Historic Football Manager..

I've been thinking/dreaming about an additional Football Manager product for a long time now that I'm sure many of you have also thought of. It is in my opinion beyond the scope of us amateur editors and only really viable as a full SI production.

Effectively it would be a data add on with the objective of recreating any specified time period. I.e not only do you start the game by picking which leagues you want to load and which size database but crucially you can go back in time and start your career at any time in the golden ages of football. Obviously this would be a mammoth research task initially however it could be phased with subsequent releases unlocking further and further periods in time. Players would have the option of enabling realistic youth players (say with a cut off of a certain PA) or for an alternate reality type random regen system.

Once the initial research is done, it would not have to be reworked much, just tweaked for each annual release. I'm sure it would appeal to most of us with an appreciation of the history of the game and would I think be a successful revenue stream and market development opportunity for SI in much the same way as most developers tap the DLC vein.

I'd certainly pay another £30 for this.

This idea comes up surprisingly ofen. I can see the appeal, but it would be a nightmare to try and create a realistic simulation of football in a past time period. The database alone would be hell to put together.

Very nice idea, but I guess it would take A LOT of job as SI would have to enter the information for ALL those "new" players. And other info if you wanna make it real (different stadiums, different club situations, costs of players...)

They'd have to incorporate old rules for various competitions, which would probably be harder than it sounds. Whole reams of new code would be needed to implement this idea.

They'd have to incorporate old rules for various competitions, which would probably be harder than it sounds. Whole reams of new code would be needed to implement this idea.

Oh definitely, the trick would be that it would be only done once, SI could then sell as an add on for each and every FM version. Bear in mind that there are far more ageing gamers now with disposable income and more interest in past years. One possibly method of deployment could be to pull together 2000 onwards with FMx1, 1990 onwards with FMx2 etc..

I'm probably just dreaming but what a game that would be! Imagine rolling it back to '89 and managing Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard and co at Milan, 82' Brazil.. 66' England and so on..

I'm probably just dreaming but what a game that would be! Imagine rolling it back to '89 and managing Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard and co at Milan, 82' Brazil.. 66' England and so on..

Just think off all ME variants that they'd need to programme so that you are playing a realistic simulation of football from '65, '82 or '88.

Too much to ask from such a small dev team for what is a niche market within a niche genre.

This is an idea I'd be hugely into. I do however respect it would be near on impossible to make, given the game of football today is nearly unrecognizable to what it was even just 20-25 years ago. You watch games from the late 80s, and it's astounding how players would just have time on the ball to do their thing. The idea of pressing in the opposition half was just non-existent, and considered a waste of energy. There's also the back pass, which has sped the game up to no end.

I've played FM with a legends database, and it is a bit of a novelty, but that's all it is. It isn't functional at all. So while I'd love it if there could be a time warp thing made in a football manager model, it would never ever happen and be made well.

Would love a crack at '60s, '70s or '80s English first division

Plus - European Cup with a straight knock-out draw, without the money-hungry razzle dazzle of today's bloated "get the biggest teams to the final at all costs!" format.

Yes please

An idea I have which I think would be workable (but again incredibly unlikely) is a re-release of old CM/FM games, which are effectively identical to what they last were (at the final patch) however with a more modern, super user friendly layout the the more recent releases have. For instance, CM01/02 (which still has a good following) is actually a fine and enjoyable game even by today's standards. What lets it down however, and a reason why I think a lot of people, and myself personally, can't get back into it is the general interface. Having player attributes ordered alphabetically. Not having a positions tab in a player's profile. Having limited viewing and filtering options in the squad list. If these aspects were improved, but everything else in the game remains the same (no 2d/3d pitch, limited training options, ect.), then I still think you have a superb game, and something I'd genuinely pay a bit of money for.

To be fair, re-releases of previous versions seems a more realistic idea than games based on past eras.

It would certainly be a big effort but look at those legends DBs made by a couple of fans with some spare time on their hands.. Now imagine if SI built 2000 onwards with reference to the old CM & FM databases, I would think it would be both do able & profitable with the resources at SI's disposal.. For example, forget the 'real' regens for a minute and initially they would need to build 11 databases with a lot of carry over data. Perhaps limit the scope to a certain level of competition i.e. I doubt anybody wants to play 5th tier from 2001..

I'm probably dreaming but it would be a great option!

It's not just a database issue, though. You'd have to try and faithfully recreate the football world of that era. Well, you would if you were as dedicated to realism with this idea as with regular FM. That would be even harder than putting the database together.

Profitable? If I can recommend one thing to you it would be to never start your own business or accept any type of managerial role where the employment of others is dependant on your decisions.

The workload required to deliver what you are asking is monumental, let alone the research & legal costs that would have to be invested to produce an accurate player database spanning 30+years of world football.

But are you referring specifically to the match engine/tactical framework? Obviously it would be very difficult to replicate the days of the W-M or even further back. Perhaps it would be more realistic to focus on the modern era i.e. '78 onwards? That would cover a lot of people's heroes whilst still being fairly homogeneous. The game currently has competition changes, I guess the big issues would be things like rule changes such as the back pass and then issues like USSR break up.. Maybe it is pie in the sky but it would certainly add a massive new dimension and level of re playability.

What about players who died mid career, will you include them & have them die at the appropriate time?

There will be a myriad of issues that would have to be identified, discussed, planned for & worked around, it's a massive project which means it will be very time consuming & take up thousands of man hours.

Profitable? If I can recommend one thing to you it would be to never start your own business or accept any type of managerial role where the employment of others is dependant on your decisions.

The workload required to deliver what you are asking is monumental, let alone the research & legal costs that would have to be invested to produce an accurate player database spanning 30+years of world football.

I may not be very knowledgeable about the size of SI's production team however I work in a fairly senior position within one of the world's leading technology and consulting firms responsible for the financial management of a $50m entity.. I've managed to do okay so far! I'm also a qualified accountant. I have however had a few glasses of wine which may be clouding my judgement on the feasibility of this project!

The economic model would factor longer term returns on this initial high R&D investment. Once compiled, the data could be re used and released as a DLC compatible with each new version of FM. I'm not saying it would or wouldn't be profitable but it would be interesting to find out.

edit: We will have to agree to disagree!

You'd also have to decide whether players' careers and development go in the direction they did in real life. Obviously they wouldn't necessarily move to the same clubs and stuff like that, but... well, you can see what a minefield it would be.

I should point out I think the idea is unworkable rather than unwelcome. I can certainly see its appeal, although I doubt I personally would bother with it.

You'd also have to decide whether players' careers and development go in the direction they did in real life. Obviously they wouldn't necessarily move to the same clubs and stuff like that, but... well, you can see what a minefield it would be.

I should point out I think the idea is unworkable rather than unwelcome. I can certainly see its appeal, although I doubt I personally would bother with it.

I think it would have to be a 'what if?' type scenario ie you jump in in 2001 and the future is the determined by the game engine, to have it any other way wouldn't make sense. Obviously market research would be a must.. Perhaps very few people would be interested in such a thing, especially given a necessary sale price to provide the necessary return on investment..

So would competetion rules change as you progressed? You'd have to know every little rule change and when it occured. That goes for the game of football itself. Would you have a date at which the game stopped or would you on forever because at one point it would just become normal FM with newgens again.

Great idea but sadly, commercially impractical I suspect.

Fantastic idea- even if we could just do this from over the last 10 years I would be totally up for it.

I don't know why people are saying rules were massively different. The only big changes between, say, the 66 World Cup final and the 2010 one were backpasses and subs. Virtually everything else was the same.

Ron 'Chopper' Harris would beg to differ

You also seem to have forgotten about the various changes to the offside rule, golden/silver goals, 3 points for a win, granted the change form 2 to 3 points appears minor but it had a lasting effect on how the game is played.

I'm sure with some time I could think of a few more that would require different game mechanics to be coded for specific dates.

Interesting idea. I'm not sure I would want it though, but I suppose I would try. however I don't see this ever happening. It just seems to be a near impossible task to incorporate that amount of data.

SI have enough on their hands just getting all the various leagues into a semi-playable state, so I can't imagine they would be able to take this on. If they did bring in additional resources I would like to see them working on the QA side of things for the normal PC/Mac FM version.

Ron 'Chopper' Harris would beg to differ

You also seem to have forgotten about the various changes to the offside rule, golden/silver goals, 3 points for a win, granted the change form 2 to 3 points appears minor but it had a lasting effect on how the game is played.

I'm sure with some time I could think of a few more that would require different game mechanics to be coded for specific dates.

The game already incorporates future rule changes into the game so I think this would be a minor part of it. The main thing that perhaps breaks the feasibility is the data itself. Perhaps I shall just build myself a database from a particular point in history.

I think you might have missed the undertone of my point. Adapting rule changes to match the reality of the time should be fairly straight forward, what would prove very difficult is designing a match engine capable of accurately producing the different styles of football that those rule changes created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Foulke_(footballer)

I would love to go back to the 1890's and manage Fatty in the link above. As much as I would like to manage a team in the past it would be too hard to implement. You just have to think about the rule changes in England alone in the past 50 seasons, then you have to realise that future rule changes along with league structures would have to be changed and put in for every league in the world. Then each league programmed to change rules and structure at the right time period. I would imagine the back pass rule would make the match engine very very different.

Wonderful idea but as has been said, it's just not feasible. The amount of work that goes into researching players for just the current year is phenominal.

They could possibly devise a game which starts in a specific year, lets say 1977 (because everyone knows that 1977-1980 is the best era in British football and British teams in Europe ), but even then I think they'd only be able to have a few English leagues and maybe a couple of European leagues.

And that's the problem I think. Whatever they could do, there's no way they could make it as immersive as the current year, as the only way they could do that would be to skip the current generation of FM, and the fact is I, and most others I think, would rather have the current version than a historic version if it was a choice between the two.

I think everyone would prefer a different era, I'm a Forest fan so I'd either want to play from 1977 or the mid 90s as that's when I was going to see them every week. Vaguely remember playing CM 2 and loved managing Stuart Pearce as he's my favourite player of all time and I think that's probably the era I would go for. It would be impossible to have a game where you select a year to start though, it would take 10-20 years at least I would think.