Anyone else play just one in-game day each day?

I'm 20 days into my first experience playing FM12 at a rate of one day in game for each day of real life, and I've been blogging about it here (click to visit). But the purpose of this thread is not to self-advertise.

I tweeted to Miles Jacobson earlier about my experiment and he said that one of the guys at SI plays that way. This got me wondering: How common is it?

Does anyone else play with a restriction of just one day of game time each day? If so, why? And how do you think this has affected your experience of the game?

Conversely, if you don't play this way, have you ever considered—or will you now consider—trying it out?

so you only get through roughly 1 season per version of the game?

If you buy a new Football Manager every year, and you play only in this way, yes.

Like I said above, this is my first time playing one in-game day each day—I would normally go through several seasons in a year, but I wanted to try something different; I wanted to see how the game holds up when treated like real life, where you can't speed through multiple days or weeks at a time, and to find out whether it could approximate the experience of football management as job rather than fantasy. (Plus it lets me curb my FM12 addiction, which had started to get in the way of my work as a freelance writer.)

short answer,no,sorry but i see no point to this experiment whatsoever.Yes the game is deep enough that you can micro manage and take forever to get through a season(i do this myself),but yor idea will fail as sometimes while processing the game will move 1/2/3 days ahead.

I have mechanisms in place to avoid that. Autosave is set to every day, and the game will automatically stop processing to display the league standings screen at 11pm each night.

Obviously it's not for everyone. But I'd like to hear from people who have tried it, or are willing to try it. The experience is already very different for me.

ifyou doit that way does the game time stop more through the coures of the day?you know maybe 3 /4 stop points.what do you do then?your scouting knowledge must be amazing because thats about all you could do.

sorry just realised the blog thing,you probably detail what you do in there.

I don't think I could do that. Would be a bit pointless going through a day where nothing happens and turning it off. Waste of a good 30 seconds

I don't think I could do that. Would be a bit pointless going through a day where nothing happens and turning it off. Waste of a good 30 seconds

Exactly what I was thinking. It seems like playing the game in that fashion would make it more of a chore than make it enjoyable.

Yeah, I explain the details in the blog. I let the game do its normal thing through the day, but I have it set to always stop at 9am and 11pm to ensure I can follow the rules of the experiment. That means there could be days where it stops several times (for news and matches and whatnot), and there could be days where, as Ranquelme says above, nothing happens and I feel like I've wasted the minute or so the game was running (this hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure it will soon).

its an interesting concept, kudos for thinking outside the square

This would be a lot more interesting if there were more micro-managing aspects of the game we could get involved in, one for example would be actually watching your team train each day and having that hands on approach actually have an effect on how well their progress develops. You could delegate the type of training being undertaken via shouts as an example (or dare I say it some form of mini point and click game), from sprinting, 7-a-side games, circuit training etc. Of course this would have to be a purely optional feature as some people don't have the time or patience to micro manage stuff like that (me included!) and of course it could get boring pretty quicky - watching players jogging around a training pitch

I suppose the closest to that we can do with current game mechanics is arrange a lot of practice games for our reserves and U18's, but that would burn them out eventually. So I'm not sure I could do this experiment unless there was at least 10 - 20 minutes worth of "actvity" for me to do each day other than load - click continue - save - quit. But fair play to you, I'll follow your blog with interest.

This would be a lot more interesting if there were more micro-managing aspects of the game we could get involved in, one for example would be actually watching your team train each day and having that hands on approach actually have an effect on how well their progress develops.

There was a game titled Head Coach that did this. Was a huge time sink but was enjoyable. They had actual in office interviews with the various coaches that were to be signed, detailed daily schedules had to be made, had weekly coach meetings where you might jump on a coach because his players really suffered during a game, practiced with certain positions/players during practice and ran different plays so that the player became more accustomed to them, scouts were given assignments to college players that would reveal attributes according to how aggresive they scouted them. Was almost impossible to get a full 16 game season in under 24 hours.

Johnny Yakuza has returned \o/

Johnny Yakuza has returned \o/

Man you beat me to it, exactly what I thought when I read the thread title

Man you beat me to it, exactly what I thought when I read the thread title

Same! I wonder if the OP wears a suit on match day?

I'm so busy lately that my FM time is limited and sometimes I only have time for one or two games in a day.

interesting.... that said, i don't think i'll ever try it because i'll never progress past a season in FM. i won't be getting my money's worth

right now i only play one match per day to curb my addiction. so i progress about a game-week in a day of real life time

This would be a lot more interesting if there were more micro-managing aspects of the game we could get involved in, one for example would be actually watching your team train each day and having that hands on approach actually have an effect on how well their progress develops. You could delegate the type of training being undertaken via shouts as an example (or dare I say it some form of mini point and click game), from sprinting, 7-a-side games, circuit training etc. Of course this would have to be a purely optional feature as some people don't have the time or patience to micro manage stuff like that (me included!) and of course it could get boring pretty quicky - watching players jogging around a training pitch

I suppose the closest to that we can do with current game mechanics is arrange a lot of practice games for our reserves and U18's, but that would burn them out eventually. So I'm not sure I could do this experiment unless there was at least 10 - 20 minutes worth of "actvity" for me to do each day other than load - click continue - save - quit. But fair play to you, I'll follow your blog with interest.

I agree that the experiment could be a lot more interesting with more detailed micro-management, but it on the scale of Football Manager as it stands today that would be incredibly tedious. I think it works wonderfully in games like New Star Soccer, however.

I'm actually kinda hoping that playing this way does get annoying at some point, because that will give me insight into both myself and the game which I can translate into a great piece of writing. I've never been able to write much about my love of football management games because I've never quite figured out just what it is that I like about them. I'm finally learning that by putting myself through this crazy challenge.

There was a game titled Head Coach that did this. Was a huge time sink but was enjoyable. They had actual in office interviews with the various coaches that were to be signed, detailed daily schedules had to be made, had weekly coach meetings where you might jump on a coach because his players really suffered during a game, practiced with certain positions/players during practice and ran different plays so that the player became more accustomed to them, scouts were given assignments to college players that would reveal attributes according to how aggresive they scouted them. Was almost impossible to get a full 16 game season in under 24 hours.

That was an NFL game, right? I just looked it up. Seems like it had some cool ideas.

Johnny Yakuza has returned \o/

I don't know who that is, but if he wore a suit when his team played a match he must have been quite the character.

Tbh your mad, but it does sound like an interesting idea.

I could never do it, but timing a save with the start of a season IRL, with real fixtures would be awesome. Then your games correspond with all the who-ha of match day.