Football Manager 2012: a Thin Line Between Reality and Gaming
The Football Manager franchise is one of the longest running franchises is computer and video game history - the series originally known as Championship Manager was born in the mid 90s and since then new games were launched each year by developers Sports Interactive - improved versions, to be precise - which made the franchise become known today as the best football manager franchise available to gamers.
One of the things that make games in the Football Manager series so amazing is the focus of the game's developers on realism as opposed to spectacular or sensational gameplay: the virtual manager really feels like a real manager of a football club and less than a gamer. And even though there are not many eye candies when you play Football Manager games and most of the gameplay is text based (with tons of numbers and statistics and player ratings), that's actually part of the realism because a real life manager probably has to do the same: read notes, learn new things, create tactics or tweak the ones the team already knows, scout for some new players and then read some more!
Football Manager also has the biggest players database in the genre and they are all so well researched that real world clubs have signed deals with the game's developers to use the database in order to search for new players to sign. In the real life! So this reason only should be big enough to prove how well researched this game actually is and how realistic you must feel when you play it!
Because, yes, Football Manager is a game in the end: after going through all the stats and choosing the formation, you finally get to see the match itself and the game has a 3D match engine that shows you exactly what's happening on the pitch. And even though you don't have direct control over the players (you're just the manager, after all!), you will still have the chance to alter tactics on the go, shout instructions and change players - with all the changes that you make actually showing in-game. For example, if you instruct your players to run more with the ball instead of crossing, you'll see them dribbling more so the matches you're playing are not all random!
And there are many, many more features that make games in the Football Manager series be so realistic: you can scout players from all over the world, you can train your youngsters and even decide who gets a contract, you can affiliate your club with others and even build new stadiums or expand new one. If there's anything that a real life manager does, then you certainly can do it in a Football Manager game. And that's what should make you say that Football Manager makes you feel like a real life football team manager!
You can start your virtual manager job right away and become a Football Manager Freak and you'll never be alone! Even better, to help you get started and prepared for the future, there's also a list of Football Manager 2012 wonderkids that will surely help get your club forward!
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