Thursday 6 November 2014

My Personal Games of 2013: Football Manager 2014


To understand why football manager is successful you need to understand what it's like to be a football fan.



Supposedly the most stressful situation any human can be put in is one when either fight nor flight serve them well. Where they are compelled instead to ensure punishment and reward administered with administered with equal randomness. Cause and effect suddenly become seemingly disconnected, and the mind finds itself lost, the rational taking a backseat as superstition and ritual step forth to fill the gap where once logic ruled.

That someone would voluntarily put themselves in this situation seems absurd, but every week millions of fans do just this for there is no game in the world, where expectations are so readily confounded and hopes so frequently dashed as football.

To someone who has never sat part of a crowd thousands strong, their stomach's sinking as their collective dreams collapse FM's combination of stats, diagrams, and spread sheets, can feel like a awfully clinical. But to those who have for nearly two decades Sports Interactive's Football Manager series of games (& its predecessors Championship Manager) provided a quiet oasis of order in their lives. A place where the cruellest of sporting mishaps are just on reload away.