‘I didn’t realise the game’s impact for years’: the making of the original Football Manager | Games

IF they were a football fan who had a computer in the early 1980s. There is a game that you will remember immediately. The box had an illustration of the FA cup, and in the lower right corner there was a photo of a smiling man with curly hair and a goatee. You would see the same pictures in gaming magazines -it ran for years because the game was an annual bestseller despite rudimentary graphics and very basic sounds. This was a football manager, the world's first simulation of Fooie tactics. The man on the cover was Kevin Toms, the creator and programmer of the game.

The story behind the game is typical of the Whiz-Kid era, when the only coder knock the bestseller zx spectrum and Commodore-64 title out in their bedrooms and then drive around Ferraris with the proceeds. As a child in the early 1970s, Toms was a big football fan and an amateur game designer – only then were it board games because nobody had a computer at home. “When my parents visited my career master, I said:” Ask him if it is possible to get a job as a game designer, “says Toms.” He told them: 'It's a phase, he will grow out of it.' “

He didn't. In the 1970s he worked as a programmer for company -mainframes and encoded at Open University for a while. “It didn't take long for me to realize that I could write games about these things,” he says. “Actually, the first game I made was on a programmable calculator.” In 1980 Toms bought a video genius computer, which was largely considered one of the most important early home micros, as the clone of the TRS-80. “It became clear to me that I was able to write the football manager board game that I would do on a computer for years,” he says. “There were two main advantages – the league tables could calculate for me, and I was able to work out an algorithm to arrange the devices.”

The video genius never started -but then Toms bought a ZX81 with a 16 km ram extension and ported the game on it. “In January 1982 I submitted a fourth -side ad in computer and video Gaming Magazine and it started to withdraw, “he says.” I can still remember the first letter to arrive with a check -in. In the first few months I sold 300 games. “

At that time the game was extremely simple – there were no graphics, just text. The players were looking for a team from a selection of 16 and then had to act as a manager: buying players, deciding on a squad and then optimizing the team while it went through the season. They started at the end of the old fourth division and worked upwards. Toms wrote his own algorithms to generate games and also decided the results of the games based on the statistics of the game teams.

“The difficult part was the player attributes,” he says. “I gave them a skill assessment of five, but then I wanted a counter-compensation, so that you not only buy the best players and they could leave them on the side–had to give a reason to take them out. In real football. In.”

Toms also wanted to give the game long -term strategy and planning, and this came in its most popular element: the transfer market. In the earliest versions of the game, you would offer you the chance to hire one player a week, but this selection was randomized – you never knew who would be available. “Say you get a rating that three midfielder appears and have to strengthen your midfield: Give money for it or wait for a player with five reviews that may not come for weeks? This pressure and fun.”

The main problem with which he was confronted was that. The extended ZX81 had only 16,000 of them, which made some aspects difficult – including team names. “It took a long time for all license problems to go hand in hand,” he says. “My problem was not: I have to buy a license for the use of Manchester United? It wasn't enough memory to save the name. Every team name had to fit in eight characters, so I chose the man and the man C.

The football manager was first published in the early days of the game industry – copies were sold by post or at computer fairs. The High Street store took up the aspiring video game sector until 1982. “WH Smith has contacted and said:” We like your game, we want to store it “, and they invited me to London. When I came home, I realized that their math was pretty crap – it was 10,000.”

Toms left his job at Open University and founded his own company most addicted. The subsequent versions of ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 from Football Manager were equipped with an additional component: match highlights that showed basic graphic representations of key moments such as goals and acceptance.

“It was inspired by the match of the day – they extract the funniest parts of the games,” says Toms. “I deliberately did not put a match timer on the screen, so they never knew where the highlight happened in the game; they didn't know how close they were at the end of the game and whether there was time for another goal. This added to the tension – it was a critical part of the design, but it was also a slight break between every highlight and it was very simple. It was also very simple. It was very easy.

The game was a phenomenon that appeared on bestseller lists for years. My friends and I had fun working just the team and the player names. We all remember now. “I haven't noticed the full effect for years,” says Toms. “At that time there was no internet – although I got a few letters:” I played their game for 22 hours in a row. “Or:” I didn't pass my mock O-levels because of the game. “

Toms then wrote several other management games, including software Star, a simulation of the game industry. But with increasing number of conversions and updates by the football manager, the stress also increased. Finally, he sold the company and got out of the games and returned to business coding in the world. In 2003 Sports Interactive, the developer of the Championship Manager series, acquired the name Football Manager and renamed his own game under this title – and the name lived.

But the game wasn't quite over. Ten years ago, Toms online talked to fans of his original game and asked whether someone would be interested in a smartphone translation – football manager, as they all remembered, with the same basic graphics. The answer was positive and in 2016 he published football Star* manager on mobile. He recently improved it and published one again PC Version. “People enjoy it because it's easy to play,” he says. “This is inherent in my design philosophy – it has to appear easy, but a subtle depth or it will not keep interest. I have to say that you have played 500 seasons and have 5 billion pounds on your bank account – the remaining amount is clearly correct because you are still playing with all the money you are still happy to play.

Toms clearly rediscovered the spark that brought the original football manager into the world 40 years ago. He has long-term plans for the football star* manager and maybe also software star. “I still have a lot to do,” he says. “At the moment I have much more goals and ideas than I have time. I don't slow myself down. I should do it, but I'm not.”