ABOUT Football Manager

Obviously, every sports fan dreams of realizing himself in the role of his idol, and computer games help him in this: dreaming, playing.

Game series such as FIFA and PES, NBA and NHL, NFL and Football Manager have an incredible number of fans around the world and are the best on the market in their categories.

But today I will talk about the last of the games presented – about the development of the series of games and the Sports Interactive company, and a little more about how a game that at first glance was a collection of tables, incomprehensible numbers and letters, suddenly became a cult among fans of football simulators.

History of the Sports Interactive Company

Paul and Oliver Koller are the founding brothers of the Championship Manager series – later Football Manager.

The future developers were born in Church Stretton, Shropshire, 13 miles from Shrewsbury. Paul was born in 1969, Oliver three years later. The Koller brothers were ordinary children of farmers: they farmed, milked cows, looked after goats and sheep. There were no shops nearby, so if we were to shop, it would be a month in advance. The boys devoted all their free time to computers and football: in the summer the boys held a football tournament: they recruited teams and fought for the championship. True, in reality they turned out to be very mediocre football players.

“I was terrible, we finished the season with a goal difference of minus 150,” admitted Paul.

The brothers actively supported Everton, despite the presence of the local Shrewsbury.

On the other hand, “Shrewsbury” in those days was mastering the expanses of the third division (as now), and the “Toffees” (as fans call the Everton club) of the 80s are one of the main forces of English football, Kollers can be understood. But it was difficult for the village boys to follow the team’s results: the brothers had, frankly, no television signal, and the parents did not like football and did not take their sons to matches.

In the mid-80s, football magazines did not reach rural areas; it was impossible to find the English Championship standings. And then 16-year-old Paul realized what needed to be done.

The boy was listening to the radio and filling out his championship table on the BBC Micro. This is one of the first home computers, which was developed for the British broadcasting company BBC to program and listen to music, it already had artificial intelligence: the user could, for example, play chess with the computer. The car didn’t take off outside the UK when the Apple II dominated the market. But in England, this computer became a cult: it was used to create hits for Depeche Mode and Queen, and it was also used to create audio and special effects for the TV series Doctor Who.In 1985, Mexico 86s and League Division One were popular on the market – the simplest arcade games with a bunch of restrictions, where the player simply got his hands on a controller and pixelated football players, they had to push the ball into the goal. The brothers wanted more.

They studied the code of other video games. The Kollers spent their holidays, especially winter ones, in the attic, fiddling with the computer at night instead of sleeping. "We never sat down and said, ‘Let’s make a game.’. We just got together and did it,” the guys recalled about how the super project was born.

After graduating from school in https://casinoways.org/ the early 90s and leaving for universities, the brothers did not abandon development. They spent weekends together and honed their future game, allowing only select friends from Shropshire to test their work. Oliver even dropped out of Leeds Mathematics University to focus entirely on developing the simulator.

Once, in order to attract the attention of publishers, the Kollers prepared a presentation explaining the uniqueness of their new game.

The largest publisher that refused Kollers is Electronic Arts. They didn’t like that the game had no graphics, they didn’t see the point in text comments. The London company Domark showed interest in the game and published Championship Manager in 1992. A few years later, the brothers will remember how low the fees were, but this did not bother them – then they were glad to have at least some money for their work.

“We turned to a lawyer, but he was a village lawyer. When he received a contract from the publisher, he said: “Yes, the terms are fine.”.

But in fact, the lawyer had no idea about “order” – “although we don’t blame him for this” – now the Kollers’ story sounds stupid.

Having signed the contract, the brothers immediately became the most popular people in Shropshire. They were immediately written about in the Shropshire Star newspaper: “Two enterprising brothers from Shropshire have proven that gaming can pay off. Paul and Oliver Koller from Church Stretton sold a computer football game they developed in their spare time. Now they will receive significant money in addition to the royalties for the copies sold, and they also have the opportunity to release a sequel.".

Championship Manager was released in September 1992. The game fully allowed you to feel like a football coach. Albeit with a huge number of “buts”. Only English football divisions with European cups were available, you had to manage the dialing of numbers.

Sold 20 thousand copies. In 2020, these are ridiculous numbers, for the 90s they are also not the biggest (for example, Doom, released a little later, was bought by more than two million gamers), but for a thematic game in a not-so-popular genre, it’s quite good. That’s why Domark ordered a sequel.

A year later, Championship Manager-93/94 was released: with real names of football players, transfers and improved performance. The brothers were not yet very ready for criticism. “It was very sad to read something negative – you felt angry because you knew that people actually enjoyed the game,” said Oliver Koller.

Later, the developers released the Championship Manager Italia add-on with the ability to train Serie A and B clubs, with each new part the database was replenished with new players and championships.In 1997, the brothers opened the Sports Interactive studio, which produces annual football games to this day, but under the wing of the Japanese Sega and under a new name – Football Manager. The rights to Championship Manager remained with Domark. The company was also doing well: in the mid-90s, it became part of one of the largest video game publishers, Square Enix.

FM has become the life of millions of people. Koller comes across funny stories from gamers almost every day. Some people dress up in costume before important matches and finals. And some set fire to a trash can to simulate an away match in Istanbul as part of the Turkish Cup. “We love hearing stories like this,” the brothers say with a smile.

The studio still continues to produce Football Manager.

The last game in the series was a part released in 2019 and the developers adhere to the principle of “Release games every year – changing the number in the title”, not all fans of the series like this, but it doesn’t become less popular because of this, quite the contrary, the latest figures on Steam say that about 100 thousand people enter the game every day and spend their time and for such a narrowly oriented game these are pretty good numbers.

Gameplay of the game

The first game in the Football Manager series was a part released in 2005 and at that time it was a set of letters and numbers that made it clear what a particular football player, club employee, coach or manager himself was.

The main tasks of the player changed depending on which football club he manages, for example: if a poor club, which is at the bottom of the standings, takes your wing, then the requirements that will be set by the management will not exceed the level of the club and it will depend on the playing skill of the player himself whether he will fulfill the tasks assigned to him or, on the contrary, fail.

During the match itself, the player was given the opportunity to observe the moving players, (in the form of circles on the map), change tactics and give instructions that were given to the manager in advance. It would seem how this could attract gamers ?

But all football fans have always wanted to take the place of a coach and kick someone out of the team or buy a football player whom you would never see in your club in your life.

And this was the whole magic of FM – people spent hundreds and even thousands of hours going from the last division to the major leagues and taking all kinds of trophies, without affecting the play on the field in any way.

You couldn’t just take control of one specific player and score goals – you just watched, sweated, cursed, tried to fix something and came to success together with your own players – with those whom you raised, whom you noticed and bought, with those who believed in you, albeit virtual, this is what attracted all football fans around the world.

The main innovation of the series was the 2008 game (FM 2009), in which a 3D engine was added for the first time

Now virtual managers have the opportunity to watch their players more realistically and become more immersed in the process of a football match.

Many years after the release of the first game in the series, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, but the essence of the game remains the same: gamers are still interested in watching and managing teams from the real world of football and making their dreams come true, which any other game series could not allow, and a career as a coach in FIF and PES allows you to feel the experience of a coach, but this is not what real football geeks need.

Football Manager also began to be released on mobile devices, first as Football Manager Handheld, and then as FM mobile, the essence was the same, but only rather minimalist, like everything on mobile devices.

Sport Interactive has created a precedent that has no equal – a tactical simulator of a team sport called football, in which the player is given so many opportunities that his eyes run wild.Many studios have tried to repeat the success of FM, but none of them really succeeded.

The series has been going on its way for a long time and continues to develop to this day and, I hope, the development of the series will not stop.