This is Football Management – Upcoming Mini
Sports Director Ltd has just announced their forthcoming football management game, This is Football Management, which is being specifically developed as a PSP mini.
This is what Roger Womack, director of Sports Director Ltd and designer and developer of the game, had to say about it on the PlayStation.Blog:
This is Football Management provides months of fun as you choose from 92 clubs and lead them to glory in the league and cups, building a stronger team with careful wheeling and dealing in the transfer market to build a squad capable of winning every trophy in its path.
This eagerly anticipated game provides football fans with the opportunity to step into the football manager’s shoes, pick their favourite football team from the English divisions and take the all-important decisions in managing their squad to league success and cup glory.
This is Football Management is easy to pick up and play, providing PSP owners with a unique handheld gaming experience via a solid match engine, an intuitive game interface and easy-to-read team and player statistics. This is one game that is going to provide your football management experience on-the-go throughout the season.
I really like the idea of this. Football management games make great minis in theory, as they’re perfect for pick-up-and-play ability and the graphics don’t have to be brilliant for them to work.
Championship Manager on the PC was one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played and the most exciting graphic on offer was the flashing red line when a goal was scored.
Obviously TIFM does not have licensed players or clubs, and for some people this might be a problem, but in his reply to a reader’s comments on the PlayStation.Blog, Roger Womack states that the game would have a manual name editor for all clubs and players. Although with names like ‘W.Rooniy’ for Manchester Red you might not need to bother as I think we can all guess who that is!
Roger also stated that TIFM currently includes just the four English divisions, although you can still buy players from European clubs, just not manage the club.
Looking forward to this, it could be great!
Won’t this have pretty stiff competition from that Sega football manager game, though? Then again, those are super complicated…
I’m kinda confused about this.
Well, I mean the gameplay of course.
Is it some text-based game?
Yeah, a lot of sports sims are simply text based, when it comes how a game is resolved/displayed. You can get more accurate results that way, whereas graphical ones have weird physics that are never quite right.
Soccer/Football versions are big in Europe, whereas in the US, baseball ones are popular.
Yes, these are text-based games that are very popular in the UK in particular with soccer fans. Basically, you do everything except control the players on the pitch. You pick the players for the team, choose a formation, strategy and so on (eg attacking, defensive). Then when the match starts you watch your players go out and do their stuff, based on your tactics, like a real soccer manager would. Sometimes you see little icons moving around the pitch to represent what’s happening in the game, sometimes the action is simply described in words. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s strangely addictive! Another part of the strategy of it all is how you spend the resources at your disposal, buying players from other clubs and selling your own players. Most games don’t have official licences so they give the teams and players names that are very similar to the main English clubs and players, so for example in this case, ‘Wayne Rooniy’ who plays for Manchester Reds in the game is instantly recognisable to soccer fans as Wayne Rooney who plays for Manchester United. Some games (such as this one) provide a text editor so that you can change all the names to those of the real players and teams. I’ve known people to spend hours doing this!