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Football Manager: a game with a passionate following
🎧 Today, Benedict Rhodes and Nick Barnsdale kick off the newsletter with a podcast on the Football Manager community. The passionate group of fans is united under a love for soccer management. Guests include YouTuber Zealand Shannon and Sports Interactive PR manager Tom Davidson.
The Football Manager fanbase, like the game itself, is a unique one. Many video games have a passionate following, but few have the influence and reach as that of the popular soccer simulation game.
Published by Sports Interactive and Sega in its current format since 2004, but with roots going back to 1992, Football Manager is an ultra-realistic simulation game that allows players to take control of a club and control everything - from which players are in the starting lineups to the club’s finances and off-field activity.
As Tom Davidson, PR Manager for Sports Interactive, puts it, “Everything needs to come together and you need to create that legacy of taking a team that may not be the biggest team, but you could turn them into the biggest team in the country, or the continent, or ideally, the world.”
The Football Manager community is massive, with around five million people playing Football Manager 2020 across the mobile and PC formats. Over half a billion hours - the equivalent of almost 60,000 years - were played by gamers since its release in November 2019 according to Miles Jacobson, director of the game, on Twitter.
The developers have prioritized community interaction in recent years in an effort to make the game the best it can be. According to Davidson there are around a thousand new things added to the games each year, with a significant number of them coming from fans on the forums they’ve set up, and social media feedback.
“I think what sets us apart from other companies is our authenticity. We’re fans first,” said Davidson. “We talk to our community and our fans the way we’d expect to be talked to if we were a part of the FM community. There’s a lot of conversation, a lot of two-way engagement going on, and it can lead to some really cool opportunities as well.”
Zealand, an up-and-coming YouTuber and streamer in the Football Manager community with over 60,000 subscribers on YouTube, says the FM community is “a cut above.”
“Everybody plays it - you’d be surprised who messages me out of the blue and thanks me for making videos.” Former United States national team striker Terrence Boyd is among those who have messaged him with feedback.
He’s earned a large following over the last few months, picking up hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of new subscribers a day on YouTube since his channel started to blow up in the early months of 2020. He also streams the game on Twitch, where he’s had some memorable moments.
“I think the best memory would have to be winning the Champions League with BATE Borisov,” a Belarusian club, he said. “I think there was something like 1,400 people [watching the stream]. We had no business winning that, we were so much worse than whoever we were playing, I think it was PSG.
“Most streams have the same energy flow. You’re up, you’re down, but that was a whole other ballgame. It felt like I just played 90 minutes when I finished the stream, I was exhausted.”
He has lofty ambitions for his YouTube channel, saying “I want to be the biggest YouTuber in the world,” with a smile. “I think I can do that. I don’t know how exactly I’ll get there, but I want Football Manager to be a cornerstone of that.”
Not only is Football Manager a video game, but also an extensive database of real-life players and clubs.
Boasting a roster of over 100 playable leagues across more than 50 countries, Football Manager is by far the most diverse and in-depth soccer simulation game, making it popular with gamers all around the world.
“I think that’s what makes the sport unique,” said Zealand. “Football Manager does a better job of capturing that than anyone else. It’s got a little bit of a different flavour everywhere, but it’s still the same thing. It’s fun to just throw myself into that - ‘this is the city and this is the club, these are the colours’ - and you go from there.”
Part of the realistic nature of the game, the player can be rewarded for good performance in the game, or suffer setbacks in their career, just like in real life.
“It’s one of a few games where if you lose your job, the world still goes on without you, you’re not central to it by any means at all,” said Davidson. “If you fail at what you’re trying to achieve, it’s not like it’s game over and you can go back and try again, you have to try and find something else - another project, or another challenge, to take on.”
Being able to take over your favourite club is something that Davidson says he loves about the games, adding that he hopes to turn around the fortunes of the club he supports, Nottingham Forest, in the game.
“I think that’s quite a powerful thing because we all sit there when we watch sports and say ‘I wouldn’t have done that’’’.
With the much-anticipated release of the 2021 edition of the game on November 24th, Davidson is excited for gamers to sink their teeth into it for another year.
“We’ve redesigned everything around what a real manager experiences during a match,” he said. “A lot of what we do is based off our conversations with real people in football.
“We’ve had access to people who are managing big clubs in the Premier League, people who have worked as international managers ... I think we have a system that is really reflective of real life.”
Zealand put it best when asked what makes the game so addictive: “You can play it during lectures, you can play it while you’re doing papers. You can always be playing it while doing other things.”
Football Manager 2021 is designed to be the biggest and best game in the series yet, and millions of people around the world are set to be a part of it.
Related Reading
Football Manager Ruined My Life: Comedian Tells Story Of Taking His Laptop To A Wedding — a fun and lighthearted story from an incredibly devoted Football Manager disciple. Also a great look into how the game hooks people in.
Sports Interactive Studio Tour — a video from the FM Show that takes you through the offices of the FM developers and provides some interesting tidbits about the development of the game.
Everything you need to know about CanPL in Football Manager 20 — a comprehensive look into what the Canadian Premier League had to offer in last year’s edition of Football Manager.
About us
Benedict Rhodes is a journalism student in his third year at Humber College. Pursuing a career in sports journalism, he writes about a variety of sports for several outlets. You can follow him on Twitter: @BTFR17 or reach him by email: btfrhodes@gmail.com.
Nicholas Barnsdale is also a journalism student in his third year at Humber College. He has covered horse racing for multiple outlets and hopes to become a professional sports journalist. He is a die-hard Buffalo Bills fan. You can follow him on Twitter: @acebarnsdale or reach him by email: nicholasbarnsdale@hotmail.com.
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