Miles Jacobson Works for: Sports Interactive Position: CEO Questions: 17 Interview by: Bjorn Date posted: 5 October 2004 We from PlayDevil.com had the opportunity to visit the Benelux press-conference that ATARI held last week in Antwerp, Belgium. New games were presented such as Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Outrun 2, latest Worms game and much more. But the most important reason why we were going was to meet the CEO of the English based game developer, Sports Interactive, Miles Jacobson. Perhaps unknown to some people, football (manager) gamers do know that this chap is THE man that brought Championship Manager to life. Now that series went to EIDOS (Miles said that the next installment was goin' to be ... compared to their game), Sports Interactive still had the exclusive rights for the massive CM database. So plans for creating a new but more sophisticated game were made and so Football Manager 2005 was born. We managed as probably the ONLY online web site @ the Benelux press-conference to secure an exclusive interview with the man himself and asked him everything. Well 'almost'. Here follows our interview with Miles Jacobson: 1- PlayDevil.com: First question that we ask to the person that we interview is, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? Who you are, your position with Sports Interactive and what you are doing there?    Miles: My name is Miles Jacobson and i'm Managing Director or CEO or whatever you wanna call it of Sports Interactive who is a UK developer that's specialised in sports management games. For 12 years we made the Championship Manager series. Last year we split with our publishing partner, EIDOS, to sign with SEGA for a 5-year all-studio output deal. As part of that deal we retained the code and the database that we worked from the previous CM series. EIDOS kept the name and with SEGA we have so far published Beachside Hockey manager which has done very well in hockey based countries. Football Manager 2005 will be released on November 5th and we have a baseball game which will be published next year. 2- PlayDevil.com: We read that there will be or already is a new football magazine called Football Manager aswell ?    Miles: Yeah we had a magazine in the UK for about 2 years now. Previously it was Championship Manager magazine which was us and EIDOS doing it. We kept on going on with Future Publishing which is one of the biggest magazine publishers here. When we splitted with EIDOS, they came (Future) to me and said "Do you wanna make a Football Manager magazine?". I said of course: "YES" and the second issue has just been released yesterday (23 September) to tie in with the beta demo released which we have just done for our fans. There will be another magazine on November 7th and then the final of the year on New Years Eve, on December 31st. Next year we are hoping that the magazine will get an European release. The magazine not only covers the games but also players and their stats, tactics, interviews with other football persons, etc etc. In the future we'll have a strategy guide included with it for those who really want to be the best. 3- PlayDevil.com: The game, Football Manager 2005 is now sheduled for a release on November 5th. Is that date 100% correct ? I mean, is there still a chance that it will slip?    Miles: As I said, we are 99% positive. As you'll have seen from the demo today there was NO video footage going on. I was playing with the game LIVE without any problems. Actually there are problems. We have 2 crashes at the moment in this current build but they got fixed yesterday. The bugs that being reported from the beta that we've released online (which is a few weeks old), 90% of those bugs are fixed. So from a developer point of view we're 100% on target. At the funny side of this we have refused to announce a release date up to now because we wanted to be sure that the game was going to be ready. 4- PlayDevil.com: So its like "Its done with its DONE" ?    Miles: Yes completely. When we signed with SEGA, in february, we already talked with them about the actual release date and it was then already that November 5th was the ideal one. But none of us wanted to say that until we are sure. As a developer we know that we have a reputation for slipping games. I would like to say that we do not slip games. It's just that the release date are announced too early and we haven't really been in a position before to be able to say: No, that date isn't right. 5- PlayDevil.com: So the only thing that needs to be added then is the audio ?    Miles: Well, the audio is already in it but we haven't given that to people yet. There are still some bugs to fix. We have around 150-160 bugs in our must-fix-before-release and we got a few weeks before we go GOLD and they will be fixed. I would expect that when I return to the office a numerous bugs will be fixed already by our team because everybody is so working hard. We want that this is the best game that we have ever released. We'll probably still need to do patches at some point because we can't get every bug. 6- PlayDevil.com: You work now for Sports Interactive. Was this your very first job in this industry?    Miles: No, I was part-time at Sports Interactive for a long time. I've been involved since Championship Manager 2 and I was a beta-tester on that. I also used to do unofficial updates on the game and then started doing all the UK research. Then helping them out so I became full-time about 2.5 years ago. I worked before in the music industry for 10 years and I used to put soundtracks together for video games. Such as Gran Tourismo, Stuntman, Driver 2. I worked on over 30 top-5 games putting soundtracks together. 7- PlayDevil.com: Getting back to Football Manager 2005 (pc-cdrom and mac) which you are here to promote, can you give us, for those gamers that don't really know what kind of game this is, a brief overview ?    Miles: Ok in short because there is so much to tell about our game. If you are the kind of person that goes to the pub before a game of football or after and says I can do better then that manager or he should have picked that player today , it is very simple ... buy our game and we'll give you the chance to proof wether you are right or wether you are wrong. (laughs) 8- PlayDevil.com: How long did you guys worked on the game and with how many ?    Miles: We have 35 full-time members of staff at Sports Interactive, plus 16 testers and 2.500 researchers. Also 50 affiliated websites that we work with as well with our magazine team. So there is alot of people working on the game. Essentially, the game has been in developed for as long as any of our games because we're using the codebase of our previous games. But we started working on this game the day that CM 03 - 04 was released. So last november. 9- PlayDevil.com: Sports Interactive is known for the famous Championship Manager series. How much is Football Manager 2005 changed when you compare it to any version of CM ?    Miles: Well the interface is completely new. We have gone for a completely new look for the game mainly because it was the right time to do it. There were some great design ideas from the GUI-team (graphical user interface) and they managed to turn their dream into reality with this game. We kept alot of the popular features from our previous titles. We own the database and the code so we might aswell use it. But we have also added a lot of new stuff such as management mind games. There are more then 50 new data fields for the players in the database to really please their personalities in the way that they play. Every single part of the game is improved particularly the navigation. More clubs, players are included in the database and 8 new nations to manage as well such as Peru, Indonesia and much more. 10- PlayDevil.com: I bet that some gamers will think that this game is just more of the same. Meaning if you have a previous CM title, why would you want to buy Football Manager 2005 ?    Miles: Well, I can't say to people to buy our games. What i would say to any of them is that they probably have an internet connection. Go to our website, a few weeks before the game hits release and download the demo of Football Manager 2005 or the beta version now. If you like what you see, buy it , if you don't and you are happy with your previous games, that's fine by us. But i would be very surprised that anyone who liked our previous games did not, having played this for a few hours, immediately want to go out and buy it. 11- PlayDevil.com: The game offers a huge variety of clubs, countries, names etc ... it can be all customized. Is there still place then for any improvement ?    Miles: Yes we already got a huge feature list of things that we want to add for Football Manager 2006 (!!!). When we went into this game we made a big mistake with CM 4 in that we were very over ambitious with that title. And it meant that the features that were in there weren't good enough and that there were some things that we wanted to add but we didn't had time too. So we are now a lot more careful now when we are deciding what goes in a game and what's not. Really scheduling everything properly to ensure that we are releasing at the right time. 12- PlayDevil.com: Are there any plans yet for making Football Manager 2006 ?    Miles: We already have plans for a new version of the FM. Expect some more additions to management mind games possible managers being able to talk to players as well as managers. Most of the other stuff is well ... TOP SECRET. As we always do, we'll be taking ideas from our message boards, our community. 13- PlayDevil.com: So we can expect every year a new Football Manager ?    Miles: Exactly, every year each of our games, wether that will be hockey, baseball or football there will be a new version. 14- PlayDevil.com: After seeing you demonstrate the game to us, it looks so precise and accurate in data. How did you manage that? I mean, that was definitely a challenge for making it so 'good' ?    Miles: Yeah we just have a brilliant research team! Around 2500 researchers around the world. 51 Head-researchers and a global head research as well and they all work close together to ensure correct data. 15- PlayDevil.com: Are there any plans yet to port Football Manager 2005 or later version to any console such as PS2 or X-Box yet ?    Miles: The PS2 and X-Box unfortunately are not powerful enough. They don't have the processing power to handle our games. We'll always evaluate all new formats that come out. We have a research development team by our side who are always looking at new platforms and if they decide that they want to port the game to that platform, well they just gonna make it. 16- PlayDevil.com: In the future will people be able to download new content for the game and update their game and stats ?    Miles: Yes but rather doing this stuff officially we tend to take our community to do it. So we will be shipping with our data editor so the people can do their own updates. We hope that people start giving away their tactics, guides etc. 17- PlayDevil.com: In the presentation you talked about the media editor ? What's that exactly ?    Miles: Well the media editor will be released a few weeks after the game comes out and it will give people the chance to edit the news stories in the game and also create their own. We have a lot of news in the game. As I said in the presentation there is about 500.000 words in the game so hopefully with the community we can get the number up with more variation. 17- PlayDevil.com: Any last words towards the fans of CM/FM and the community ?    Miles: YES! I say this everytime I do an interview, the Sports Interactive community really do keeps us going and I don't think that moving to SEGA would be possible without having those guys (the fans, community) there supporting us, spreading the word about the new game. They are invaluable and hopefully we can reward them by continuing to make games that they love to play! A HUGE thanks to the community because if they don't buy our games, we would have no jobs! 17- PlayDevil.com: Thanks a lot for this interview Miles and we wish you all the best!    Miles: No problem and thanks for spreading the word! We also took 2 digital pictures from Miles himself. One, on the left from the interview and on the right side during his presentation of Football Manager. (ps: for any Belgian football fans ... look at the presentation board and witness the club RSCA Anderlecht ... fully customisable.)   For any more information regarding Sports Interactive, Championship Manager, Football Manager 2005 or any game from SI, visit their official site right here. We wish them all the best and good luck with FM 2005/2006/2007/... and other upcoming games. Any problems and/or suggestions are always appreciated on webmaster@playdevil.com Nothing of this entire Site, animation & logo's included, may be reproduced, stored, saved, transmitted, in any form or means, electronic, written or otherwise without the prior permission of PlayDevil. Other Logos & Names are Copyrighted Material of its respectful owners. All Rights Reserved. PlayDevil Productions © 199/8-199/9-200/0-200/1-200/2-200/3-200/4 "rip your own stuff"