SI, SEGA and KTH sign agreement for South Korean MMO

[Miles Jacobson]

LONDON (July 29th, 2010) – Sports Interactive are delighted to announce a development partnership with KTH, the hugely successful Korea internet portal company, to create an online football management game specifically for the Asian market based on Sports Interactive’s Football Manager Live, to be known locally as Football Manager Online.

The agreement, signed in Korea by KTH Allstar and SI’s parent company SEGA®, will create a joint development environment with Sports Interactive and KTH’s development teams already working together on the game which will be tailored for the South East Asian market.

As a result of the deal, Sports Interactive’s Football Manager Live team has doubled in size, with one part of the team concentrating on gameplay for Football Manager Live, one part concentrating on gameplay for Football Manager Online, working with KTH to fully understand the Asian market and model, and a third part who will work on technology on both games, who will also work very closely with KTH’s engineers who will be putting the server technology together for the project.

The development team will be based in both KTH’s studio in Seoul, and Sports Interactive’s studio in London, with some of the KTH team moving over to London for a large part of the development process. The game should be released towards the end of 2011 first in the Korean market, with versions likely for other Asian markets to follow afterwards.

“We’ve prepared a separate team made up of Korea’s topnotch developers for the joint development of Football Manager Online,” KTH Game Business Department Director Yunjung Seong stated. “We will do our best to be acknowledged not only for our publishing expertise, but also our game development capabilities through this agreement.”

“We’re delighted to be working with the team that KTH have put together for the project” said Miles Jacobson, Studio Director of Sports Interactive. “Since the signing of the deal, we’ve learnt so much from both the business and development teams at KTH about the South Korean market, and we’re very excited about what we can achieve by working closely together with them and their hugely talented engineers to make the perfect online football management game for the region.”

"SEGA is extremely pleased to partner up with a great company like KTH and make the Football Manager series available to a wider range of gamers," said SEGA COO Okitane Usui. He went onto add, "We look forward to effectively leveraging the strengths of both companies to bring out a new side of Football Manager that will appeal to users."

In related news, Sports Interactive and SEGA have also announced that Sports Interactive have taken over publishing repsonsibility for perpetual online game Football Manager Live, with studio director Miles Jacobson now heading up the publishing side for the title, as well as his role as Executive Producer on both Football Manager Live and Football Manager Online projects on the development side.

[Miles Jacobson]

To show how this new project, and the changes announced regarding FML's publishing situation will work with regard to the dev and support teams, the new structure is below, with 3 new members of the dev team, and Rob & Paul moving over to SI from SEGA on the support side.

Working on both projects on a production and publishing level are me (exec producer and general bad cop) and Marc (producer and general good cop) on both titles.

Having now finished a major revamp of the mod guides and procedures, Rob and Paul in their new roles as junior producers, are driving forward with the next major update as well as keeping on top of support and other issues.

The FML dev team will, as before, be led by the creator of FML, lead designer and lead programmer, Ov Collyer MBE, assisted on the gameplay side of things by Dave and Robson, who has recently joined as an intern.

The tech team, which will work on both projects, is Graeme, Kevin and Carey.

The FMO gameplay team is Rob, Andreas, and Miguel, who are working very closely with our friends and now colleagues at KTH in Korea.

Chris will continue working on the graphics and skin side on FML, as well as working on FMO.

And obviously the match engine will be used on both projects, as well as the FM series in general.

It's a very exciting time for all of us to be able to expand FML into new areas of the world, and with the expanded team and new talent coming into the team, it can only be of benefit to both the FML and FMO projects in the long term.

[William Hall]

A few questions if you don't mind

1. How will this affect beta (if at all)?
2. What are the benefits of this rather than SI/Sega working in the asian market?
3. Will we see gameworlds in Asian languages?
4. Will these Asia-specific gameworlds be open to people from outside of Asia (ie. Australia (although not in a footballing sense)/New Zealand)?

Thank you

[tommyh_16]

Good questions will

[cynet]

Why couldn't it have been a merger with the asian markets opening up into the european market.

This is good news for Asia and Sega, but for us it does not.

[Miles Jacobson]

A few questions if you don't mind

1. How will this affect beta (if at all)?
2. What are the benefits of this rather than SI/Sega working in the asian market?
3. Will we see gameworlds in Asian languages?
4. Will these Asia-specific gameworlds be open to people from outside of Asia (ie. Australia (although not in a footballing sense)/New Zealand)?

Thank you

1 - it won't.
2 - the business model in Asia is very different, as are the kinds of games that they like to play. It will make a lot more sense once we start talking about the gameplay differences, but that won't happen for many months, possibly not even this year - the gameplay will be very different, which is why the gameplay teams are working separately (although, obviously, great ideas will be shared if they can work with both games!)
3 - The initial FMO launch will be South Korea, and that will be in Korean. It's possible that the game will come out in other Asian territories too, but the plan would be for each to be country specific.
4 - It is expected to be country specific and, at the moment, the only launch that is going to happen is in South Korea. When deals in other territories happen, we'll announce those too. But much like when Fifa Online first launched, it was only able to play for people in Korea, or people who could spoof being in Korea and had a Korean bank account!

[joetheref]

Why is the statement dated August 10th? Have you posted this too early

[Thorstein]

I would imagine that this is good news for us because:
New costumers = more income = better longetivity
New development budget = FML lives longer even when there would be commercial hic-ups
Bigger development team = more possible exciting features

Just hope the Korean project does not take away too much attention of the current FML problems and projects

[Scally Of The Wag]

Would this have any fundamental affect on FML development?

[RTC]

Nobody has said this has potential to be the dogs....... well you know

[Bertie BG]

Would this have any fundamental affect on FML development?

Only positive ones

[Miles Jacobson]

Why is the statement dated August 10th? Have you posted this too early

Changed now - thank you

[Scally Of The Wag]

Only positive ones

Always good to hear

[Blanchflower1]

So when will Singaporeans be able to take part?

[ManchesterTigers]

This is fantasic news, Im hopeful with such a successful internet portal company on board now FML can benefit from their expertise in server management and hopefully erdicate lag forever!!

[shezza88]

Sounds good for SI on the whole. I havent got FM live, but it's something Im still considering, well done guys

[Alex Harris]

Great news, and congrats to all concerned. My main thought is that the South Koreans are lucky people and hopefully the rest of Asia will be looking on enviously and wanting a dedicated FML/FMO very soon too!

[Errol Grootjen]

Good news SI

[Lord Ramius of Wossname]

congratulations, sounds like a big business deal for you guys.
Just one thing, I think it is a bit of a shame that Sega wants to keep working in the asian country- by - itself way. FML would imo be a near perfect platform to break trough that traditional way of marketing online games in Asia, due to its international subject. But i can see the (financial profit) sense in doing it this way. anyway, hopefully you guys make enough money of this system to funnel some back in FML proper.

[~adma~]

Is this going to effect the development of FML? In that you guys might find ways of making processes quicker or even come across new must have additions to FML?

Anything already been mentioned for FMO that you guys have thought would be good for FML?

[seagull84]

Good news for SI.

One question though while the issue of South Korea is a hot topic. I live and work over there (I'm from England) and it was horrendously difficult to get a digital download of the game last year in order to play the new version on the day it came out - STEAM did not allow it to downloaded in Korea.

Any chance of doing a deal with STEAM that will allow FM to be bought and downloaded through them in South Korea?

[Hoista!]

ooh very interesting announcement. I've been working in this area for a while - the digital media entertainment space in Asia.