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2 months ago
Feature: Real Life Madrid
The latest Football Manager is the most accessible yet. Which means less stressing over incremental tweaks, stats and numbers, and more scope to channel your energy in a completely different direction. This season, play it as it was intended (by me) to be played: with a dash of live-action roleplay. Whether you’re a tracksuit coach or a three-piece supervisor, the world’s most comprehensive soccer management…
7 months ago
Feature: Suspending disbelief for another year
Football Manager 2019 preview: a meaningful step forward for the series
“When you’re working on annual iterative titles, it is difficult,” says Miles Jacobson, Studio Director at Sports Interactive. “You’re always going to get people turning around saying ‘you haven’t added anything.’ And no matter how much you add, you’re still going to get people saying that.” That’s the challenge that the Football Manager series faces every year. It remains, as it always will be, a…
1 year ago
Feature: You can win everything with wonderkids
Football Manager 2018 isn’t just about playing for a season, giving up, then starting over – it’s about building a legacy, relationships and a squad to be proud of. With that comes the need to sign people who are still legally children for more money than most of us will ever see in our lives. Wonderkids, then. With that in mind, I’ve trawled through the…
2 years ago
Feature: Carrying a slight knock
Nobody listens to a word I say. I might be a legend of the game and one of the most beloved footballers of my generation but as soon as I stick my nose in at half-time, all the energy is sucked out of the dressing room. Football Manager 2018 gives me all of the data I need to understand why the team are uninterested or…
Feature: Peering through the transfer window
How 25 years of AI development and messy reality shape Football Manager
This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they underwent to make the best bits of their games. This time, Football Manager [official site]. Do want to play a cavernously deep simulation of a world of viciously competing factions? Do you dream of leading your people to glory and dominating all comers? Do you relish bending complex systems of…
Football Manager 2018 will change scouts, stadiums, AI and more
Harry Redknapp is not a wheeler-dealer. The subs bench is not a bed. Transfer deadline day is not suitable for work. Transfer deadline day is your entire existence now. I've been waiting to see what's new in Football Manager 2018 [official site] since the release of Football Manager 2017. A short transfer window spoof video from Sega and Sports Interactive doesn't reveal an enormous amount,…
3 years ago
Football Manager [official site] is not a political game. I recall being extremely surprised when the 2022 World Cup was relocated to Argentina from Qatar in my first playthrough of last year's edition. Given reports about the bidding process and the feasibility of hosting the tournament there, as well as more troubling stories, I wondered what the reasons for the move were in the fictional…
I'm always a little bit upset that I can't play the new version of Football Manager [official site] as soon as the season starts, though I understand the reasons why (namely, the fact that the bloody transfer window doesn't stop when the football starts). Usually I console myself by reading about the new features that I can expect once the game arrives. This year, the…
Feature: No marquee signings
I've won titles and cups, and I've been sacked following a relegation that was more surrender than battle. I've found young stars at bargain prices, and built a team of overpaid ego-machines who are ready to down tools as soon as the going gets tough. After tasting success and failure, I'm ready to tell you wot I think about Football Manager 2016 [official site].
4 years ago
Feature: Simming to the future.
The year is 2035. I am the manager of Leeds United. I have Football Manager 2016, but I've been struggling to find an entry point. Starting a new FM career is a little like starting a novel you know is going to take you a year to read. I started careers at Manchester United, sighed, and closed the game down; I already knew too much…
Feature: The vanishing of Angel Blaze
That feeling when you finish a long series of books, or a television series, and say goodbye to the characters for the last time. Closing a world, pulling down the shutters and knowing that it has run its course, is a peculiar sensation. Indeed, it can provoke a sense of loss. How utterly ridiculous I felt last week when I mourned the ending of tens…
Did you know that you can have children in Football Manager [official site]? Spend enough time in the managerial game and a player appears in the youth ranks of your club, a 'regen' who shares your family name. It's your son, that, and he might go on to be a star. In previous installments, Junior was made up of a random assortment of stats, as…
As soon as club football starts again after the summer drought, my mind turns to the next iteration of Football Manager [official site]. In an ideal world, it'd be released to coincide with the first kick of the season (for me, Bury away at Doncaster on August 8th) but with the late closure of the transfer window and (maybe) the need to check that Memphis…
Feature: Bargain Buys
Football Manager's best players can technically be discovered by using stat-sniffing tools to reveal hidden information, but there's more to players than numbers. Where a high stat might mean a player is theoretically proficient at something, you also need to know how they perform on the pitch, whether they can do it on a rainy Saturday morning in Watford, and whether they'll play well with…
Last year's Football Manager [official site] documentary, An Alternative Reality, appeared on Steam's video streaming service last night. The purchase is for streaming only, with no downloadable files available, and the standard price is £7.99 (there is a 30% launch discount at the moment). The documentary is already available on other digital video services, some of which do allow downloads as well as streaming, but…
Feature: A Game For All Seasons
This year has been unusual for me, gaming-wise, because I haven't had That One Game. You know the one - the game that keeps you up at night while also managing to occupy your coffee breaks. The one that you can play while you're listening to the new Flying Lotus album just as easily as you can play while Corrie's on. It can take up…
5 years ago
Feature: A year of transition and other clichés
Another year, another trip to the dugout. It's tempting to think of football as nothing more than a billionaire's playground wracked with corruption and capable of reducing a supporter to tears for all the wrong reasons. The beautiful game can be extremely ugly. But there are still tales of tiny triumphs, of giant killing and last minute survival, and of windswept terraces on a winter's…
Feature: Automatic Diary
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Feature: Hate For Fun
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It's probably the case that the biggest updates to Football Manager every year, the ones that will make the biggest difference over the following months, are found in the interface. In such a complex simulation, with more data than a Next Generation marathon, it's important to have access to important information on a single screen, or at most a single click away. The video below…
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