RPS Feature Foxy football
Just before the launch of Football Manager 2017 [official site], with the beta already released to the many people who preordered the game, I spoke to Sports Interactive director Miles Jacobson about the changes his team have made in this latest game in the series. We talked about AI improvements, Brexit, and whether Leicester winning the Premier League was a happy day or a sad day at Sports Interactive.
RPS Feature Clean sheets and spreadsheets
As we enter the second part of a marathon conversation with Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson, I begin by checking that the half time oranges have done the trick. Once we’re both warmed up and ready to go, talk turns to Football Manager’s place in the wider world of games and Miles’ background in the world of music. When we’re not discussing Jesus Jones and Blur, we’re pondering whether comparing Football Manager to open world games is instructive. Part one is here.
RPS Feature A parallel universe
Football Manager is an enormously complex simulation. On a global level, the game tracks thousands of careers, ambitions and relationships, and on any given match day, weather, morale, skills and individual personal issues can contribute to moments of brilliance or abject failure. Talking to Sports Interactive’s director Miles Jacobson, I found that the simulation model is even more elaborate in some areas than I’d expected. Read on to find out about the game’s expanding narrative engine, how climate change is forcing the team to update the code that generates weather patterns, why the ugliest aspects of football have no place in FM and how a non-contract player’s family situation might prevent him from playing for your club.
