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Football Manager Live - First LookSEGA Announces Football Manager Live
Football Manager Live - First Look Preview
Chris Leyton
22/04/2007
Football Manager goes MMO... we pulled ourselves away just long enough to bring you our first impressions...
It must be difficult trying to improve upon near-perfection; however, that's the mandate Sports Interactive stick to as they strive to achieve improvements with the latest iteration of the Football Manager series each season. SI fans will however have something else to look at early next year with the release of Football Manager Live. Returning from his travels across the globe, Sports Interactive co-founder Oliver Collyer appears to have had an apparition of some sorts, enough to warrant his return to the team's new premises to spearhead the development of an exciting new diversion for the series held so passionately amongst football fans.
Conceived for an audience that feels the Football Manager series is perhaps a little too hardcore and for those who don't have enough hours in the day to dedicate towards Torquay United's lust for Premiership glory, Football Manager Live promises to blend the best of the series with tabloid-styled Fantasy Football accessibility, encapsulated in an MMO environment. It may have mainstream aspirations; however, after clocking up far too many hours in the last week, there's little doubt even at this stage that FML will also find strong appeal amongst the devout FM fanatics.
I Want To Be Man U
Beginning from scratch, Football Manager Live challenges you to create your own club, so there's no issues over everybody wanting to be Chelsea, Barcelona or Manchester United and being left with Crewe Alexandra. The ever-reliable FM database however is present in its entirety, containing the thousands of real-life players that you'd expect from anything bearing the FM brand - although the way in which the game is structured makes it hard to hold onto a team of 'Galacticos', but a little more on that later.
Beginning with a wage cap of £100,000, the first challenge is to build up an initial squad that allows you to begin competing against other opponents. An 'Auto Select' option is available for mainstream newcomers, although the more serious player will spend an eternity scouring the lists and handpicking players for every specific position. There's a considerable amount of elements to customise early on, whether it's designing your club emblem, designing the home/away strip, and determining the size of the pitch and the accompanying strips.
Initially the structure of Football Manager Live can seem a little bewildering, replacing traditional seasons and league structures with servers accommodating 1000 different clubs and a leaderboard governing overall positions. Although it seems a little strange at first, the setup ensures matches should always be available and leaves you in charge of how much or how little you choose to play. A sophisticated ranking system modelled after those that rule the world of professional chess lies beneath the game, which in turn governs the major indicator of success in the game... money!
C Ronaldo... £5000 Going, Going, Gone!
Balancing the books and keeping an eye on your finances appears to offer a greater challenge in Football Manager Live, although anybody who attempted to take smaller clubs into the Premiership in the Football Manager games will probably have a better understanding of this. At the start of every day (00:00 precisely), each player is awarded £150,000 to keep you ticking over even if you've not played during the day, provided your daily wage bill doesn't exceed this. Bonuses based on your performances during that day and other aspects add to this daily figure, with the incentive of being able to add to the squad and lure better players.
Starting with a bare bones squad, progress up the leaderboard inevitably requires signing new players and letting go those who don't fit the bill, all of which is handled in a slightly differently manner. To keep players freely moving, contracts are based on a monthly basis, employing an eBay-esque auction system when it comes to buying or selling. Although the auction system captures the excitement of similar features in World of Warcraft and various other MMOs, the current execution can feel a little confusing particularly as there's no real indication of the true market value of a player. Hopefully it's an area that Sports Interactive will continue to work on in the many months left of development, to iron out any of the ambiguities and streamline the overall structure.
Technology + Design = Football Manager Live
Despite labelled as an Alpha build, Football Manager Live is surprisingly robust and functional at this early stage. Although there's 11 long months until the game makes it on to the market, it's hard not to be impressed by the thought Sports Interactive have poured into the design of Football Manager Live, particularly when it comes to the technology. Aiming to have the title available on every format around (although only PC/Mac versions have been confirmed so far), Football Manager Live simply requires an 11MB client to be downloaded and installed to begin playing the game. The idea is that you'll be able to play wherever you are, so even if you're on holiday you'll be able to download the client onto your laptop or at an internet café and carry on the addiction - you may even be able to put it on a PDA or Smart Phone in the months to come. The size of the client also opens it up to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, though that's just us speculating at this stage; whether or not Miles can convince the hard-nosed execs to open up the game for cross-platform play remains a dubious question mark.
Setting up a friendly match to begin your rise up the rankings is a simple process, elegantly handled by the way in which the game and interface has been designed. Although much of our experience so far has centred upon an endless range of "Friendlies" and subsequent grudge re-matches, competitions are very much a part of the package. The team at Sports Interactive are aiming to make user created tournaments, cups, and leagues as easy as possible and the primary focus during the overall game.
Given the size of the client, it's even more surprising that Football Manager Live features the seminal match engine from FM2007. With a portrayal of the game that goes beyond the likes of FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer, watching your team compete against human opposition is ultimately what it all comes down to, providing justifiable reasons to scream at your monitor when your striker misses a sitter or jump in ecstasy when he finally hits the net. Behind it all, Football Manager Live retains the advanced tactics and level of control that previous Football Manager titles have offered. With a huge range of formations and the slider controls over aspects such as width, passing, and tackling, FM fans will also be able to import meticulously designed custom tactics from previous Football Manager titles. Managing the need to have a little time to adjust your tactics, the game offers a limited amount of 'Time Out' options, which gives you a minute to make the essential changes (particularly for injuries) whilst ensuring the match keeps flowing.
One of the largest initial factors in balancing the game between those who play a couple of times a week and those logged-in 24-7 is the game's implementation of injuries. Calculated in terms of days out in the real world, injuries are typically a case of loosing a player for between 1-2 days, though injuries that are more serious will often stretch into weeks. One of the only contentious issues at present, loosing a star player for even 2 days is heartbreaking enough when you're playing the game solidly; however, the dynamic seems to suit the purpose
Currently, Football Manager Live removes many of the finer aspects linked with the Football Manager series. You won't have to worry about training schedules, your backroom staff, or assigning scouts to certain areas; however, that's not to say the game makes sacrifices when it comes to the depth the series is famed for and who's to say what the team will add in the remaining months of development. Although it's under-developed at this stage, the game already features some support for Youth Teams as Collyer and the team work around the clock on the correct setup to ensure this doesn't become too much of a chore for players to get bogged down by.
Despite the early stage, there's many touches that demonstrate the level of brilliance we've come to expect from Sports Interactive. Although welcomingly familiar to previous FM titles, the interface has seen a number of changes and benefits from a subtle split system that reorganises the various windows automatically during a match and accommodates the chat channels. Like any good spreadsheet, there's plenty of scope to filter out the results you want, options to customise your own views, and we'd hazard a guess to plenty of alternative interfaces available soon after release. In-keeping with the overall MMO structure, communication and socialising is crucial to the experience, which is all capably handled by the in-game IM system and Mail options. Chat Lobbies are easy to setup providing Private and Public options, whilst a Contact list serves as a friends list to keep track in the busy 1000-team servers.
Obviously, at some stage, you've got to pull yourself away from Football Manager Live (it's good to wash occasionally), but just in case you're worrying about the auction bid you've made or just catching up on the latest news, Football Manager Live integrates with your mobile phone to provide SMS text alerts.
Although the finer details of the business model have yet to be ironed out, Sports Interactive wish to follow a similar strategy to other MMO titles available. Suggesting that the client could be available for free, players would then pay a monthly fee to play the game - as Miles points out, the time you'll be staying in and playing more than makes up for the price of a few pints!
Anonymous
Date Added:Mon 8th Oct 2007 01:24
Anonymous
Date Added:Wed 1st Aug 2007 08:27
Date Added:Fri 8th Jun 2007 00:47
they have said the normal fm 2008 isnt coming out its just fm live
noob, its coming out before xmas noob
moneyhire
Date Added:Fri 27th Jul 2007 19:45
gold_coast
Date Added:Fri 20th Jul 2007 13:51
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Date Added:Fri 8th Jun 2007 00:47