We have all played Football Manager 2009 and we all had different opinions about the game. Personally, as I have already stated in other articles, I considered it to be a brilliant game and I never had so much fun playing a computer game. Maybe GP1 back in the days with my dad, but I had no money and probably no one would have given beer to a 5 years old boy. After playing more than 6 months with the same team, I started knowing my players by their full names and attributes(no shit!) and I just took every given occasion to play it.
Of course the game had a fair amount of bugs and there were other, smaller issues with it as well. By implementing the 3d match engine, Sports Interactive took a great risk and according to a vast majority, their investment didn’t really pay off. Lack of speed meant lack of playability for a lot of people and probably the transition between FM08 and FM09 was too great for our minds(and PC’s) to take it without subconsciously wanting the old game back. Of course people overreacted at times and the game wasn’t as bad as some thought it is. It certainly wasn’t unplayable and with a minimal amount of liberalism, you could have slided through seasons without noticing anything. If you’d ask people whether FM08 was any better than Football Manager 2009, people would be very undecided. As seen on other community websites, FM09 was far from being the most popular release around and many members started playing on older versions.
What happened now though? Football Manager 2010 is a hit! Don’t believe me? Check this! Of course you could say that ten votes are not a lot and that we are a new community and we don’t know anything. Possibly, but 10 to 0? If you would ask ten Football Managers on the street, all of them would say that FM10 is a good game! If not brilliant, then at least better than the precedent release. Ten out of ten people on TheAwayStand.co.uk say that the new version is indeed a brilliant game and far superior to Sports Interactive’s last release, FM09. Hell, it seems to be so good that it even made Mase notch up a little 1k word long essay about it! Mind you, the same Mason who had about 100 posts on Football Manager forums in the last couple of months, with writing a total of 99 words.
Hopefully I have convinced you. Football Manager 2010 is a good game. Of course the natural question is:
How in Earth did SI do it?
It’s not just that they’ve released a better version, it is also that they’ve managed to shut thousands of moaners up and actually turned a negative atmosphere into a surprisingly positive one. Of course I can’t say that the General Discussion sections on the SI forums were hostile to the creators of the game, but last year, around this time of the year we had guys committing on-line harakiri because they just got 4 players injured and they were forced to start 5 threads about. And of course that guy died of overdose because his 654 million dollars Strikers didn’t manage to score 40 goals a season. Rumours say he started a topic on SI per every dollar! Nowadays the realms of SI are much calmer. Peace is there.. How, SI?
First of all they didn’t make the mistake of over-hyping the release. I remember them dropping little hints making us believe in the implementation of the 3d engine, yet not releasing any information until the final day. Announcing the game on the 3rd of September, I remember. 3.9 = 3d. Oh please, how pathetic! We are not talking about the medicine which will cure cancer. Apart from offering some weird guys, hours of play and ruining the education of many youngsters, Football Managers brings nothing to the community. It is nothing but a game and not one with using the cutting edge technology either. Of course you might argue that it helps real life football managers finding players, but I would argue whether the scouts from SI are any better than the ones who found Kolo Toure in Ivory Coast for Wenger.
This time around they were much more discrete. They didn’t start by writing poems to their new features. They started by talking about their actual work process, the boys who work for them and help developing the game. Daily blogs was what we’ve been able to read and I must say, pretty decent ones too. In fact I enjoyed reading about the months spent by the testers trying to find bugs and perfecting the games. Through these blogs we’ve managed to understand the obvious. The people who work for Sports Interactive are actually human. They are also not one million clones of Miles Jacobson. They are human beings who work as individuals and if they make mistakes, then it’s their fault personally, but also the fault of the company. By the 654 million Striker buying guy starting his 600 millionth topic, he doesn’t just attack Miles. He attacks all the people working for SI. Individually.
Of course this hasn’t got much to do with the actual Football Manager playing experience. Of course it’s a good thing that SI actually managed to make us feel sorry for them and actually have an inside view on their work, but FM10 is more than that. When we mention FM09, not only the admittedly rushed 3d(yes, coming from a 3d supporter) comes to mind, but also other unfinished new features. Oh my god, the press conferences! Not sure whether any of us punched our monitors while saying that something awfully stupid might be of a “positive influence”, but I can proudly state that my little screen is still intact, even without sending my assistant who will say that my 60mil playmaker can leave my club if he wants.
My point? There is a nice saying in Hungarian which can explain this quite well. “By walking slowly, you will get further.” Our friends at Sports Interactive learned this. The hard way, but they finally did! They have finally understood that we are not buying the Football Manager games because we hope they will become like FIFA Manager. We don’t expect tons of flashy animations, or 100 new and major added features per version. We just want to play Football Manager. The game we love. We will love them more if they finally manage to iron out the press conferences and the confidence system and definitely not if they buy the right to show the Ronaldo dance before he takes his free-kicks. We prefer playability to glamour. The magic of FM has always been realism and the feel of actual football management simulation, rather than extraordinary bombardment of our sight and hearing.
Did Sports Interactive finally manage to understand this? Yes, it seems to me..
November 18th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I think if those people who read this article should read The Games comments on the forum post who although has attacked the article with some zeal, he is infact talks alot of sense and has constructive too.
This article is padded out alot and could be summed up and argued a much better point.
I have already mentioned that SI games as a company have done well this year in implementing features to the game that not only appeal to the type of people that will read articles posts like this (the community) but also those that just have an interest in Football using real footballing terminology and 3d football view, but also keeping hardcore players happy too.
SI Games have done so much better in using the media avaliable to them to gain stronger relationships with their consumers this is what modern marketing is all about, relationship because us as consumers are in strong positions as well as more sophisticated in what we demand. Podcasts, Twitter, Facebook and the resources of SEGA have made sure that this years game is going to be such a success and that is actually what SI have done right this year.