The 2004 release of Football Manager saw it become one of the five quickest selling PC games ever, which was remarkable considering it was a spiritual successor of the much-loved 90s Championship Manager series.
Ever since its inception, the video game franchise which gives its players the opportunity to manage a football team has seen a rise in popularity - six million people played the game in the previous year.
Over the past two decades, we have witnessed a dramatic change in video gaming - what were once little circles bouncing on a green rectangle have evolved into a full-fledged 3D simulation that many gamers can easily spend countless hours on.
Monday marked the release of the 20th installment of the Football Manager series, so the BBC interviewed Sports Interactive, the British developer of the popular game, about its evolution.
Miles Jacobson, the studio head, expressed that he was designing the game with himself in mind, yet coincidentally there were plenty of others with similar interests.
We are committed to making a game that offers great value for money each year, so people can receive a lot of playtime for the £40-50 they have sacrificed to acquire it.
An instance of this can be seen in the implementation of a new feature providing the ability to continue from where players ended in the prior year's game.
For the initial occasion in the franchise's chronology, users can proceed with their preceding saved game. This thereby implies that their progression in Football Manager 2023 will move on unimpeded into Football Manager 2024.
Sports Interactive reports that 25% of those who have pre-ordered the game have utilized the feature.
He stated that the feature was the most sought-after one from the community and also the most pre-ordered game they had ever had.
This will be the concluding installment of the Football Manager series in its current state... it's designed to be a tribute to the culmination of this period.
Football Manager has made significant progress since its initial, text-oriented start, growing to become a major player in the gaming world with 3D representations of players.
This was achieved by means of motion capture technology, wherein a computer processes movement obtained from a person in a suit embedded with dots.
Nic Madden, the head of the "match engine" team at the studio, confessed to having been the sole employee wearing the suit in the past.
He indicated that the trophy lifts were mostly his own work, and then added that he was glad that his animations wouldn't be part of the game any longer.
Football Manager 2024 has done away with motion capture technology, as it has been replaced with a new method called "motion matching".
This study examines data from actual football games and converts the motion of real football players into activity within the game.
He further noted that this has enabled them to produce improved animations.
We recreated the action at game speed in the motion capture studio, yet we still weren't able to achieve the same result as if it had been done in the actual game."
We attempted to simulate the action at game speed in the motion capture studio, yet it wasn't the same as if it had been done in the actual game.
"These animations we're capturing were all done in the context of a match, so the realism is inherent."
English football fans recently rejoiced when the Lionesses achieved a monumental victory at Euro 2022, held at Wembley.
Despite being based in the same city that hosted the stadium where England won its first major tournament since 1966, Football Manager does not include women. The first time international women's teams were included in a football game was in 2015 when they featured in FIFA (now EA Sports FC).
Miles Jacobson affirmed that female soccer will be a prominent element of the game next year, and he accepted the fact that the developers "should have done it sooner".
When Tina Keech initially joined Sports Interactive, the head of women's football research informed the BBC that she was starting from square one.
In addition to assessing all the players in women's football and providing ratings for each of them, a problem that has been hampering progress is the aspect that all Football Manager enthusiasts are passionate about - the data.
"She could go ahead and play for another team if she didn't want to take a long break," she suggested.
They traveled to Australia or the US to arrange a loan, and then returned to Europe.
It took me approximately three days to research Sam Kerr's storied playing career, due to the amount of time she's spent travelling.
Despite her renown in the sport, Sam Kerr's Wikipedia page has not escaped the scrutiny of Ms Keech, who has questioned the accuracy of the data on the page.
She expressed that all who take part in the sport of women's football understand that the statistics are not reliable. Moreover, she noted that the information provided by governing bodies is likewise untrustworthy.
She noted that getting the data accurate would enable the studio to be a part of the expansion that has occurred in the sport.
She emphasized the significance of the history of the women's game.
"It's thrilling to be a part of that expansion and to determine our place within it. I'm eager for my daughters to look back and say 'My mum did that!'"
It has been a lengthy project, but the twentieth Football Manager title marks the last instalment to only involve male players.
Ms Keech stated that we should not forget our history and the female players that have worked hard to progress the game.
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