Football Manager 2009 - Q&A Feature

So, you've been playing Football Manager 2008 for a good 10 months and in that time you've taken Scunthorpe United to European Glory, brought Trinidad and Tobago World Cup success, and even been lucky enough to sign Lionel Messi on a free - you're running out of new challengers to squeeze another hundred gameplay hours out of the title. Never fear, Football Manager 2009 is soon to be here and SI's Miles Jacobson tells us why it's the biggest step forward in FM's history.

TVG: The traditional Champ Man cycle for game releases was four years between each 'new' game with three seasonal updates in-between. In that the first FM was released in 2005 and we've now had three games since then, can we consider the inclusion of a 3D engine in 2009 as evidence that this traditional four year cycle is still in place?

No. Originally we were looking to include the 3D engine last year. It wasn't going to be ready so we've moved it to this year instead. We don't really take cycles like that into account and we do things when they're ready to go in. The 3D engine is probably the longest term feature we've worked on because it's been three years on and off with a couple of abandoned attempts, but up until a couple of months ago we hadn't decided whether it was going to go in this year or not. It's looking really great now so we're very happy that it's going in.

TVG: In FMs and Champ Mans of years gone by, you used to be able to sign the 'Wonderkids' - the Anatoli Todorovs; the Freddy Guarins - and they would always develop into great players...

In real life as well...

TVG: Well yeah, there's that as well. But in the last couple of FMs it seems like you really have to develop these types of youngsters - you're not guaranteed that they'll turn into a world class player. Is that intentional on Sports Interactive's part?

Well I'm not going to tell you how we've done that, because that's like the secret source of what goes on, but you're right in that we've been working on that as an area. Player progression is incredibly important and it's a discussion that we have quite a lot on the forums with some people who just go, 'But this player should get great', and we'll go: 'Well how much are you playing him? Are you playing him in Coca-Cola Cup matches [or Carling Cup for those of us who aren't stuck in the 90s]? Are you sending him out on loan to get valuable first team experience? Or are you just letting him play in the youth team?'

You don't get anything for nothing and we've added in things like player interactions in the past that have allowed you to get an older player to mentor a younger player. This year we've put in player preferred moves training, so that with the wonderkids that you want to play a certain way you can train him to play that way. It's an important part of football management; it's knowing when to put your arm around a player or give them a kick up the bum.

TVG: With previous FMs on PSP, we've found that the interface for setting your formation is a bit restrictive - your left choosing between a list of pre-set formations rather than being able to tailor your own. Have you addressed that in this year's version?

The stuff that we've announced so far for the game is the addition of the 2D engine, the multiple leagues, and the two new skins - I'm not going to be saying any more about that now. When you get preview code you'll be able to see the other things that have been done. There are certainly lots of other tweaks and changes that have gone in there. We've had a new addition to the PSP team this year and he's certainly added quite a lot to the game, so we're pretty happy with it. As with the PC game there are elements of revolution (like 2D on the PSP and 3D in FM), but lots and lots of evolution as well.

TVG: We've heard rumours over the years that Sports Interactive and Konami's Pro Evo team have shared stats databases for the players in each game. How true is that?

We've gave them our database a few years ago - I think it was either 2001 or 2002. We gave them the database because while we love their game, we got slightly annoyed at some of the players playing in the wrong position, so we decided we'd do them a favour and let them have our database. There's massive respect from our side to Seabass and his team - the games they have made have been phenomenal over the years. That's why we did it and we didn't charge them a penny. We let them have it, we got a thank you in the game, and everything was great. But that's as far as the collaboration went and it won't be going any further either because we're now part of SEGA, they're part of Konami, and we're pretty happy working with the Virtua Striker team over in Japan.

TVG: Virtua Striker is a name that might ring bells with some of our older readers who led a misspent youth in game arcades, but its presence has waned over here since the 90s. What's it been like working with the Virtua Striker team in developing FM's new 3D match engine?

Virtua Striker was an arcade machine by SEGA Japan and the guys who worked on that also worked on the Let's Make a Soccer Team series, which is huge in Japan, where you make a football team rather than being a manager per se. We have a really good relationship with those guys. There's a lot of mutual respect between the two teams and they'll be using our database moving forward with their games. A couple of them actually came over this week, so there's a lot of technology sharing going on.

When we started working with SEGA we didn't believe that something like that was going to be possible, and since they bought us a couple of years ago it's been so easy to do technology sharing with the other studios mainly because we all respect each other and the work that we do. We've been really lucky there because Christ knows how many animators we would've needed to take on to actually get all of that stuff done without having their help.

TVG: Getting back to PES for a second, can we safely assume that you're a PES rather than FIFA fan and what is it about the game that you enjoy?

I do tend to play PES more than FIFA at the moment, although I really like some of the features in FIFA Euro 2008 where you play as one player. Me and one of my mates sit on the sofa regularly trying to beat each other's scores out of 10. So, I think it's going to be a very interesting battle this year between FIFA and PES and I'm looking forward to playing both and trying both.

TVG: Do you have an Xbox 360 version planned for FM 2009?

No, because our control system's crap. We thought we'd improved it a lot last year; it was still too hard to use, so we decided to have at least a year off on the 360 this year. The good news is that there has been one game that's similar to us on PC, which has come out and really nailed a good control system for quite a complicated interface and that's Civilization: Revolution. So we'll probably look at it again in future but we really wanted to concentrate on the 3D engine this year, getting that nailed and the other improvements that have gone in rather than thinking of the consoles for this year.

TVG: Where do you feel the 360 control system has been falling down and not performing?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and at the time we launched the Xbox 360 game, we were very happy with the improvements we'd made to the control method but we still found it quite hard to play. It's difficult to give the reasons why because if we knew the reasons why then we would have fixed them already. There are some other games, as I mentioned, that have been doing a good job of improving things in that area. We're not releasing on the 360 this year so it's something to worry about for the future if we decide to go back down that route. We also wanted to concentrate all of our resources onto making FM 09 on PC/Mac as good as it possibly could be and we wanted some of the really strong technical guys back, who've been working on the 360 game, to be working on the 3D match engine to make sure that we could deliver something that was worthy of the Sports Interactive and Football Manager name.

TVG: You mentioned earlier that you have 1500 researchers helping to compile the data on players and staff in FM. Are they ex-football scouts?

No, they're football fans. I started out at Sports Interactive, but I was a beta tester first and then became a researcher. They're football fans who show a really good knowledge of football. One of them has become a scout since, so he's worked on the game and he still works on the game but he does scout for a premier league team in a country that I shouldn't mention because it's meant to be secret. But we've had players doing it; we've had members of coaching staff doing it, but normally it's people like you and me who go and watch football regularly; go and watch the youth team, and have an opinion.

If you have a look at how many players we've predicted over the years. People like Leo Messi as a 15 year-old; Christiano Ronaldo - the list is ridiculous. Our guys really do know what they're talking about. With the game we're giving people the chance to do their dream job by being a Football Manager, so there are a lot of people out there who know a hell of a lot about football who don't work in the game, and we're lucky to have most of them on our research team.

TVG: Over the years we've really enjoyed some of the bizarre notifications that have popped up on our Champ Man and FM games from time to time. Examples include playing for hours at a time before being told that our cat is now dead due to negligence when we logged out, or Michael Owen retiring early in one of our games with a heart condition. Can you tell us a little bit about where these ideas come from and do you have any juicy examples for FM 2009?

It comes from very late night development sessions and people having a laugh so anything like that, that would be updated, hasn't been done yet because the real late nights are going to start in the next couple of weeks I expect. You can certainly expect a few bits and bobs though - we always like to surprise.

TVG would like to thank Sports Interactive's Studio Director, Miles Jacobson, for taking the time to speak with us about Football Manager 2009, out on November 14th for PC and PSP.