14 DAY TRIAL // Miles Jacobson, the director of Sports Interactive, says that many gamers fail to understand the complexity of the match engine and how many interactions between variables are calculated in order to reach a result for each phase.
He tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “We’re simulating every quarter of a second of football – it used to be an eighth but we’ve just changed the time splices down. Every quarter of a second, every movement of the ball and every movement of every player is calculated based on every other position, their stats and the status of the match.”
Some gamers have accused the company of using randomization of pre-determined results for its matches, basically making most of the work that players do in Football Manager 2014 unnecessary and fooling them into thinking they have an impact.
Jacobson has also criticized the level of fidelity of the recent FIFA 14 to the actual game of football, which has recently allowed more than two players to challenge for one header with the next-gen Ignite engine.
He adds, “You can watch a ninety minute match in FM and apart from a few niggles that we’re working through, it does look like a real game of football. Lots of passing in midfield rather and reorganising of defensive shapes rather than just end to end stuff. We have all of that going on.”
Football Manager 2014 is one of the most complex titles launched this year, with elements as arcane as weather and coach interactions affecting the ultimate outcome of a match.
It offers more than 1,000 improvements over last year’s version and the company says that it plans to deliver a number of updates over the course of the year in order to improve some mechanics and introduce all the transfers that take place in the real world.