FM19 and beyond... Womens football? Do you want it?

[Smurf]

I suppose a good start would to have the international teams and unplayable - but you would get news items about tournaments and such. Would it be much to load up databases of women players and have a separate tournaments being played in background?

I suppose it could be optional to have it turned on at start of game or during the game if you didn't want it.

[Crispypaul]

It's an entirely different game so you would have to run it separate from the men's game - you would have to two transfer modules running simultaneously for example, and FM is still a pretty modest game system wise.

Frankly too - there is not enough mass market interest in women's football.  In England the top division of women's football only gets average attendances around the 1,000 mark which tells you all you need to know about the broader appeal.

[Smurf]

2 hours ago, Crispypaul said:

It's an entirely different game so you would have to run it separate from the men's game - you would have to two transfer modules running simultaneously for example, and FM is still a pretty modest game system wise.

Frankly too - there is not enough mass market interest in women's football.  In England the top division of women's football only gets average attendances around the 1,000 mark which tells you all you need to know about the broader appeal.

Have you got that market research to hand? How many women play football manager?

[Transk53]

2 hours ago, Crispypaul said:

It's an entirely different game so you would have to run it separate from the men's game - you would have to two transfer modules running simultaneously for example, and FM is still a pretty modest game system wise.

Frankly too - there is not enough mass market interest in women's football.  In England the top division of women's football only gets average attendances around the 1,000 mark which tells you all you need to know about the broader appeal.

Actually a using a bit of quick Google Fu reveals that there is huge increase in women playing video games, albeit like a lot of men, probably on the smart phone platform. However, likening this to the average attendances in the women's Super League for example, or others, won't have any direct correlation with those playing FM. You are right on one level with this post, but way off generally. The broader appeal of women's football has nothing to do with women, or anybody playing any version of FM IMHO.

[Crispypaul]

42 minutes ago, Smurf said:

Have you got that market research to hand? How many women play football manager?

I don't know this, but I do know that the women's game doesn't have nearly as much global appeal

[Crispypaul]

31 minutes ago, Transk53 said:

Actually a using a bit of quick Google Fu reveals that there is huge increase in women playing video games, albeit like a lot of men, probably on the smart phone platform. However, likening this to the average attendances in the women's Super League for example, or others, won't have any direct correlation with those playing FM. You are right on one level with this post, but way off generally. The broader appeal of women's football has nothing to do with women, or anybody playing any version of FM IMHO.

I am not sure that women who play Football Manager (or games generally) hold enough real world interest in the women's game for it to be commercially viable for FM to incorporate a whole new mode.  If they're not turning up to Man City Ladies v Liverpool Ladies, why would they be interested in the virtual version?

[Transk53]

3 minutes ago, Crispypaul said:

I am not sure that women who play Football Manager (or games generally) hold enough real world interest in the women's game for it to be commercially viable for FM to incorporate a whole new mode.  If they're not turning up to Man City Ladies v Liverpool Ladies, why would they be interested in the virtual version?

Because many fans don't like going to football games for many reasons. There is still a disproportionate amount of women attending, versus those that just watch on the telly. Personally I believe a women's league on FM, or even a separate version would do really well. If not just for the fact there isn't one. Marketing alone could generate loads of sales.

[Crispypaul]

Just now, Transk53 said:

Because many fans don't like going to football games for many reasons. There is still a disproportionate amount of women attending, versus those that just watch on the telly. Personally I believe a women's league on FM, or even a separate version would do really well. If not just for the fact there isn't one. Marketing alone could generate loads of sales.

I am talking about people going to the women's game.  Attendances similar to the National League.  It's not like the games are televised either.

SI will add a women's module I suspect when its commercially viable to do so.  At the moment, it is not, but that could of course change.

[forameuss]

2 minutes ago, Transk53 said:

Because many fans don't like going to football games for many reasons. There is still a disproportionate amount of women attending, versus those that just watch on the telly. Personally I believe a women's league on FM, or even a separate version would do really well. If not just for the fact there isn't one. Marketing alone could generate loads of sales.

But where's the substantiation to these "loads" of sales?  No-one's saying that there would be zero interest in the feature, but that's probably not going to be enough for SI to undertake the massive amount of work it would be to get the feature in.  It's a fairly simple set of scales to compare the resources it would take against what they'd recoup, and I'm not convinced their anywhere close to equal. 

Are there really that many people out there who don't buy the game, but remain interested in the concept, and would only buy if there were women's teams?  I expect most of the people interested in the feature already buy it.

[Federico]

I don't understand what kind of benefit would bring women's leagues to the game, to the users and to SI.

At the moment, according to me, it would be a waste of resources, research, databases, future fixes and so on. I would never play a women's league nor I can say I'm even slightly interested in it.

I would rather play a reliable, complete, realistic FM made by men's league only, all life long.

And I swear you, I love women.

[Federico]

1 ora fa, Transk53 ha scritto:

Personally I believe a women's league on FM, or even a separate version would do really well. If not just for the fact there isn't one. Marketing alone could generate loads of sales.

"Loads of sales"?

According to which statistic you're stating that?

I like how any now and then some marketing genius jumps in and think to suggest to a company, being around since more than 20 years, how to run its business.

[Transk53]

1 hour ago, Federico said:

"Loads of sales"?

According to which statistic you're stating that?

I like how any now and then some marketing genius jumps in and think to suggest to a company, being around since more than 20 years, how to run its business.

Mmm, and you are suggesting I am a marketing genius. Genius troll there 🙄

[Transk53]

2 hours ago, forameuss said:

But where's the substantiation to these "loads" of sales?  No-one's saying that there would be zero interest in the feature, but that's probably not going to be enough for SI to undertake the massive amount of work it would be to get the feature in.  It's a fairly simple set of scales to compare the resources it would take against what they'd recoup, and I'm not convinced their anywhere close to equal. 

Are there really that many people out there who don't buy the game, but remain interested in the concept, and would only buy if there were women's teams?  I expect most of the people interested in the feature already buy it.

I am not basing it on anything. With the right plug, any game can sell. I would say that there are just as many female gamers out there who haven’t bought the game, and yes in my own personal opinion, I do think that a lot of female gamers out there would buy the game with a female emphasis, rather than just a males type game. Which frankly it could be seen as.

But yes, economically  I don’t know if SI would recoup valuable sales from it. Perhaps it would be sheer folly for them to institute on the grounds you have rightly pointed out. Anyway, nice reply from you 👍

[forameuss]

2 hours ago, Federico said:

I don't understand what kind of benefit would bring women's leagues to the game, to the users and to SI.

At the moment, according to me, it would be a waste of resources, research, databases, future fixes and so on. I would never play a women's league nor I can say I'm even slightly interested in it.

I would rather play a reliable, complete, realistic FM made by men's league only, all life long.

And I swear you, I love women.

10 minutes ago, Transk53 said:

I am not basing it on anything. With the right plug, any game can sell. I would say that there are just as many female gamers out there who haven’t bought the game, and yes in my own personal opinion, I do think that a lot of female gamers out there would buy the game with a female emphasis, rather than just a males type game. Which frankly it could be seen as.

But yes, economically  I don’t know if SI would recoup valuable sales from it. Perhaps it would be sheer folly for them to institute on the grounds you have rightly pointed out. Anyway, nice reply from you 👍

You could well be right, and there is this big core of players that aren't interested but would turn towards the game.  I disagree, but I'm basing that on just as much as you're basing yours on, so that's fair enough.  It all comes down to the effort against reward.  I imagine it's come up in conversation at SI - far more ridiculous things have, after all - so I'm sure they know their stance on it.

[Crispypaul]

54 minutes ago, forameuss said:

You could well be right, and there is this big core of players that aren't interested but would turn towards the game.  I disagree, but I'm basing that on just as much as you're basing yours on, so that's fair enough.  It all comes down to the effort against reward.  I imagine it's come up in conversation at SI - far more ridiculous things have, after all - so I'm sure they know their stance on it.

Haven't had a "I want to spend my manager's earnings and/or build burger bars!" thread for a while.....

[Transk53]

1 hour ago, forameuss said:

 

You could well be right, and there is this big core of players that aren't interested but would turn towards the game.  I disagree, but I'm basing that on just as much as you're basing yours on, so that's fair enough.  It all comes down to the effort against reward.  I imagine it's come up in conversation at SI - far more ridiculous things have, after all - so I'm sure they know their stance on it.

Yes fair enough. Yeah I guess the effort against reward gets a bit reinterpreted if you are EA these days. Talking of women, got to convince mine yet that the World Cup is a must see.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

The main problem with adding in women's leagues is that it is effectively an entirely separate game, so you are near enough doubling the resources needed to make the game.

As the women and men's leagues don't interact for the female leagues to be added they would likely be a separate mode with their own database, which means you need enough research to build a full game world - you cannot just release a mode with just the English Super League or just National sides. (which is a bit of a catch-22 situation you need the research to add the leagues, but you need something out there to attract people to do the research.) FM cannot really do the FIFA thing of throwing in a women's side as a token gesture.

Scaling the attributes wouldn't be a problem as the game modes would be separate so it wouldn't be an issue if a women had the same attributes as a man as they wouldn't ever be playing against each other, so a women having 20 finishing would just be in relation to women's football instead of being compared to football in general.

You also have the issue of player animations there is a good chance these would need to be redone for the women's game which now means you have doubled the motion capture work as you'd need to capture everything twice once as a male and once as a female and the game is already a bit lacking in the animation department as it's expensive and time consuming. Then there is the question of whether the ME itself needs tweaking or not and if it does you've now got two ME's being worked on.

Then there is the facegen system as at the moment the game doesn't generate faces for female staff members so you'd need to add the ability to do that to the system and then you're again doubling the work as you now have to generate male and female faces, and the facegen system has been struggling with male faces over the last few versions so adding more work there would detract from the main game.

That doesn't even factor in any financial balancing or other balancing issues, nor the fact that the Women's leagues in the England anyway aren't all that stable at the moment as the FA keep on messing around with the format which makes the research and programming of the leagues more difficult and quickly outdates the game.

That's not to say I have anything against adding Women's Football to the game (or releasing it's own game) it's just a lot more work than someone just entering the names of female players and teams, and the resources would personally be better used to improve the core game.

[Federico]

And thanks for for have posted what I meant in a much more exhaustive and polite way.

[tiago_wakabayashi]

9 hours ago, Smurf said:

Have you got that market research to hand? How many women play football manager?

Good question. I knew only some one, maybe 4 or 5 and there are two girls well active on a brazilian forum I take part. 

@michaeltmurrayuk I gave 1+ because it was the best explanation about the subject from SI. I hope it changes in the future, but I can understand better the SI side now. 

[Guest]

19 hours ago, michaeltmurrayuk said:

Scaling the attributes wouldn't be a problem as the game modes would be separate so it wouldn't be an issue if a women had the same attributes as a man as they wouldn't ever be playing against each other, so a women having 20 finishing would just be in relation to women's football instead of being compared to football in general.

If you do not scale attributes to the men’s database then you have to rework the ME code or accept that the match created is not an attempt  at as realistic as possible simulation.

[podunkboy]

I watch the Women's World Cup, I'm probably as invested in the U.S. Women's team as the U.S. Men's team, but honestly, if SI doesn't have the resources to give the same level and quality of FM play for both sides, I'd prefer that they remain a "men's only" football sim. Now...if someone wanted to develop a futsal/5-a-side/indoor soccer simulation, I'd totally get on board with that. (I know, I know, it's a heresy, but it's what I grew up with.)

back on the old commodore 64: MISL soccer Major Indoor Soccer League - C-64

[Jonfun1980]

Separate expansion game, I have no interest in it. 

[FrazT]

@michaeltmurrayuk

Great post and summary

[MagicHat]

How many people have seen womens football on FIFA, played 1 game, then never bothered about it again? me for one

 

Let's be honest we want to play womens football manager about as much as women want to play football manager.,

[forameuss]

8 minutes ago, MagicHat said:

How many people have seen womens football on FIFA, played 1 game, then never bothered about it again? me for one

 

Let's be honest we want to play womens football manager about as much as women want to play football manager.,

You were doing so well until the second part.  Aside from putting your own opinions into a general, and generous, "we", is it that hard to believe that women want to - and do - play football manager?  They can even drive and vote these days!

[MagicHat]

Ummmm i think it's a fair and realistic comment. It might not be PC as the day is today but ah well...

Basically, a very small percentage of women are interested in football, an even smaller percentage are interested in playing football games. Usually you bring a game out that a lot of people want to play... 

[forameuss]

Nice to see Richard Keys has changed his ways.

[MagicHat]

28 minutes ago, forameuss said:

Nice to see Richard Keys has changed his ways.

Look i'm not sexist or anything like that... men and women are equal. They just have different interests. Dispute any specific point i said and i'll happily debate it. Maybe i should say my definition of  "we" "men" "women" means most of, the majority etc. There will always be anomalies.

[forameuss]

3 minutes ago, MagicHat said:

Look i'm not sexist or anything like that... men and women are equal. They just have different interests. Dispute any specific point i said and i'll happily debate it. Maybe i should say my definition of  "we" "men" "women" means most of, the majority etc. There will always be anomalies.

Right.  Women and men have different interests.  Women can't like football, and if they do, they're an "anomaly". 

I'd put down the spade if I were you.

[MagicHat]

7 minutes ago, forameuss said:

Right.  Women and men have different interests.  Women can't like football, and if they do, they're an "anomaly". 

I'd put down the spade if I were you.

I never said women can't like football. I said in general women aren't interested in football and even less women play football games.

[alexcelsior]

I mean, we don't need to have the full database, just a structure that works well enough for modders to create database of players and clubs. 

[tiago_wakabayashi]

On 14/06/2018 at 08:04, Smurf said:

Have you got that market research to hand? How many women play football manager?

Lately I have seen more women playing, even I've seen someones replied Miles on twitter about the FM19

On 19/06/2018 at 08:31, MagicHat said:

How many people have seen womens football on FIFA, played 1 game, then never bothered about it again? me for one

 

Let's be honest we want to play womens football manager about as much as women want to play football manager.,

I play sometime with them. With the UCL license, could include the female teams of the competition.

And your second part is double fail. Say for yourself.

EDIT: A Women's football manager comes

[jimhagen2309]

women football would be good edition to FM and give game possibly new audience.

the welsh and Irish leagues average attendance can t be much more than 1000 average.

in fact most of clubs in Scottish championship won t get more than that.

[N^G]

No, and in fact I would consider this to be a clear signal that the series is prioritising the wrong things and would probably cease to purchase.

[Smurf]

25 minutes ago, N^G said:

No, and in fact I would consider this to be a clear signal that the series is prioritising the wrong things and would probably cease to purchase.

Even now in real life the Balon d'Or will have a female category, surely if the game is to reflect football in real life it needs to reflect this also? 

I definitely wouldn't see a value to making any of the women's leagues active or playable - but others might. 

 

[forameuss]

28 minutes ago, N^G said:

No, and in fact I would consider this to be a clear signal that the series is prioritising the wrong things and would probably cease to purchase.

It says a lot that after all the arguably superficial things they've decided to concentrate on, that you would only stop purchasing once them damn wimmin get a spot in the game.

50 minutes ago, jimhagen2309 said:

women football would be good edition to FM and give game possibly new audience.

the welsh and Irish leagues average attendance can t be much more than 1000 average.

in fact most of clubs in Scottish championship won t get more than that.

If you're going to randomly pick a league, and talk in such absolutes, you should probably take a quick check of whether you're actually right.  No club has so far averaged under 1000 in the Scottish Championship this season, and only 2 of the 10 averaged under that last season.  Not that it really matters, but if you take last season, 8 of the 10 clubs averaged more fans than the Women's Super League managed.

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Smurf said:

Even now in real life the Balon d'Or will have a female category, surely if the game is to reflect football in real life it needs to reflect this also? 

I definitely wouldn't see a value to making any of the women's leagues active or playable - but others might. 

 

It doesn't need to add women's football to reflect real life. 

I wonder if the same debate happens on the PCM forum as I believe that game also only simulates male professional road race cycling.

 

[Smurf]

11 minutes ago, Barside said:

It doesn't need to add women's football to reflect real life. 

I wonder if the same debate happens on the PCM forum as I believe that game also only simulates male professional road race cycling.

 

A quick search points that it does, and people are making women's cycling databases, jerseys and such. Showing there is a demand for it. 

And someone has made a female database for Football Manger

https://www.footballmanagerblog.org/2018/06/football-manager-2018-women-database.html

Shows there is demand for it.

[forameuss]

1 minute ago, Smurf said:

A quick search points that it does, and people are making women's cycling databases, jerseys and such. Showing there is a demand for it. 

And someone has made a female database for Football Manger

https://www.footballmanagerblog.org/2018/06/football-manager-2018-women-database.html

Shows there is demand for it.

To be fair though, I tried to build a completely made-up fantasy database, doesn't mean there was a demand for it outside of my own use.  And SI would need far more interest than a few hundred people downloading an edited file to actually go ahead with doing it properly.

[Smurf]

5 minutes ago, forameuss said:

To be fair though, I tried to build a completely made-up fantasy database, doesn't mean there was a demand for it outside of my own use.  And SI would need far more interest than a few hundred people downloading an edited file to actually go ahead with doing it properly.

It was only a quick search 

I found a twitter feed for same

https://twitter.com/womenonfm?lang=en

 

Morelinks

 

Another going back to FM12

http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/transfer-updates-custom-leagues-editing/105027-womens-database.html

 

This one has over 1500 downloads for Fm13

https://www.fmscout.com/a-womens-football-the-database-fm13.html

 

 

 

 

[Smurf]

It's also in Steam workshop - not sure how to get downloaded stats

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1315662285

 

 

[Guest]

1500 downloads is tiny & just over 0.1% of total copies activated, is this a statistic that the market isn't actually there?

[forameuss]

Yeah, what Barside said.

I'm not against it by any means, but I can see that from SI's perspective they need to go on something more concrete than that.  Basically, putting any feature in the game is going to cost them x (ultimately monetary, either physical costs, or someone's time).  It's simplifying massively, but for a feature like this that is a complete departure, and a much larger change than a lot of people realise, you've got to balance the amount you're going to spend on a feature against how much that feature is going to bring in.  Is there a big untapped market of players who are 1) interested in the game 2) don't buy it already and 3) would buy it if this feature was added?  I remain unconvinced that there is any feature that that is true for.  SI are in a niche market, and they're closing to tapping the whole thing.  It's all about retention.

[Smurf]

It might be tiny - but that's only people who search for it and download it and play it. Others wouldn't have know-how or think about even searching for it, or even buy the game at all because of no femal league. 

At the moment today there's  according to steam

MIn 25,853 

Peaked at  42,777

So adding another possibly 1,500 players to that count would be circa 5% increase given that all people using database were online at a similar time. 

Also that stat was from 2013 - 5 years ago. The demand may have risen since, it may have fallen.

If it's popular enough for people to share amongst themselves and share to a small population of already FM users - then it could be popular enough to be included in the full game.

 

I mean - let's not get bogged down in very bad stats either - the fact still remains, Balon d'Or is going to be first time ever presented to a female footballer, and I, for one, would like to see it represented in the game. 

Much more so than a player randomly declaring that they are gay. 

 

 

[N^G]

1 hour ago, forameuss said:

It says a lot that after all the arguably superficial things they've decided to concentrate on, that you would only stop purchasing once them damn wimmin get a spot in the game.

What makes you think I'm a fan of other superficial things that have been added to the game over the last few years and that this just wouldn't be the last straw?

There's a lot that they could do with this series, but preaching social values to it's audience by making a big effort to include football that is basically schoolboy level quality isn't the way forward.

I'd much rather they spent time on improving the depth of the actual management part of the game in order that we aren't playing whack-a-mole with players who are unhappy that they haven't appeared in the last 3 games, answering repetitive questions to the media and ignoring the twitter feed that invariably has a "this is good", "this is ok" and "this is bad" entry for every single thing from your support, not to mention that the men's game is far from fleshed out and complete.

[forameuss]

1 minute ago, N^G said:

What makes you think I'm a fan of other superficial things that have been added to the game over the last few years and that this just wouldn't be the last straw?

There's a lot that they could do with this series, but preaching social values to it's audience by making a big effort to include football that is basically schoolboy level quality isn't the way forward.

I'd much rather they spent time on improving the depth of the actual management part of the game in order that we aren't playing whack-a-mole with players who are unhappy that they haven't appeared in the last 3 games, answering repetitive questions to the media and ignoring the twitter feed that invariably has a "this is good", "this is ok" and "this is bad" entry for every single thing from your support.

Do you need another shovel or are you fine with the one you've got?

[N^G]

Just now, forameuss said:

Do you need another shovel or are you fine with the one you've got?

Try playing the ball and not the man.

[Smurf]

1 minute ago, N^G said:

What makes you think I'm a fan of other superficial things that have been added to the game over the last few years and that this just wouldn't be the last straw?

There's a lot that they could do with this series, but preaching social values to it's audience by making a big effort to include football that is basically schoolboy level quality isn't the way forward.

I'd much rather they spent time on improving the depth of the actual management part of the game in order that we aren't playing whack-a-mole with players who are unhappy that they haven't appeared in the last 3 games, answering repetitive questions to the media and ignoring the twitter feed that invariably has a "this is good", "this is ok" and "this is bad" entry for every single thing from your support.

I much prefer that they spend their time fixing the UI so it's playable again, for me the UI got broken way back in Fm13/FM14 was worse. But then again, they have teams that work on ME, teams that work on UI, teams that work on scouting, and teams that work on the databases, I am only presuming of course. Maybe they all chip in and do it all together. But the point is they have staff that work on different things.

Where is the harm in having more staff to include a database of wondeful women footballers. And what would be the harm if you could choose to not include that database in your game, and giving the option for others to play using that database. 

 

[Smurf]

1 minute ago, N^G said:

Try playing the ball and not the man/woman.

Fixed that for you

[forameuss]

Just now, N^G said:

Try playing the ball and not the man.

Cos it's all about the ladz innit?  Proper blokey blokes.  Doing blokey things.  No girls allowed, rite ladz?!!

And I probably would've if you hadn't just gone the tired "OMG SJW" route with your post.

But like I said, it still says a lot.  Other far more superfluous features have been added that are shoved into your face in a far more tedious manner.  But they have the temerity to add a game-mode that would likely be completely avoidable, but happens to involve *gasp* women, and that's the line?