STACK Magazine November Issue 121

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GAMES
NOVEMBER 2014 JB Hi-Fi
FEATURE
054
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I t’s the game that will consume every
spare minute you possess as you fret
about how you can turn your team’s
fortunes around before the chairman wields
the axe. Late nights, in between meetings,
before dinner dates; when the hooks are in,
nothing will to save you from Football Manager.
Delivering an annual franchise on time with
enough new features to keep the regulars
happy and tempt new players to sign up
is not a job for the faint-hearted.
However, after 15 years working on
the franchise, studio director Miles
Jacobson is used to the pressure.
“I don’t know things to be
different, to be honest,” he says.
“So whilst it is a challenge every
year, we have good processes in
place now and enough experience
for it to not be an issue.”
According to Jacobson, the studio
undertakes four weeks of feature
meetings working through every
suggestion that has been made
internally, through the forums, from
the Sports Interactive research
teams, from the people directly
involved in professional football, or
even ideas overheard in the pub.
“Everyone in the studio is invited
to these meetings. We discuss
everything (typically there are
between 1,000 and 2,000 feature
ideas to go through each year) and
everyone gets a vote for their priority
of the feature,” says Jacobson.
“After all that is done, it’s over to me
– I group features together to make
things more cohesive.Then the relevant
programmers and artists will estimate the time
it will take. Some features might take more
time, others less, compared to the estimates,
so I’ve always got ‘back-up’ features that can
be added and often have to take things away,
too, during the process. But because of the
annual iterations, I know they’ll always get
done at some point – keeping the balance
is essential.”
Some of the many changes this year
include the ability to choose either a ‘suit’
manager, who leans more on their tactical
prowess, or a ‘tracksuit manager’ to lead
his team with football boots on his feet.
Players will react independently to these
management styles.
“If you have a low motivation rating
then the players are less likely to listen
to positive comments,” Jacobson says.
“And being a rubbish coach in areas you are
looking after makes the players improve less.
“But it’s not as cut and dried as that; every
player has their own personality, so they will
react differently according to that too.”
Scouting options have also been overhauled
with two major changes.
“The first is that managers can now specify
to their scouts the type of player they are looking
for and why; are they looking for a striker who is
a hot prospect, or someone to replace a player
who they know they’re going to have to sell?”
explains Jacobson. “Are they looking
for a back-up player, or someone who
can slot straight into the first team?
“The second is that managers can
now scout players for a lot longer, and
specify it in time. In the real world,
scouts may just go and watch a player
two or three times, but they might also
watch them for a period of months,
so it was important for us to give that
option to the in-game scouts too.”
Tunnel and training ground
interviews, and tabloid journalists who,
Jacobson says, “might have a different
agenda”, are part of a significant
change to the media aspect of FM15,
and with the help of AFCWimbledon
andThe Creative Assembly, motion
capture will be used for the first time in
the game’s history.
As regular players of Football
Manager, one of the ideas STACK has
harboured for some time is the possible
introduction of a mode where players
are given the opportunity to coach a
classic team from football
history. We ask Miles Jacobson
whether this is something the
studio has ever considered?
“Legally, it’s not possible,
or rather, it is possible,
but prohibitively expensive
and would need an
army of a licensing
team. So it’s not
something that is
likely to happen
from us.”
You’re The Boss!
Football Manager 2015 is almost here. Straight talking Sports
Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson tells us what’s new.
Football
Manager 2015
is out
November 7