14 DAY TRIAL // One of the video games that I eagerly await to play each year is Football Manager, the title created by Sports Interactive that aims to put the player in the track suit or tailored costume of a manager who can take control of any club in the world in order to realize his dreams.
The game is immersive and engrossing, and I end up spending a few hundred hours with it by the time spring rolls by, with nights during the first few weeks of December when I do not sleep for more than four hours.
Traditionally, hardcore gamers tend to dismiss the Football Manager series as being a series of connected spreadsheets that cannot deliver the kind of adrenaline-filled experiences that action games or shooters can offer, but as the median age of the gamer goes up, it seems that middle management games might become more popular than ever.
EVE Online and the draw of long-term conspiracies
EVE Online is a video game best known for the complex, long-term undercover operations that some of its biggest corporations perform on each other and the massive battles that sometimes take place because of relatively trivial reasons.
But few people think about the amount of work required to execute something like this and the amount of man hours that the rest of the alliance needs to put in so that such a major operation can be supported.
EVE Online has been described as playing a spreadsheet with a science fiction theme and plenty of backstory, but the game manages to create emotion and tension based on player actions that sometime feel like working a second job.
Football Manager 2015 and the rise of role-playing football simulations
Football Manager 2015 is the most complex title in the series so far and most gamers who have never tried it out tend to believe that this simply translates into more accurate stats, enhanced tactical choices, and more control over club finances and transfers.
But the development team at Sports Interactive is aware that its titles have been described as a second job and has quietly introduced a revolutionary shift towards interpersonal relations.
Basically, the player, as the manager of his favorite football club, needs to talk to a lot of people, ranging from his own players to members of the press and others, in order to make sure that the atmosphere is right and that all those involved can support a successful campaign.
This is a role-playing game embedded deep inside the football manager mechanics and it makes the game fun because, as Sid Meier famously put it, it gives players a lot of significant choices to make, even if their effects are not always immediately visible.
Gamers, as a group, are getting older and they tend to move away from experiences that involve a fast pace and over-the-top violence.
Games like EVE Online, Football Manager 2015, and other simulations which include a lot of tactical options offer an alternative where long-term investment and careful planning can deliver more cerebral rewards down the line.
It’s unlikely that the above mentioned experiences will ever become as important as Call of Duty to the industry, but they do offer something that’s different and engaging in its own right.
