Football Manager Handheld Preview

Football Manager 2006 is due for release on PC and Mac on October 21st. We spoke to Miles Jacobson from Sports Interactive about their latest game and the future of the series.

Pro-G: So what’s in a name? Nearly a year has passed since FM2005 made its competitive debut following the split with Eidos [now SCi Eidos, who retained the Championship Manager name], so how did that change impact on sales?

Miles Jacobson: Our sales of FM2005 were comparable or better than any of our previous titles globally. But it took a lot of hard work from us, Sega & our amazing community. The aim with FM2006 is to grow the market…

Pro-G: How has your change of publisher to Sega worked out for you so far, in what has been a year of diversifying their portfolio? Has Sega taken the hands-on approach, or have you been left to your own devices?

MJ: On a development level, they leave us to get on with it. We are fortunate to have a fantastic producer at Sega, and he and his team trust us to do what we need to do, and only tend to get involved when we ask them to (such as the tutorial) and there’s a large test team there too, to compliment our own. With marketing and PR, we work closely together to ensure that everyone is happy. We probably have a lot more creative freedom than most, aswell as lots of input in other areas, so we’re pretty happy.

Pro-G: How much tweaking of FM2005 has been undertaken for this year’s title?

MJ: We’ve announced 34 new features. There are dozens of others aswell that we’ll let people find for themselves. So a hell of a lot more than tweaking has gone on! There’s been a full dev team and a full research team working since the last release to ensure that FM2006 isn’t just an ‘update’.

Pro-G: It may seem a strange thing to suggest, given the sales records you continually set and such, but do you think that your titles are aimed at a hardcore section of gamers, or do you feel that FM2006 is accessible to all, and will welcome new players into your world?

MJ: When we started working on FM2006 we were looking at improving the game for 2 different groups – the hardcore, long term player, and the person who has dipped their feet in the water but was maybe a bit overwhelmed by the level of detail. We’re hoping that the 30,000 word tutorial helps the newer or new FM player, along with an easier to use interface, and new training module, whereas the hardcore have got features like the greyed out players, team talks, and a much more solid long term game world.

Pro-G: At E3 we asked how you felt about being the undisputed market leader, and your thoughts on the competition (at the time being Championship Manager). In addition to any further CM games, EA’s FIFA Manager (which has received a lick of polish) could now potentially be considered a rival. Are you concerned about a greater number of games vying for the same customers, or do you think that FM attracts a different type of gamer?

MJ: I think our games are pretty different to the others in the marketplace, because we are so anal about detail. We simulate every 1/6th-1/8th of a second of real football in our match engine. If you want to watch in real time, you can. The more arcade based engines simulate 6-8 seconds of real football per minute. That’s why the clock goes so fast, and the action is a lot more end to end, rather than our real simulation of football, which involves a lot of passing about.

We concentrate on gameplay, others might concentrate on looking pretty. But there is room for all of us in the market, and the other styles of games can grow the market for all of us. Competition is good – it keeps us on our toes.

Pro-G: Despite having lost countless hours to the CM/FM series (with a lot of time devoted to hot-seat play), I never tended to tinker with training or formations, and this made the game very easy to play in short sessions (play a match or two, then save and do something else), and I never felt I was missing out on anything (except silverware!). Was making the game as deep or shallow as the player wanted a design decision, or do the team believe there is a ‘right-way’ to play it?

MJ: There is no right or wrong way to play our games. There is no right or wrong configuration. For example, I play the game with a small database, and normal detail, whereas Paul Collyer won’t play the game without extra detail, and a larger db. I want to get through the season, he’s happy to play it slow. So everyone plays it the way they want to, and it’s great that we have such a cross section of players of the game in the company as it means that everyone ends up happy with the way it turns out.

Pro-G: Online play has never officially been supported by SI, but generally has been available. Is this an avenue you are going to pursue in future titles?

MJ: We have supported online for years – there is a misnomer that we don’t! Both we and Sega currently support up to 32 players for both hotseat and LAN play. It’s faster this year too, due to some of the screens having optimised packet sizes.

Pro-G: On the subject of the new training system, what was the thinking behind this approach? [From CM4 onwards the game allowed you to customise the training schedules to an impressive/anal degree, depending on your viewpoint.]

MJ: I was heavily involved with designing those modules and I didn’t use them, so we couldn’t really expect anyone else to! Whilst amazingly detailed, according to our research, no one was bothering because it was too complicated. Going with the new system – which is a lot more realistic from a manager point of view because of the real life managers’ normal workload, making the coaches a more important part of the game, and that we sent Neil from SI on a Coaching course so that we could get it as accurate as possible – has meant that already more people are using it (just from the beta demo) than ever bothered before, which is a very good thing indeed.

Pro-G: I have to confess on Friday 17th March 1999 my friend and I both arranged to take the day off work so I could buy Championship Manager 3, and I remember the day well. It is the only time I have ever taken time-off to get a game, and I daresay I wasn’t the only one. Has anyone at SI ever felt a similar buzz of excitement once they have been able to play a final version, or is it largely a time of relief that it is (temporarily) over?

MJ: The vast majority of us play the game throughout development. One of the perks of the job! We do start an office network game as soon as we go gold in the English Championship. The first week is for people to “tinker” and then the season starts, so we’re still in the tinkering stage at the moment, will do pre-season on Monday, then the season starts on Tuesday, which is a bit unfair on me as I’m off to X05 to show the Xbox 360 version of Football Manager 2006 for the first time.

Pro-G: While we’re talking about the Xbox 360 version, are you looking at ways of running it utilising the console’s RAM only, or will it require the use of the hard-drive? Will the game need to be tailored a lot to work on the 360, and how feature-complete will it be (in comparison to the PC titles)?

MJ: As previously revealed, the game will require a hard-drive. It will be feature complete, although the network modes will be replaced by special Xbox Live modes. There are a couple of things that you won’t be able to do on a non HD TV, such as split screen mode, just because there is no way to display them in the lower resolution. It’s running really well at the moment, and we’ve still got 5/6 months to go in dev, so it’s going to be amazing once it’s finished.

Pro-G: A PSP version of FM2006 is also in the works, and it is a feat that many will find hard to believe. Can you please tell us a little more about this version, and details of what compromises have had to be made?

MJ: A PSP version of Football Manager is in the works, not Football Manager 2006. We’ve taken a different approach to the development of the game compared to the PC/Mac and Xbox 360 versions as a handheld experience is very different to that of one in your living room. We currently have 6 country’s leagues in the game, although this might rise before launch, and the idea of it is to be the perfect game to play on the bus, at half time, on the train, and therefore it needs to be simpler to play compared to our PC/Mac and Xbox 360 games. Your team saw the direction we were going in at E3 and seemed happy, and we’ll be showing it off properly in the New Year.

Pro-G: What was the major factor in you deciding to produce a PSP version of Football Manager?

MJ: We loved the machine, and the challenge of making a handheld version of our games.

Pro-G: Do you think that the Xbox 360/PSP market will take to Football Manager?

MJ: I hope so! There is no reason why not, and we’re getting a lot of interest on both versions from consumers and the industry.

Pro-G: Do you think that with the next generation of consoles we will no longer think of consoles and PCs providing different types of experiences, and could Football Manager help to cross that divide?

MJ: If the next generation platform holders work out ways to open up their online networks to be compatible with PC and Mac aswell then I think that will be a very big step forward for all gaming. The Xbox 360 has been pretty painless to develop for so far, so PC & Mac developers should find it easier. Obviously you’ve still got the problem with TV resolution, but once HD becomes cheaper and more widely available, those issues become less and less of a problem. If HD doesn’t take off, then that might become an issue for the convergence of the different platforms. We’d like to be making games for as many platforms as we can, so are very interested in all of the current revelations and announcements from the different hardware companies, and I think we’ve shown that by being so early in the cycle for PSP & Xbox 360.

Pro-G: How much further do you think you can take the genre?

MJ: We’ve got hundreds of pages of ideas, and will continue to raise the bar with the genre in line with the advance of technologies.

Pro-G: How do you decide what features are to be implemented – do you design by committee or is the series directed by a single entity?

MJ: First off, we look through which of the community ideas seem to be most popular, then gather together our own by going through our various documents which are constantly being added to, then have a series of feature meetings per module. Anyone at the company who wants to attend those meetings can, and has an equal say on what gets green-lit, and what doesn’t. Different people at SI have different areas of the game that they are most interested in moving forward, so it makes sense for everyone to have equal say across the board, even if they aren’t directly coding a particular module.

Pro-G: You’ve already branched out into to world of ice-hockey management [with Eastside Hockey Manager] and this, too, has been met with critical and commercial success. Do you have plans to further broaden your horizons?

MJ: Out of the Park Baseball is due for release in 2006, and we’ve got a few other projects being looked at by our R&D team that might, or might not, lead to other projects. We’re also working on a new quiz concept which is very interesting.

Pro-G: And finally, what are your professional and personal responses to those fans who will sign up to your forums to moan about how their favourite player isn’t good enough?

MJ: They are welcome to their opinion, and we if we and the researcher of that team agree with the fan concerned, then we will update the data and provide a patch. Football is a game of opinions, and with more than 270,000 players in our database, we’re bound to get one or two wrong! It’s when footballers phone us up moaning about their stats that we run into problems sometimes…

Thanks to Miles for his time. Football Manager 2006 is due for release on PC and Mac on October 21st, and you can expect a review around that date.