Football Manager Live Interview

23 Jun 2010 at 10:07:05 by James Chalmers

 

A little bit of everything you’ve mentioned contributed to the reboot. From day 1 we were monitoring statistics and keeping an eye on a number of key metrics and it was in the Summer of last year that we sat down with SEGA as we did on a regular basis, to review our findings. Following this particular meeting and then a series of further in-depth meetings we took the decision that the only real way of sorting everything out would be to undertake a reboot.

 

 

I guess you could say that the price now is the price we’d always wanted it to be. The original FML announcement talked about the game costing a couple of pints and I’ve used this phrase a lot in the last few months but in the end it was more like a couple of Norweigan pints. Everyone who plays the game and leaves has to fill out a short survey and our analysis of this showed that price was a sticking point for a fairly large percentage. As part of this process we looked at revamping the pricing structure too – we did have different levels based on how long you wanted to subscribe for but in the end we opted for a simply month to month recurring plan.

 

 

We’re looking at a fairly modest increase compared to when we decided to reboot and that’s very much our strategy for the next nine months. We’ve learnt our lesson from the original launch where we were very happy to keep opening new gameworlds and seeing our subscriber numbers increase in large spurts. However the flip side and ultimately the problem was had was managing the churn well enough.

 

 

Glad we relaunched in order to keep the game going but obviously not glad with some of the mistakes we made originally. We are exceptionally good at making a boxed product year on year but the land of MMO’s was a totally new and eye opening experience.

 

As with the price, this was a common issue and a core reason why people left. We spent a lot of time analysing if this was the case and it was definitely true. Most of the longest running gameworlds were dominated by managers who were signed up and in during the early stages of the GW’s life. In those days it was a race to get in first and a race to get the best players - it favoured the FM fans who had a good level of database knowledge. Having the best players early on generally ensured you were able to get a better placing in the Football Associations and this led to these teams having more money than the others. With the top players and a lot of prize money it meant these teams occupied the top part of the rankings and new managers just had no way of competing. Add to this the fact that you never had to work at keeping these players it just made for a stale game experience for those managers trying to work at reaching the top.

 

Comment

Add a comment using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google or OpenID accounts.
blog comments powered by Disqus