FM 25 DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

[kiwityke1983]

3 minutes ago, jmlima said:

4.3% for FM24 so, roughly 86% of players from the 5% given win the world cup.

But... 7.1% win an international tournament...

Like I've said multiple times Miles used the percentage of saves that play international not the percentage of players.

The percentage of players is probably closer to 50% than it is 5.

 

[Dbuk1]

22 minutes ago, jmlima said:

4.3% for FM24 so, roughly 86% of players from the 5% given win the world cup.

But... 7.1% win an international tournament...

My comment was aimed at a mod....silly joke. 

[wazzaflow10]

1 hour ago, renaldasuk said:

they say only 5% play international management mode.

 

I checked FM 23 achievements, 7.5% won the world cup, let's say half of those who played it, won. that's already 15% of all FM23 players, who played in the world cup. what if we add smaller nations, that do not qualify for the world cup?

how do you get 5% SI?

 

1. no one will pay international management from the start, because it is so bad and has been neglected for years with 0 development

2. since most players start with club management first, it is only those who play  long term saves, can engage with international management and only minority of FM players are playing long enough to be offered an international job

 

it is easy to manipulate statistics, to support your point, rather than admit that you have no talent and skill to make international football work within your new or most likely updated code

If there are 200 unique players and 7.5% have won the world cup that means 15 players have at least one international save.

Those 200 unique players could play an infinite number of saves. We obviously know that if 15 players gained an international achievement then there's at least 15 saves with international management.  They didn't comment on how many saves are uniquely international or uniquely club.

In order to make 15 saves equal 5% of total saves we do some basic math. 15*100/5 = 300 total saves. Or 1.5 total saves per player which in reality seems completely achievable. Even if we assume there's double the number of international saves as you suggest we get 3 saves per player. Quoting your "its easy to manipulate statistics" its not hard to fathom there are a lot of players who start a lot of saves and skew the average. I personally started two real ones and a few others for some scouting tests I was running. At best 5% of "real saves", however you want to define that, might be marginally lower.  

There's simply no benefit to manipulating statistics here and its pretty easy math to sort out that its entirely possible. Especially given the fact that users have asked for it to be revamped. It doesn't make sense to port a module of a game you plan on rewriting from scratch. Calling a development team talentless is a pretty silly comment from someone who can't remember cross multiplication.

The main takeaway is you're just angry at women's football being included.

 

[matthew1310]

For people that really love International Managment:

Please sign this petition.

https://chng.it/NmDpXgPjwh

We can show SI that for us International Managment is important !

[ajw10]

A petition  I almost want SI to now say that international football is never returning

[santy001]

What happens if only 5% of the playerbase signs the petition?

Steam, as big as it is, isn't the only place through which you can acquire Football Manager. Maybe it's higher on Steam, lower on PC Gamepass and then on one platform it's some weird cult like International only group of players and overall it comes out to around the 5% mark. 

The reason why I'm comfortable taking the stats at face value, SI didn't have to include it. As a studio decision something had to give and they made a decision. The rest is just to help people understand some of the contributing factors.

[wazzaflow10]

1 hour ago, kiwityke1983 said:

Like I've said multiple times Miles used the percentage of saves that play international not the percentage of players.

The percentage of players is probably closer to 50% than it is 5.

 

I don't think that kind of skew is realistically possible.

If we have 2000 players with half of them playing international management you'd need some crazy skew of numbers.

Suppose each player only starts 1 save (not realistic) but the math doesn't work for obvious reasons. No way to divide up 2000 saves into 5% of international and have 50% of the player base play international.

So lets increase the number of saves. Suppose each player in each group can start 2 saves. Its closer but we still aren't near 5% of saves. We can do this for 3 saves per player, 4 saves per player etc.

In fact if we assume that each group starts roughly the same number of games we'd have to have 10 saves per player. I don't think that's realistic.

So lets say we make it 25% of players have an international save. that brings it to 5 saves per player. Its more possible but probably the upper bound of reality.

12.5% brings it do 3 saves per player. So now we've firmly entered what is likely reasonable. Assuming all players play an equal number of games in each group with the constraint that one group has at least one international save.

 

[RandomGuy.]

2 hours ago, trevjim said:

 

PES and FIFA used to push each other so much. Until Fifa introduced Ultimate team and the money dried up for PES

PES failed because they started prioritising online modes, to try and replicate Ultimate Team, and neglected single player career mode.

Once the online part never took off they had nothing to fall back on and in the end they were just making awful, buggy, games.

That's not a mistake/route I think FM will go down. 

[kiwityke1983]

59 minutes ago, wazzaflow10 said:

I don't think that kind of skew is realistically possible.

If we have 2000 players with half of them playing international management you'd need some crazy skew of numbers.

Suppose each player only starts 1 save (not realistic) but the math doesn't work for obvious reasons. No way to divide up 2000 saves into 5% of international and have 50% of the player base play international.

So lets increase the number of saves. Suppose each player in each group can start 2 saves. Its closer but we still aren't near 5% of saves. We can do this for 3 saves per player, 4 saves per player etc.

In fact if we assume that each group starts roughly the same number of games we'd have to have 10 saves per player. I don't think that's realistic.

So lets say we make it 25% of players have an international save. that brings it to 5 saves per player. Its more possible but probably the upper bound of reality.

12.5% brings it do 3 saves per player. So now we've firmly entered what is likely reasonable. Assuming all players play an equal number of games in each group with the constraint that one group has at least one international save.

 

You just expended a lot of energy to say we have no real way of telling how many players actually play international management...I've personally started over 50 saves and managed 3 times internationally, 

The fact is the number is way higher than 5%.

There's a reason Miles chose the percentage of saves to justify removing international management, rather than the percentage of players and the only logical reason is because the percentage of players is quite high relative to the number of saves.

(I also said closer to 50 than 5 not that it would be exactly 50%)

They've made their decision and yeah personally I'll miss it but my opinion of FM25 isn't hanging on it.

Edited September 8 by kiwityke1983

[santy001]

23 minutes ago, kiwityke1983 said:

The fact is the number is way higher than 5%.

If you can convince yourself of things like this being facts, surely you can just also convince yourself that it's a fact international management is in FM25. It seems you would be happier that way too, so just let yourself believe one more "fact" that makes you happy.

[kiwityke1983]

34 minutes ago, santy001 said:

If you can convince yourself of things like this being facts, surely you can just also convince yourself that it's a fact international management is in FM25. It seems you would be happier that way too, so just let yourself believe one more "fact" that makes you happy.

It is a statistical fact that it will be higher.

There are far more saves than players. 

It is my opinion that if the player percentage justified getting rid of the mode they'd have used that instead of the percentage of saves, because the actual percentage of players who played international management would have made their argument/justification for removing it look silly.

Personally I'd have just said we weren't happy porting the mode in the bare bones state it is and would rather take it out for a year to bring it back in a better state.

No need to justify it with only 5% of saves used it.

But thanks for your condescending reply.

 

 

Edited September 8 by kiwityke1983

[ScotchWhisky]

5 hours ago, renaldasuk said:

2. since most players start with club management first, it is only those who play  long term saves, can engage with international management and only minority of FM players are playing long enough to be offered an international job

I think it was FM '21 where I started out unemployed, somehow didn't get a club job right away, then wound up managing Ireland to start.  Most boring save ever.  Don't think I even restarted.  Just took a club job and quit playing shortly after.  Didn't like the covid era version just like I didn't like versions right after Brexit, but before the result was determined.

[jim owen]

odds are if its 5% OF saves its likely to be higher than 5% of players, as most international save managers will also do at least 1 club save, whereas there will be many club only. 

 

As it is i suspect i'm somewhat unusual as i do 2 club saves and 2 international saves per year (big and little for both), as it is for me personally they have just announced they will give me half the game next year that i have got this year, as such FM25 will be the first game since FM13 i skip (unless a miracle happens and they halve the price to compensate), I wish them luck, but every announcement so far has been removing things (only minor till this international one which is HUGE), i personally can't justify (and i'm sure others will be similar) paying the same price for substantially less

[Petra90]

4 hours ago, wazzaflow10 said:

The main takeaway is you're just angry at women's football being included.

It's curious how these shortcomings with FM25 development seem to be mostly blamed on Women's Football, yet the engine change to Unity doesn't seem to be mentioned as a factor. I wonder why...

[mackem10]

On 05/09/2024 at 21:19, ajw10 said:

Honestly, Si's PR is absolutely dreadful. Anyone with half a brain would know that announcing the weight thing in the way they did would cause more people to hate on women's football.

 

 

To be fair, it didn't cause me to hate on women's football, it caused me to be annoyed at those making the game.

[Roy Race 9]

Removing international management is simply dreadful   

Also what is happening with the pre game editor are there going to be changes and if so what?

dont leave it to others in the community to do the work for you as usual and find out what has changed, how it works and give hours of their time fixing the endless bugs there are  with workarounds

The editor should be Beta tested thoroughly [there are many really good editors in the community who would do this]

also it should be released with the Beta test of the game

 

Edited September 8 by Roy Race 9

[tropicsafc]

This thread is absolutely bonkers

[Novem9]

4 часа назад, matthew1310 сказал:

For people that really love International Managment:

Please sign this petition.

https://chng.it/NmDpXgPjwh

We can show SI that for us International Managment is important !

This looks ridiculous and will definitely not change the development process. They threw it out, which means they physically cannot have time to implement it.

Furthermore, you are creating false evidence to the contrary, since it is obvious that this petition will not become popular, it is an argument against international football in FM. 

Let it go, it's a video game after all, nothing more

[Novem9]

23 минуты назад, tropicsafc сказал:

This thread is absolutely bonkers

I recommend visiting the annual release speculation thread. It is also known as the gif festival, the carnival of madness

[Dbuk1]

22 minutes ago, Novem9 said:

I recommend visiting the annual release speculation thread. It is also known as the gif festival, the carnival of madness

Best thread ever

[scythian12]

TBF the civfanatics forums are in a similar state after the announcements by Firaxis, it's also quite fun to read them. But maybe take a leaf out of their book SI: they rolled out their community manager at a panel show, and ever since the forum has been less inflammatory. (I guess the showing off / explaining of the new mechanics more in detail helped, as well as the focus on the points that arose in the community)

[alian62]

Would of been easier to of put Woman's Football on hold rather than all the other stuff . Focus on the game rather than that . 

[grade]

How many players play International games? What is exactly 5% of the total of those that played the game?

The problem sometimes with percentage, it creates this smoke screen of what exactly is trying to represent. It can become impersonal. If it is 100 people, it is just 5 people that play the International game, but if the 100% is higher (in this case it is since more than 100 people bought the game... ), those 5 people will be higher. Sure small quantity compared to the overall 95% of the others that don't play. It is a small number (probably hardcore International gamers), that will probably skip FM25 altogether... Let us see if they keep the goal of becoming part of FM26... if there is one... as Miles likes to mention in dev videos.

The issue that has been raised, is why users don't play international football... but the real question I have is... Why now? Why FM25 of all releases?

Edited September 8 by grade

[Deisler26]

4 hours ago, Petra90 said:

It's curious how these shortcomings with FM25 development seem to be mostly blamed on Women's Football, yet the engine change to Unity doesn't seem to be mentioned as a factor. I wonder why...

Graphics aren't 'woke' apparently

[Birdman10piyu]

It's very strange marketing, considering all the hate SI is getting, you'd think it would have made sense to share some good news as well as the bad news.

These guys must have a big ace up their sleeve to share later this month or they are admitting defeat and saying "sorry, yea, this year will be doodoo but we'll do better next year".

 

For me, if SI truly improved the ME/graphics/animations as they are hyping then this game will do really well. That's really the only thing I was looking forward to this year.

 

[wazzaflow10]

7 hours ago, kiwityke1983 said:

I've personally started over 50 saves and managed 3 times internationally, 

Anecdotal evidence of one user doesn't really jive with population statistics. I've started a bunch of saves, only two of them being "long term" saves and never once managed internationally in 24. But I was doing a lot of testing on scouting which isn't my normal mode of playing. I only started three saves on 23 and one save on 22.

You're probably (almost certainly) on the extreme end of user behavior. If we applied that to everyone it's a ridiculous number of saves to get to 5%. Do you think everyone has a 16:1 ratio of club to international saves? If everyone played at something close to 50/50 split you'd have 64000 saves between 2000 users assuming the non international managers only started one save each! 

 

8 hours ago, kiwityke1983 said:

(I also said closer to 50 than 5 not that it would be exactly 50%)

Closer to 50% of course being technically 30% now? Why not just say 30% then? I wasn't holding you to exactly 50%. That's why I also included what it would be all the way down to 12.5% where we'd get probably some more realistic figures on a normal/median player save behavior. How many saves do you think the median FM user starts in a year? Its certainly not 50 like you. You don't have to agree but the figures show you how unlikely it would be that it would even be close to 50% at all whether you meant it to be 49.9% or 30%. If you had said 10% it would have been a more reasonable figure. Hell even 15% would have been passable. Your intuition of "closer to 50%" just doesn't line up with what is realistically possible.

SI has nothing to gain here by fudging numbers to some crazy degree. The fact is that only 5% of saves utilized international management. If it was a more popular game mode the number of saves whether it was club + country or country only would be much higher. It just highlights the low utilization of the mode.

Hopefully a year away from the game they can focus on bring a better module into the new engine rather that shoehorning it into this version. I don't think this was a decision taken lightly as they've already removed features and I'm sure if they knew they were going to remove it they would have included it the update months ago.

[kiwityke1983]

21 minutes ago, wazzaflow10 said:

SI has nothing to gain here by fudging numbers to some crazy degree. The fact is that only 5% of saves utilized international management. If it was a more popular game mode the number of saves whether it was club + country or country only would be much higher. It just highlights the low utilization of the mode.

Then why switch from using the percentage of players who used modes to justify removing them, to specifically using the percentage of saves for international management?

There's only one logical reason and that is the percentage of players for international management wouldn't back up Miles justification for removing it.

My argument isn't that it's a popular mode per save either.

My argument is that a lot of people will have at least 1 save per cycle of international management, and that number is sufficiently large to have forced Miles to change the metric. (more than 28% if we are being very specific about what I was saying).

If we knew the total number of players and saves it would be pretty trivial to work out, but we don't so even all of your analysis is little more than a wild guess because I can't imagine the average save per player is less than 3 over the lifetime of an FM.

It's never going to be a hugely popular way of playing the game per save, purely due to the very nature of international management IRL, never mind within the game.

It's always going to be something people have a dabble at occasionally, outside of tournament years which might see a spike of players giving it a go.

[Mars_Blackmon]

7 hours ago, Petra90 said:

It's curious how these shortcomings with FM25 development seem to be mostly blamed on Women's Football, yet the engine change to Unity doesn't seem to be mentioned as a factor. I wonder why...

To be fair, graphics and a "mode" shouldn't be compared on the same level. Women's football is similar to international football in that both could stand alone as separate games. International management, if done right, is vastly different from club football, just as women's football is vastly different from men's.

 

People might blame women's football because Instead of keeping International football (a mode that people have been begging to be upgraded for over 10 years) is neglected in favor of newer but similar mode that no one asked for, maybe 5% of users.

 

Not saying that is what happening but that is what people see.

Edited September 9 by Mars_Blackmon

[wazzaflow10]

35 minutes ago, kiwityke1983 said:

If we knew the total number of players and saves it would be pretty trivial to work out, but we don't so even all of your analysis is little more than a wild guess because I can't imagine the average save per player is less than 3 over the lifetime of an FM.

Its not because you can see based on the scale of the figures that's an incredible amount of saves that have to exist for anything approach anything more that 25%. And of course you can't because you started 50 in the last year alone. That's nearly 1 a week. You have to know that's not a normal amount of saves. How much time do you think people have to play this game? I'm a fairly regular player and I barely get one save off the ground. I wouldn't have even started another save since I could port over my 23 save if it weren't for testing out some bugs I was trying to highlight for the dev team.

41 minutes ago, kiwityke1983 said:

My argument is that a lot of people will have at least 1 save per cycle of international management, and that number is sufficiently large to have forced Miles to change the metric. (more than 28% if we are being very specific about what I was saying).

He didn't change the metric. There's no official metric. Number of saves is a perfectly valid way of representing how much usage a game mode gets. If it were more popular it would have a higher percentage of saves, especially considering you can do both club and country side by side without any repercussion. Its not like you have to travel or game plan or do anything a normal manager would have to do if they were running two teams.

If you care so much to prove Miles is secretly hiding the "real usage" do some math and show us how it can be "closer to 50%" instead of just positing some conjecture on the subject.

[XaW]

@wazzaflow10 / @kiwityke1983 - Even with how fascinating it is to read you two discuss statistics, I'd appreciate you heading over to PMs now if you want to keep that discussion going.

[vrig]

6 hours ago, Birdman10piyu said:

It's very strange marketing, considering all the hate SI is getting, you'd think it would have made sense to share some good news as well as the bad news.

These guys must have a big ace up their sleeve to share later this month or they are admitting defeat and saying "sorry, yea, this year will be doodoo but we'll do better next year".

 

For me, if SI truly improved the ME/graphics/animations as they are hyping then this game will do really well. That's really the only thing I was looking forward to this year.

 

I suspect it's more a case of: they're gonna be taking preorders very soon and they'll be slaughtered if people buy the game ahead of time and then have features taken away while they wait for the actual release.

Kind of got no choice but to tell players everything they won't be getting again ASAP in that scenario.

[jmlima]

31 minutes ago, vrig said:

I suspect it's more a case of: they're gonna be taking preorders very soon and they'll be slaughtered if people buy the game ahead of time and then have features taken away while they wait for the actual release.

Kind of got no choice but to tell players everything they won't be getting again ASAP in that scenario.

Possibly correct, but worth noting that you can cancel a Steam pre-order at any time, so it's not like people would be at 100% loss in the event they wanted to cancel.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

Edited September 9 by jmlima
typo

[XaW]

32 minutes ago, vrig said:

I suspect it's more a case of: they're gonna be taking preorders very soon and they'll be slaughtered if people buy the game ahead of time and then have features taken away while they wait for the actual release.

Kind of got no choice but to tell players everything they won't be getting again ASAP in that scenario.

No matter if people are annoyed at _what_ is being said, I at least am very happy SI are becoming more open and transparent with their communication. I've advocated for SI communicating much more with the user base, and even though we aren't exactly given good info, at least we are given some info now.

Other than that I hope for more details about what exactly is in the game for the next update late September as we have just about no info about how the game looks or works at the moment.

[jmlima]

7 minutes ago, XaW said:

No matter if people are annoyed at _what_ is being said, ...

I mean, it does matter, if you want to sell you need people to be happy with your product. Even if a forum is probably 1% of total users, those same 1% are also the guys that are going to seriously ***** and moan all over the steam reviews.

And, of course, putting out the bad news way in advance of the good news is an age old technique to empty the criticism and the 'feel bad' factor before you are near to get to the sell point. It's marketing 101, but it does also prove that it matters if people are happy or not with what is being told to them.

[XaW]

1 minute ago, jmlima said:

I mean, it does matter, if you want to sell you need people to be happy with your product. Even if a forum is probably 1% of total users, those same 1% are also the guys that are going to seriously ***** and moan all over the steam reviews.

And, of course, putting out the bad news way in advance of the good news is an age old technique to empty the criticism and the 'feel bad' factor before you are near to get to the sell point. It's marketing 101, but it does also prove that it matters if people are happy or not with what is being told to them.

I think you are misconstruing my meaning here, what I was point at is that I think it's good that SI have started communicating more with the player base rather than the mostly silence it used to be. Not that it doesn't matter what they said...

[Novem9]

11 минут назад, XaW сказал:

I at least am very happy SI are becoming more open and transparent with their communication

 

12 минут назад, XaW сказал:

we have just about no info about how the game looks or works at the moment.

Don't you see a contradiction here? 

In any case, I'm surprised that anyone considers this model open. They don't even have a person to work with the community, developers come sometimes in their free time. And there are two pages in X, one of which is sometimes official and sometimes personal, as Miles wishes.

[XaW]

2 minutes ago, Novem9 said:

 

Don't you see a contradiction here? 

In any case, I'm surprised that anyone considers this model open. They don't even have a person to work with the community, developers come sometimes in their free time. And there are two pages in X, one of which is sometimes official and sometimes personal, as Miles wishes.

I said they are MORE open, but I still think it could be better. I can be happy about an improvement without being completely satisfied, no?

[forameuss]

10 hours ago, alian62 said:

Would of been easier to of put Woman's Football on hold rather than all the other stuff . Focus on the game rather than that . 

How is the game code looking right now?  Only ask because clearly if you're coming out with something like that, you must be pretty close to the whole development process.  Or just mental.

16 minutes ago, XaW said:

No matter if people are annoyed at _what_ is being said, I at least am very happy SI are becoming more open and transparent with their communication. I've advocated for SI communicating much more with the user base, and even though we aren't exactly given good info, at least we are given some info now.

Other than that I hope for more details about what exactly is in the game for the next update late September as we have just about no info about how the game looks or works at the moment.

To be honest, I think in a general sense, SI would probably be better communicating less given what's happened here.  If they'd communicated on their usual schedule of only really coming out when they had the product to actually release, I imagine there'd be far less salt.  Who knows, there might even actually be a shred of positivity in the announcement, rather than just "here's all the negative".  Granted it's a bit more complex this time around given it's delayed

[jmlima]

8 minutes ago, forameuss said:

... Who knows, there might even actually be a shred of positivity in the announcement, rather than just "here's all the negative".  Granted it's a bit more complex this time around given it's delayed

It would probably also help avoid the feeling that, piecemeal announcements of things being removed, paint a picture of a project going down in flames and decisions being taken haphazardly desperately trying to be able to deliver something by the deadlines given by the owner. They are so lucky, but oh so lucky to have a monopoly.

[jcw163]

15 hours ago, kiwityke1983 said:

It is a statistical fact that it will be higher.

There are far more saves than players. 

It is my opinion that if the player percentage justified getting rid of the mode they'd have used that instead of the percentage of saves, because the actual percentage of players who played international management would have made their argument/justification for removing it look silly.

Personally I'd have just said we weren't happy porting the mode in the bare bones state it is and would rather take it out for a year to bring it back in a better state.

No need to justify it with only 5% of saves used it.

But thanks for your condescending reply.

 

 

The mods? Condescending? Here?

[vrig]

1 hour ago, jmlima said:

Possibly correct, but worth noting that you can cancel a Steam pre-order at any time, so it's not like people would be at 100% loss in the event they wanted to cancel.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

I'm pretty sure that isn't the case for the console pre-orders, however. It certainly isn't for other console games - they always take payment up front.

[forameuss]

31 minutes ago, jmlima said:

It would probably also help avoid the feeling that, piecemeal announcements of things being removed, paint a picture of a project going down in flames and decisions being taken haphazardly desperately trying to be able to deliver something by the deadlines given by the owner. They are so lucky, but oh so lucky to have a monopoly.

I'm not sure it's luck to be fair.  They killed every competitor that stepped up.  

[kiwityke1983]

42 minutes ago, forameuss said:

I'm not sure it's luck to be fair.  They killed every competitor that stepped up.  

The only football management series to ever get the core experience anywhere to a decent standard.

All the other competitors tried to compete with one or both of better graphics or superfluous fluff.

Which is fun for a bit but the novelty soon wears off.

CM then FM under SI are the only ones to really nail the core aspects of a football management game and the match day experience IMO.

FM25 I hope is no different as long as scouting, the tactics and the ME are solid it will be a solid FM.

[Fat_Frank8]

14 hours ago, Petra90 said:

It's curious how these shortcomings with FM25 development seem to be mostly blamed on Women's Football, yet the engine change to Unity doesn't seem to be mentioned as a factor. I wonder why...

A real mystery! For me it’s because the unity change is something i look forward to trying out and the other is something i will never use. Can’t speak for everyone else though. 

[Carambau]

17 minutes ago, Fat_Frank8 said:

A real mystery! For me it’s because the unity change is something i look forward to trying out and the other is something i will never use. Can’t speak for everyone else though. 

You do for me though

[Jonthedon26]

19 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

PES failed because they started prioritising online modes, to try and replicate Ultimate Team, and neglected single player career mode.

Once the online part never took off they had nothing to fall back on and in the end they were just making awful, buggy, games.

That's not a mistake/route I think FM will go down. 

PES 2021 was a fantastic game, the gameplay and physics were great in my opinion. Such a shame what they did to the series!

[srvngrc]

2 saat önce, forameuss said:

I'm not sure it's luck to be fair.  They killed every competitor that stepped up.  

In fact, they owe this largely to researchers. Thanks to the database they have, it is very difficult for anyone else to compete. The game itself is not too good to compete but the database is…

 

Edited September 9 by srvngrc

[forameuss]

11 minutes ago, srvngrc said:

In fact, they owe this largely to researchers. Thanks to the database they have, it is very difficult for anyone else to compete. The game itself is not too good to compete but the database is…

 

Yeah, totally not anything to do with the match engine they've spent decades on or anything, absolutely all down to a network that could be replicated if a company really, really wanted to.

Seriously, the work the researchers do is a very important part, but it's entirely voluntary.  If a competitor with deep pockets really wanted to build that network, it would be relatively easy to get a researcher to provide their data to them instead by offering better incentives.  Obviously the database isn't just about that, but it's not some complicated technical task.  The match engine alone is a near insurmountable task for any competitor to get near.  It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise.  

Edited September 9 by forameuss

[Dbuk1]

20 minutes ago, srvngrc said:

In fact, they owe this largely to researchers. Thanks to the database they have, it is very difficult for anyone else to compete. The game itself is not too good to compete but the database is…

 

It is not worthwhile for any major players to compete with SI. The work required for small financial gain. 

[Novem9]

There are no competitors, if only because it is a niche genre that requires high-quality ME, which is incredibly difficult in itself, but also AI management with a bunch of contextual situations. This is obvious.

The irony is that Miles boasts of sales that are growing year after year. At some point, this market will no longer be considered a niche, and will make sense for long-term investment.

https://www.pcgamer.com/football-manager-2024-sells-7-million-and-pays-tribute-to-the-incredible-community-of-players-that-we-first-started-talking-to-directly-in-the-internets-infancy-in-the-early-90s/