Football Manager, Football Manager. I never realised the name had so much value. Until Sports Interactive purchased the name Football Manager from the company that bought if from me a long time ago. So now it has a new life as Football Manager 2008, nothing to do with me now. Hmmm…

Just reflecting, for a long time I felt that you need to be hands on, to tune the game yourself. This means access to the code. But in the business world, a role similar to a games designer is a software architect. The architect designs the whole system, sometimes specifying in detail how it functions. But, it would be inefficient to write the code too. Others do that. However, when I write games, I have always coded it all myself, except utiity routines. I felt it needed that, like, how could an artist delegate his painting? But, is this all true? Hmmm.

This was a business game I wrote after Football Manager. Simple to play but lots of fun. I remember one person writing to me and complaining, because it was possible to succeed in the game sometimes by using hype. -And when you did that, it was more powerful than honesty in its impact. What they did not like was that hype was more potent than honesty. They felt that was immoral.  My thinking was, it’s just a game, entertainment, but funnily enough, hype when it is believed in real life DOES tend to bring greater results than honesty. Sad but true, I am sure you can think of examples….

There is much, much that could be said, but overall, what creating those games was all about, what drove it all, was fun!

Hi, yes, I am the author of the original Football Manager series of games which came out in the eighties and nineties for various computers, such as: • Sinclair Spectrum • Commodore 64 • Amstrad CPC • Atari ST • Amiga • IBM PC • and others. I also wrote Software Star, President, and I recently created an online Football Management game