Suggestion - Women's Football

[boyinthesnow]

May have been suggested a million times but with the prominence of women's football increasing all the time, would anyone like to see this mirrored in FM? What would be the obstacles? 

[CFuller]

I would definitely like to see women's football in FM.

However, as been said dozens of times, one of the main obstacles is a lack of interest compared to the men's game. Attendances in many major European women's leagues barely reach League Two or even National League levels. SI don't want to put precious resources into adding women's football to FM if the interest simply isn't there yet.

[FrazT]

SI have stated that when women's football is at the popularity level of the English Championship, it will be considered.  Until then, I suspect that it will remain a nice idea in theory.

[Spurs08]

14 hours ago, FrazT said:

SI have stated that when women's football is at the popularity level of the English Championship, it will be considered.  Until then, I suspect that it will remain a nice idea in theory.

Which is a very high bar. The Championship is the 9th biggest league in the world by revenue, the 3rd by attendances. If this was applied to the male game, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Holland and Portugal, among many others, wouldn't have their leagues available. 

[FrazT]

9 hours ago, Spurs08 said:

Which is a very high bar. The Championship is the 9th biggest league in the world by revenue, the 3rd by attendances. If this was applied to the male game, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Holland and Portugal, among many others, wouldn't have their leagues available. 

You may well be correct and maybe this is a theoretical bar only- the bottom line is that to make the extra expenses that would be required to recode and research the women's game, it needs to be a lot more popular spectator ( and therefore by definition, buyer) wise before it will be considered.  Commercial considerations are always going to be important.

[vasilli07]

Someone made a database for women football and uploaded it on steam workshop just in case anyone is interested.

[Mystique]

.

[themadsheep2001]

On 3/2/2018 at 23:18, FrazT said:

You may well be correct and maybe this is a theoretical bar only- the bottom line is that to make the extra expenses that would be required to recode and research the women's game, it needs to be a lot more popular spectator ( and therefore by definition, buyer) wise before it will be considered.  Commercial considerations are always going to be important.

I'll be honest and say that this is an unfeasibly high bar, as highlighted by Spurs08, and I think SI seriously need to reconsider that as a limit

[DizzyNewHeights]

I don't think the woman's game is that important to be considered right now and would rather leagues such as Japan or Cyprus to be included before the effort was made to research the womans leagues.

[Spurs08]

14 minutes ago, DizzyNewHeights said:

I don't think the woman's game is that important to be considered right now and would rather leagues such as Japan or Cyprus to be included before the effort was made to research the womans leagues.

Japan isn't possible for licensing reasons. Cyprus is indeed the main nation that seems to be an odd exclusion considering plenty of smaller European leagues are included - at this point it's safe to assume there's some specific reason it isn't possible (lack of researchers, licensing issues, very low game sells in the country, or weird political sensibilities regarding selling the game in Turkey being the options that spring to mind).

Women's football meanwhile wouldn't be likely to run into licensing issues - the authorities would love it to gain the exposure FM brings - and would I think be quite effective for sales. It would not only bring in a new audience albeit not a massive one, but a large number of existing players would be intrigued enough to try it and it would result in huge amounts of press coverage and free advertising (which some have suggested SI have deliberately sought with the Brexit feature in FM17 and now the gay players coming out feature in FM18). The downside of course is that rather than just research, it would need significant other dev time - making sure the gendered pronouns work in every language, making sure female and male players cannot transfer into the wrong gender or really interact in any way (but staff can), and most of all. deciding how to work the attributes.How do you compare male and female players? Do you somewhat subjectively put the ability level of the best women at around the top of the English non-league men's game and thus have 12 be a very good attribute for a woman? Or have a woman's scale of 1-20 where the match engine then treats a 20 as, say, equivalent to a male 15? In reality this probably needs to work differently for different attributes - female players should generally have just as much mental ability, the technicals should be much lower but with this mainly being due to poor coaching and facilities and able to improve drastically if they ever did, but substantially lower physicals. The last point is then a storm of controversy even though it's true, and means you'd probably want them on a 1-20 scale regardless which is then adjusted in the ME - which is both time-consuming and potentially confusing.

If it was just a matter of research, I'm sure it'd be in the game already. As it is I think it's something SI are probably working towards, but it would definitely be a major feature and a big decision to make.

[vasilli07]

SI could consider making it into a DLC (like the Gibraltar league) and see how many people download it.

[sidneycrosby87]

Yes please! Even if you can't do all the research for now, at least let us make our own rather than just letting us be non-players.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

On 3/9/2018 at 01:05, Spurs08 said:

Japan isn't possible for licensing reasons. Cyprus is indeed the main nation that seems to be an odd exclusion considering plenty of smaller European leagues are included - at this point it's safe to assume there's some specific reason it isn't possible (lack of researchers, licensing issues, very low game sells in the country, or weird political sensibilities regarding selling the game in Turkey being the options that spring to mind).

Women's football meanwhile wouldn't be likely to run into licensing issues - the authorities would love it to gain the exposure FM brings - and would I think be quite effective for sales. It would not only bring in a new audience albeit not a massive one, but a large number of existing players would be intrigued enough to try it and it would result in huge amounts of press coverage and free advertising (which some have suggested SI have deliberately sought with the Brexit feature in FM17 and now the gay players coming out feature in FM18). The downside of course is that rather than just research, it would need significant other dev time - making sure the gendered pronouns work in every language, making sure female and male players cannot transfer into the wrong gender or really interact in any way (but staff can), and most of all. deciding how to work the attributes.How do you compare male and female players? Do you somewhat subjectively put the ability level of the best women at around the top of the English non-league men's game and thus have 12 be a very good attribute for a woman? Or have a woman's scale of 1-20 where the match engine then treats a 20 as, say, equivalent to a male 15? In reality this probably needs to work differently for different attributes - female players should generally have just as much mental ability, the technicals should be much lower but with this mainly being due to poor coaching and facilities and able to improve drastically if they ever did, but substantially lower physicals. The last point is then a storm of controversy even though it's true, and means you'd probably want them on a 1-20 scale regardless which is then adjusted in the ME - which is both time-consuming and potentially confusing.

If it was just a matter of research, I'm sure it'd be in the game already. As it is I think it's something SI are probably working towards, but it would definitely be a major feature and a big decision to make.

Scaling the attributes wouldn't be a problem as the game modes would be separate so it wouldn't be an issue if a women had the same attributes as a man as they wouldn't ever be playing against each other, so a women having 20 finishing would just be in relation to women's football instead of being compared to football in general.

The main problem with adding in women's leagues is that it is effectively an entirely separate game, so you are near enough doubling the resources needed to make the game.

As the women and men's leagues don't interact for the female leagues to be added they would likely be a separate mode with their own database, which means you need enough research to build a full game world - you cannot just release a mode with just the English Super League or just National sides. (which is a bit of a catch-22 situation you need the research to add the leagues, but you need something out their to attract people to do the research.) FM cannot really do the FIFA thing of throwing in a women's side as a token gesture.

There is also the issue of licensing, I don't know if the women's game has an equivalent to FIFFPro who control the licenses for player names, if they don't or they work differently then you'd need to grab the licenses individually. You also have the issue of whilst they might be happy to license now if the women's game continues to increase in popularity at some point EA will fully add them to FIFA and they will likely sign an exclusive license which could mean FM put in a couple of years work to build the game only for them to lose the ability to use it.

You also have the issue of player animations there is a good chance these would need to be redone for the women's game which now means you have doubled the motion capture work as you'd need to capture everything twice once as a male and once as a female and the game is already a bit lacking in the animation department as it's expensive and time consuming. Then there is the question of whether the ME itself needs tweaking or not and if it does you've now got two ME's being worked on.

Then there is the facegen system as the moment the game doesn't generate faces for female staff members so you'd need to add the ability to do that to the system and then you're again doubling the work as you now have to generate male and female faces, and the facegen system has been struggling with male faces over the last few versions so adding more work there would detract from the main game.

That's not to say I have anything against adding Women's Football to the game (or releasing it's own game) it's just a lot more work than someone just entering the names of female players and teams, and the resources would personally be better used to improve the core game.

[gavo01]

No, no way and hopefully never. 

[tiago_wakabayashi]

On 02/03/2018 at 11:11, Spurs08 said:

Which is a very high bar. The Championship is the 9th biggest league in the world by revenue, the 3rd by attendances. If this was applied to the male game, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Holland and Portugal, among many others, wouldn't have their leagues available. 

High bar and a bit unfair IMO. Following the @Spurs08's idea, even Brazil could be excluded.

On 10/03/2018 at 16:42, michaeltmurrayuk said:

Scaling the attributes wouldn't be a problem as the game modes would be separate so it wouldn't be an issue if a women had the same attributes as a man as they wouldn't ever be playing against each other, so a women having 20 finishing would just be in relation to women's football instead of being compared to football in general.

The main problem with adding in women's leagues is that it is effectively an entirely separate game, so you are near enough doubling the resources needed to make the game.

As the women and men's leagues don't interact for the female leagues to be added they would likely be a separate mode with their own database, which means you need enough research to build a full game world - you cannot just release a mode with just the English Super League or just National sides. (which is a bit of a catch-22 situation you need the research to add the leagues, but you need something out their to attract people to do the research.) FM cannot really do the FIFA thing of throwing in a women's side as a token gesture.

There is also the issue of licensing, I don't know if the women's game has an equivalent to FIFFPro who control the licenses for player names, if they don't or they work differently then you'd need to grab the licenses individually. You also have the issue of whilst they might be happy to license now if the women's game continues to increase in popularity at some point EA will fully add them to FIFA and they will likely sign an exclusive license which could mean FM put in a couple of years work to build the game only for them to lose the ability to use it.

You also have the issue of player animations there is a good chance these would need to be redone for the women's game which now means you have doubled the motion capture work as you'd need to capture everything twice once as a male and once as a female and the game is already a bit lacking in the animation department as it's expensive and time consuming. Then there is the question of whether the ME itself needs tweaking or not and if it does you've now got two ME's being worked on.

Then there is the facegen system as the moment the game doesn't generate faces for female staff members so you'd need to add the ability to do that to the system and then you're again doubling the work as you now have to generate male and female faces, and the facegen system has been struggling with male faces over the last few versions so adding more work there would detract from the main game.

That's not to say I have anything against adding Women's Football to the game (or releasing it's own game) it's just a lot more work than someone just entering the names of female players and teams, and the resources would personally be better used to improve the core game.

About the different attributes to (wo)men: It's right

About the FIFFPRO:

 

Quote

 

ABOUT FIFPRO

FIFPro is the worldwide representative organisation for all professional footballers; more than 60,000 players in total, male and female. The World Players’ Union currently has 63 national players’ associations as their members. Five candidate members and seven observers hope to join FIFPro in the near future.

The mission ‘FIFPro supports players’ and our mission statement ‘FIFPro is the exclusive collective voice of the world’s professional footballers’ are key principles. These are the two guiding foundations that underpin FIFPro’s activities.

 

 

 

 

On 11/03/2018 at 14:49, gavo01 said:

No, no way and hopefully never. 

Why so negative?

[SpurrBeeversWoodBuxton]

On ‎10‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 19:42, michaeltmurrayuk said:

Scaling the attributes wouldn't be a problem as the game modes would be separate so it wouldn't be an issue if a women had the same attributes as a man as they wouldn't ever be playing against each other, so a women having 20 finishing would just be in relation to women's football instead of being compared to football in general.

The main problem with adding in women's leagues is that it is effectively an entirely separate game, so you are near enough doubling the resources needed to make the game.

As the women and men's leagues don't interact for the female leagues to be added they would likely be a separate mode with their own database, which means you need enough research to build a full game world - you cannot just release a mode with just the English Super League or just National sides. (which is a bit of a catch-22 situation you need the research to add the leagues, but you need something out their to attract people to do the research.) FM cannot really do the FIFA thing of throwing in a women's side as a token gesture.

There is also the issue of licensing, I don't know if the women's game has an equivalent to FIFFPro who control the licenses for player names, if they don't or they work differently then you'd need to grab the licenses individually. You also have the issue of whilst they might be happy to license now if the women's game continues to increase in popularity at some point EA will fully add them to FIFA and they will likely sign an exclusive license which could mean FM put in a couple of years work to build the game only for them to lose the ability to use it.

You also have the issue of player animations there is a good chance these would need to be redone for the women's game which now means you have doubled the motion capture work as you'd need to capture everything twice once as a male and once as a female and the game is already a bit lacking in the animation department as it's expensive and time consuming. Then there is the question of whether the ME itself needs tweaking or not and if it does you've now got two ME's being worked on.

Then there is the facegen system as the moment the game doesn't generate faces for female staff members so you'd need to add the ability to do that to the system and then you're again doubling the work as you now have to generate male and female faces, and the facegen system has been struggling with male faces over the last few versions so adding more work there would detract from the main game.

That's not to say I have anything against adding Women's Football to the game (or releasing it's own game) it's just a lot more work than someone just entering the names of female players and teams, and the resources would personally be better used to improve the core game.

That's what would be needed for SI to do it perfectly. The operative words there being SI and perfectly. I wouldn't need it to be perfect, personally. All it would really need is a bit of improvement work to the editor, which is necessary anyway because the editor is currently buggy as hell, and the work on pronouns mentioned above. Now that's not nothing; it's still a lot of work. But compared to the above litany it's not a massive amount and if the pronouns can be made to work properly and the editor can set up leagues that are only for certain types of players (e.g. females) then the people currently making women's football databases in the editor would be able to do it about ten times better. Would it be up to the standard that SI would want it to be if they were releasing it? No. Would it have all the problems regarding attributes and the ME and animations that you mentioned above? Yes, but those who download those women on FM databases now have those problems already and it doesn't stop them, does it?

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.