Interview with Miles Jacobson Part 1
Written on the 15th January 2008 by Mark
This is part one of our interview with Miles where he answers questions on Football Manager.
Football Manager 2008
| Question |
With the recent release of Football Manager 2008, was the release a success for the company?
We’re sure the game sold well because it is still the number one Football management game but was this particular version a milestone in the success it has achieved? |
| Answer from Miles |
Very much so – game sales are up in every territory that I’ve had figures from, and word of mouth seems to be very strong (this keeps the game selling long term). It’s still number one in the UK in the PC chart, having been knocked off for a few weeks by Call of Duty.
Review scores have also been strong, and the majority of feedback is very positive indeed. |
| Question |
| Every year you guys release the latest version of the game there is the usual whinning how the game should have had this, should have had that, but what do you say to these people that say this version lacked enough new big features? |
| Answer from Miles |
| We go through all the ideas each year from the forums, and our own, and decide what will make the game better, and what is able to be done in time. We’re very happy with the additional feature set this year, and also what the extra features can bring in the future. Whatever we do, and whatever we add, we cannot please all people, as different people play the game in different ways, so we just make the best game we possibly can. |
| Question |
| How many people now work on Football Manager the PC version? Has the team increased or decreased considering you need staff to work on other platforms? |
| Answer from Miles |
The team has increased, and continues to do so each year. It’s difficult to give an exact figure, with all the researchers, and some of the team who work on the platform layers working on more than one platform. We’ll be taking on a few more people in the next 12 months too. What tends to happen is that we take on a couple of junior coders each year on the FM team, who then move onto working on other areas of the game when they feel ready, and then take on more juniors. It’s worked very well for us in the past, and continues to do so. But we’ve also taken on a couple of more senior coders this year, which has also worked well – it’s all about the people, and how they fit into the team.
The other projects, with exception of the platform layers used, are separate teams - console, handheld, FML, FM, graphics and tech are the 6 teams we have in dev. |
| Question |
| It seems that this version of Football Manager has been pretty stable so will there be another patch for FM2008 and if so any hints as to when we will see it? |
| Answer from Miles |
| Yes, there will – it’ll be out a few weeks after the transfer window, with a data update. There are still a few issues that are affecting some users, such as a few different issues with registration of players in Spain, a Scottish amateur team who seem to buy lots of players, and some match engine niggles, which we all want sorted, and they should be for that patch. |
Onto part 2
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