FIFA Manager Developer Interview

BY Rabie Hassoun | POSTED: 20 January 2009

We have a chat with lead designer Gerald Kohler of the FIFA Manager series.



It is a very simple task to release a carbon copy of the best game to grace the genre and get the whole thing over with. The guys at Bright Future don't believe in that way of developing at all however. After coming up with a rather impressive 08 FIFA Manager, they added even more features this year, resulting in a much improved 09 version of the game. We were lucky enough to get a chance to interview the lead designer and mastermind behind the FIFA Manager series, Gerald Köhler.


MEG: How did FIFA Manager start as an idea?
Gerald Kohler: The first FIFA Manager was done in 95. It was developed by Dice Computer Games and called "FIFA Soccer Manager". Later the game was developed in England and finally since 2000 in Germany, from 2004 to 2006 in cooperation with EA Canada.

When we started in 2000 the core team developed "On the Ball" before we joined EA. At that point of time "On the Ball" (German: Anstoss) was the most successful management game in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

MEG: We noticed you did some work on Euro 08, how different was developing that game compared the manager series?
GK: This was different because we developed only a part of the game, mainly parts of the user interface and the manager modes. It was especially interesting because it was our first project on Next Generation consoles and it was a great opportunity for us.

MEG: What other games inspire you the most?
GK: I love the NDS and prefer to play simple games. The game I played most last year was a pinball game. I also play a lot on Pogo.

MEG: How do you research players in Europe and the rest of the world and give them ratings in the game?
GK: We have experts in every country and they collect the data for us. Otherwise it would be impossible to maintain a database of 30,000 player with all these attributes, the histories and the general data. The biggest challenge is to keep the ratings in every country on a realistic level. Some editors are a bit optimistic about the football quality in their countries. But in general this works well.



MEG: How do you rate your research results compared to rival game series Football Manager?
GK: For legal reasons there is only answer: We don't care and don't even look. This has nothing to do with being arrogant, we respect the work of the Football Manager team very much. It's just a matter of fairness.

MEG: How do you feel you can improve the FIFA Manager series even further?
GK: There are ideas for several years, even if we work day and night. But for next year the main objective is to add less features, and instead to improve how they are all connected. We will also focus on the general quality of the game and again on the match modes.

MEG: What new features should we expect next year's game to have?
GK: This is still too early. Actually I will do a big forum check in the week after Christmas. I will then check every FIFA Manager related forum to collect all the ideas and to figure out what our users want. The next step is then to do the right choice. In any case Live Ticker and 3D match will get again our focus, but we also want to extend the pure manager part of the game. We'll also add some kind of help system because many users miss some details in the game, e.g. the Shift option in the line-up section to see the players who are best suited for a position.

There is one thing we can announce in addition, because our community really wants the manager shouts back, we'll finally bring them back in FIFA Manager 10.

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