\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>f you were a football fan who owned a computer in the early 1980s, there is one game you will instantly recall. The box had an illustration of the FA Cup, and in the bottom right-hand corner was a photo of a smiling man with curly hair and a goatie beard. You\u2019d see the same images in gaming magazines adverts \u2013 they ran for years because, despite having rudimentary graphics and very basic sounds, the game was an annual bestseller. This was Football Manager, the world\u2019s first footie tactics simulation. The man on the cover was Kevin Toms, the game\u2019s creator and programmer.<\/p>\n The story behind the game is typical for the whiz-kid era, when lone coders would bash out bestselling ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 titles in their bedrooms and then end up driving Ferraris around with the proceeds. As a child in the early 1970s, Toms was a huge football fan and an amateur game designer \u2013 only then it was board games, as no one had a computer at home. \u201cWhen my parents went to see my careers master, I said: \u2018Ask him if it\u2019s possible to get a job as a games designer,\u2019\u201d says Toms. \u201cHe told them: \u2018It\u2019s a phase, he\u2019ll grow out of it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t. Throughout the 1970s, he worked as a programmer on corporate mainframes and for a while he was coding at the Open University. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t long before I realised I could write games on these things,\u201d he says. \u201cActually, the first game I made was on a programmable calculator.\u201d In 1980, Toms bought a Video Genie computer, largely considered a clone of the TRS-80, one of the major early home micros. \u201cI realised I could write the football manager board game I\u2019d been trying to make for years on a computer,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were two major advantages \u2013 it could calculate the league tables for me and I could work out an algorithm to arrange the fixtures.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018In the first few months I sold 300 games\u2019 \u2026 Football Manager on the ZX81.<\/span> Photograph: Kevin Toms\/Moby Games<\/p>\n The Video Genie never took off \u2013 but then Toms bought a ZX81 with a 16k RAM extension and ported the game to that. \u201cIn January 1982, I placed a quarter-page ad in Computer and Video Games magazine and it started to take off,\u201d he says. \u201cI can still remember the first letter arriving with a cheque in it. In the first few months I sold 300 games.\u201d<\/p>\n At this time, the game was extremely basic \u2013 there were no graphics, just text. Players picked a team from a selection of 16 and then had to act as its manager: buying players, deciding on a squad, then tweaking the side as it went through the season. You started at the bottom of the old fourth division and worked your way up. Toms wrote his own algorithms to generate fixtures and also decide the outcomes of the matches based on the stats of the teams playing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe difficult part was the player attributes,\u201d he says. \u201cI gave them a skill rating out of five, but then I wanted a counter-balance that so you couldn\u2019t just buy the best players and leave them in the side for the whole season \u2013 there had to be a reason to take them out. In real football, the more you use a player, the more likely they are to get injured, so I incorporated that. Each player had an energy rating out of 20 \u2013 it diminished as he played, and the risk of injury increased. There had to be a reason to bring the lesser players in.\u201d<\/p>\n Toms also wanted to add long-term strategy and planning to the game, and this came in its most popular element: the transfer market. In the earliest versions of the game, you\u2019d be offered the chance to sign one player a week, but that selection was randomised \u2013 you never knew who would be available. \u201cSay you get a rating three midfielder come up and you need to strengthen your midfield: do you spend money on that or do you wait for a five-rated player who might not come for weeks? This generated pressure and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Inspired by Match of the Day \u2026 Football Manager match highlights on the Commodore 64.<\/span> Photograph: Kevin Toms\/Moby Games<\/p>\n The key problem he faced was memory. The expanded ZX81 had just 16k of it, which made some aspects tricky \u2013 including team names. \u201cIt was long before all the licensing issues came along,\u201d he says. \u201cMy problem wasn\u2019t: do I need to buy a licence to use Manchester United? It was that there wasn\u2019t enough memory to store the name. Every team name had to fit within eight characters, so I chose teams with short names like Leeds \u2013 although I did put in Man U and Man C. The players were mostly well-known players of the time \u2013 but again, with short names \u2013 which is why Keegan is in there. It\u2019s crazy how little memory there was.\u201d<\/p>\n Football Manager was first released in the early days of the gaming industry \u2013 copies were sold via mail order or at computer fairs. But by 1982, high street stores started to take notice of the emerging video game sector. \u201cWH Smith got in contact and said, \u2018We like your game, we want to stock it\u2019, and they invited me down to London. They eventually placed an order for 2,000 units \u2013 the invoice for that order was more than I was earning in a year. About a month later, my girlfriend rang me at work and said: \u2018Oh another order has come in from WH Smith, it\u2019s 1,000 units.\u2019 When I got home I realised her maths was pretty crap \u2013 it was 10,000.\u201d<\/p>\n WH Smith placed an order for 2,000 units \u2013 the invoice was more than I was earning in a year<\/p>\n Toms left his job at the Open University and set up his own company, Addictive Games. The subsequent Zx Spectrum and Commodore 64 versions of Football Manager came with an added component: match highlights, which showed basic graphical representations of key moments, such as goals and near-misses.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was inspired by Match of the Day \u2013 they extract the most fun parts of the matches,\u201d Toms says. \u201cI purposely didn\u2019t put a match timer onscreen, so you never knew where in the match the highlight was happening; you didn\u2019t know how close you were to the end of the match, and whether there was time for another goal. This added to the tension \u2013 it was a critical part of the design. There\u2019s also a slight pause between each highlight, and that also creates tension. It was very simple but it worked very well.\u201d<\/p>\n The game was a phenomenon, appearing on bestseller lists for years. My friends and I had hours of fun just editing the team and player names. We all remember it now. \u201cI didn\u2019t realise the full impact for years,\u201d says Toms. \u201cThere was no internet at the time \u2013 although I did get a few letters saying: \u2018I played your game for 22 hours straight.\u2019 Or: \u2018I failed my mock O-levels because of the game.\u2019\u201d He also knew that football pros were playing, including Arsenal striker Charlie Nicholas and Spurs manager Bill Nicholson, as well as Harry Redknapp, who later had a role as a real-life mentor to a competition-winning Football Manager player in 2010.<\/p>\n Toms wrote several other management games afterwards, including Software Star, a simulation of the games industry. But as the number of Football Manager conversions and updates increased, so did the stress. Finally, he sold the company and got out of games, returning to business coding while travelling the world. In 2003, Sports Interactive, the developer of the Championship Manager series, acquired the name Football Manager and rebranded its own game under that title \u2013 and the name lived on.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I\u2019ve had people who played the original buying it for their kids\u2019 \u2026 Football Star Manager.<\/span> Photograph: Kevin Toms<\/p>\n But the game wasn\u2019t quite over. Ten years ago, Toms got chatting to fans of his original game online and asked if anyone would be interested in a smartphone translation \u2013 Football Manager as they all remembered it, with the same basic visuals. The response was positive and, in 2016, he released Football Star* Manager on mobile. Recently, he upgraded it again and released a PC version. \u201cPeople are enjoying it because it\u2019s easy to play,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s inherent in my design philosophy \u2013 it must seem simple but have subtle depth or it won\u2019t retain the interest. I\u2019ve had people tell me they\u2019ve played 500 seasons and they have \u00a35bn in their bank account \u2013 the balance is clearly right because even with all that money they\u2019re still enjoying playing. I\u2019ve also had people who played the original buying Football Star* Manager for their kids to play.\u201d<\/p>\n Toms has clearly rediscovered the spark that brought the original Football Manager into the world, 40 years ago. He has long-term plans for Football Star* Manager, and perhaps Software Star, too. \u201cI\u2019ve still got loads to do,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve got far more aims and ideas than I have time to implement at the moment. I\u2019m not slowing down. I should do, but I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you were a football fan who owned a computer in the early 1980s, there is one game you will instantly recall. The box had an illustration of the FA Cup, and in the bottom right-hand corner was a photo of a smiling man with curly hair and a goatie beard. You\u2019d see the same<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[211,1413,378,265,167,8701,9572,9571,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-16160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-didnt","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-games","11":"tag-impact","12":"tag-making","13":"tag-manager","14":"tag-original","15":"tag-realise","16":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}