level.

Trust is a huge word in football because, as I said, you can't do it all on your own.

Delegation and man-management of your staff so they know what you're looking for.

People have talked about it - managers have possibly 50 different problems a day to deal with.

You're preparing training, you're looking at if players are injured, if they're available to train, are they available for the next match.

Yet again, those meetings, whether you're sitting in your one-to-ones or you're just walking round and seeing people in the cafeteria or the restaurant, or just having a general catch-up coffee with them is hugely important.

James: So, Miles, we've just heard from Chris Wilder about how important it is he hears from his backroom staff and that's an element of the game this year with the Staff Meeting.

How important is it for you, who for so long has made a game about football and I'm sure you've met a lot of people, to get their perspective and insights a bit like is happening in the game itself with Staff Meetings.

Miles: It's essential and it has been for a long time.

Before we were even making the Football Manager series, when we were still making our old series, we knew that the game had become part of football because people started talking in the press about how they were scouting players and using our data to go and find players.

Our Research team is such an important part of what we do and having 1,000 scouts around the world watching players week in, week out, that's something football have become involved in

But we don't work at football clubs day-to-day and whilst for over a decade we've had unrivalled access at certain clubs and that unrivalled access has really helped drive the game, we've grown a lot as a studio in the last couple of years.

There's not just 50 of us any more. You've learned about some of the people today in this video and about the new roles we have and the way we're doing features now.

So it was really important that that knowledge and access wasn't just in my head anymore and that we were able to unlock it a little bit.

We setup in the studio what we call the FootTalks which are private, because if they aren't private we don't actually get proper information out of people.

There's a very big difference in talking to someone privately and talking to someone publicly on what will get discussed.

The guests come along to the FootTalks and it's normally me that gets to interview them and I'm asking them questions around future features that we're working on and how they do things in real life, and how that will make things work in-game.

One of the reasons you get the option in Staff Meetings on how often to have them is because different Head Coaches and Managers have given us different answers as have Assistant Managers, as have Data Analysts, as have Technical Scouts.

We have a wide variety of people that we actually talk to from inside the game, including players, as part of the FootTalks and really try to drill down into things that are going to help steer the game.

James: Miles, it's been a joy to sit down and chat with you and meet you in-person for the first time but it would be amiss for me to not give you the opportunity to to chat to the people around the world that love the game as we look forward to FM22 coming out.

Miles: I just want to thank everyone for their support over the years. The fact that people keep buying the game means we can continue to keep making the game and continue to make it better.

I hope that in these difficult times everyone is happy and healthy and really loves what we're doing with FM22 as they have with previous games.

You keep supporting and we'll keep delivering as best we can.

James: And that's it! All four headline areas detailed by the people who powered the features themselves with a little guidance from some experts within football too.

There's even more detail to come from the Football Manager team.

Keep an eye out for in-depth Feature Blogs that'll go even further under the hood on those key areas as well as other exciting new additions that'll drop on the Football Manager social channels over the next few weeks.

Remember, FM22 is out November 9th and if you pre-purchase now on PC or Mac you can secure 10% and Early Access.

Thanks for joining me here in the studio and good luck with your FM22 saves!