First, yeah, its soccer. When I started, I knew $^&%-all about soccer. I mean, I played as a kid, but I didn't know anything at all about modern professional soccer, and I had a sort of mental image of small American crowds and a semi-pro sport played 'for the love of the game'.
Well, it turns out, in Europe and South America, soccer is KING, absolutely bigger than American Football is here. Life and death, and not just at the World Cup level, through the "club" (professional) level as well.
FM (Worldwide Soccer Manager) is, quite simply, the best simulator of that sport out there.
What's so great about it?
Depth, depth, and more depth.
. . .
Attributes
In PureSim, players are rated on what, seven characteristics? Contact, Power, Eye, Hands, Range, Arm, Speed?
In FM, players are rated on more characteristics that I could possibly remember to list: the "Mental" side of the game along includes Aggression, Anticipation, Bravery, Composure, Concentration, Creativity, Decisions, Determination, Flair, Influence, Off the Ball (movement), (defensive) Positioning, Teamwork, and Work Rate. Every decision a player makes during the game-engine is based on those stats - so if your guy is too brave and too aggressive, he's going to get more fouls called against him.
Even better, the players have simulated emotional reactions based on those characteristics - so, say you've got a brave, aggressive, strong defender, and the opposition has a small, quick, talented forward .. with very low bravery .. you can order your guy to pound on him (tight marking, hard tackling) and by the second half of the game, that forward may act "ball shy", afraid of getting hurt in the big hits your guy is laying on him. (Of course, there's the risk that your guy gets himself thrown out of the game for too many fouls....)
Further, the players have "Favorite moves", such as "Likes to shoot from long range", "Likes to drift outside"... not all of them are good, you have things like "Argues with referee"...
. . .
Development model
The development model is incredibly sophisticated, as well.
In PureSim, players develop based on a hidden "peak age" number; the further from their peak, the further down the AAA/AA/A ladder you want them playing for maximum development... and 'more playing time is always better'.
FM looks at a number of different factors, but the primary modifiers are his current skill and his potential skill. If he's playing at his potential, he's not going to get any better, fair enough. If he's got room to improve, then things get interesting. For each 'current skill', there's a 'correct playing level'... if you have him playing in the A equivalent when he has AAA skill, he won't improve... but if you have him playing "in over his head", he's in 'survival mode', not learning (think rookie QB starting in the NFL).
Also "in play" are other factors: quality of the team's training facilities, quality of the coaches, whether the player is happy or not, etc.
Players even become "stressed" if you rely on them too young - make most eighteen-year-olds a starter at the highest level, and they'll crack under the pressure. You can even do long-lasting damage, costing them the self-confidence required to succeed at that level, essentially shattering a promising young career.
Even better, you can assign veteran players to "mentor" the younger ones. The younger one will start picking up the mental traits (and 'preferred moves'!) of the "mentor".. again, for good or for ill! If you have a lazy "mentor", the young player is going to learn to be lazy..
. . .
Scouting
International soccer still uses the old system baseball had, before the modern draft and organization. You scout players globally, as do the other teams. At first, all you may know about a player is his name and his position.. but as your scouts visit, they'll reveal more and more about him, showing you some and eventually all of his numeric 'attribute's, as well as giving you the following sort of verbal reports:
As you hire personnel - coaches and scouts - you increase your "Scouting Knowledge" of different regions:
. . .
Financial Model
The heart of any sim is its financial model.
If its too simplistic, there is no "price" for purchasing the best of anything. (Look at any EA product for an example: you always want to buy the most expensive whatever-it-is, as there's never a downside to doing so.)
In PureSim - and most of the single-developer American titles, honestly - there is a fixed "Budget", and your expenses are deducted from that budget. You can't go over, and either the budget doesn't change from year to year, or 'inflation' increases the budgets.
In FM, the system includes many many sources of income:
- Television contracts
- Prize money
- Day-of-game Ticket sales
- Sale of players
- Season ticket sales
- Merchandising
- Grant monies
- Investments
And many sources of outflow:
- Purchase of players
- Player salaries
- Staff salaries
- Ground maintenance
- Day-of-game costs
- Travel costs
- Dividends!
- Taxes!
- Revenue from affiliated clubs
- Debt payments on loans
- Construction costs
That's only a sampling, but it really has such a detailed financial system that I remember a game where I took over a team with a massive debt, playing at a low level in front of a mostly-empty stadium. It was a significant challenge "just to make ends meet", and I wound up watching the finances on a monthly basis, losing money mosts months, and relying on either selling my best young players for high prices, or making good Cup runs (for both the additional home games, and the prize money). Getting that team clear of debt was a huge accomplishment, and gave me more emotional 'payback' than any accomplishment I've experienced in PureSim.
Your 'board' sets the budgets, including deciding what your maximum total 'wage bill' can be, what your maximum wages are for a single player, and what your 'transfer budget' is. If you spend everything they let you, you're chancing running the team down financially. Likewise, decisions like "Let's build a new stadium", and "Let's improve the training facilities" are in the hands of the board, not the player - and they cost a lot of money, so the board is only going to agree when the team's financial future seems secure.
. . .
Press coverage
Do you like PSPN?
What if it had real articles?
What if you had to answer questions from the media?
What if your answers had discernable effects on your players?
What if your 'malcontents' stirred up trouble in the media as well, potentially unsettling your other players?
What if you could use the media to play mind-games with both your players and the opposition, in the run-up to a big game?
In FM, you can do all of that.
One of my favorite moments in the game was, after I'd reached the "Championship", which is basically England's AAA-equivalent, crowds in the 15,000-30,000 range, and I managed to sign Christian Vieri, one of the biggest Italian stars. His contract had expired, and I made an odd contract offer, with a huge signing bonus and a low annual salary, plus a minimum-fee release clause, which basically meant if any other team was willing to pay me $8M or so, they could hire him away from me.
The neat thing was, the media KNEW what an odd circumstance that was, and I received messages like how the fans met at the airport to greet their big new signing.. how it was standing-room only at his first practice..
.. and then it tied in, of course, to the finanical system, as my attendance took a huge spike upwards, and of course my merchandising revenue increased as well. It lasted about a year, and then some bigger fish paid the $8M to steal him away.
. . .
Promotion and Relegation
Put ALL of that together with the "Promotion/relegation" system...
.. oh, you don't know about that?
Well, in European soccer, each team in A, AA, and AAA is independent. At the end of the year, the top three teams from A get 'promoted' to AA, while the bottom three teams from AA are 'relegated' down to A... and all up the chain, so that the top three teams from the Championship get promoted, while the worst three teams from the Premiership get relegated... and the top three or four teams from the Premiership qualify for the European Champions League the next season!
It has an interesting impact on the schedule, in that most games matter, even very late in the season. The battle between the 19th-place team and the 18th-place team with three weeks left in the season may be a literal battle for life and death (of the organizations), as the loser is almost certainly bound for relegation, and significant drops in their revenue (television, season tickets, prize money, etc). If they've been 'spending' at the Premiership level, they may have to have a 'fire sale' such as American teams can only imagine, just to get down to a reasonable wage for the Championship level.
As a game design, however, that makes for a beautiful, beautiful system, as you can take over a team in the "lowest playable league", which for England would be the Conference North or so, and try to earn promotions... to the Conference .. to League Two .. to League One .. to the Championship .. to the Premier League .. to qualify for Europe .. to WIN in Europe ... well, you're looking at about a twenty-year 'campaign' for that, and that's assuming you're doing very very well!
. . .
One hundred playable leagues?
But the scope of the game isn't just Europe... you can manage just about anywhere, from Australia to the United States, from Argentina to Iceland, from Croatia to Mexico, from Sweden to South Africa...
... and the game knows the correct competition rules for all of them, even the most obscure backwards crazy rules (which most Europeans agree is the MLS, honestly!)
. . .
The World Cup
But AL only cares about the World Cup, and that just for Nationalistic Pride, he says... [;)]
... so, just for him, you can take over the national team of just about any nation in the game as well... and good LUCK trying to turn the U.S. into a perennial international soccer powerhouse, the game DOES know how unlikely that is!
(A hint: you have to work at turning the MLS into a powerhouse league, as well)
. . .
It is EXACTLY what we would dream of PureSim being, if only Shaun had unlimited time and financial backing. [:)]
If you can get past the fact that its "the wrong sport", and get past the fact that you don't know a 4-4-2 from a 3-6-1, and give yourself a year of game time...
... its the best game in our market, bar none.
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