"We do have these long discussions with Eidos," explains Oliver. Working within the games industry, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that people actually pay good money for this stuff, and being able to buy the best game of the year for half the going rate can only be a good thing. People are quite happy and tell us that they want to spend, like, 20 quid on this version." And the one big reason is that people actually want it. Oliver agrees: "It's more than just a data update, there are refinements and stuff. Because if you piss the fans off, then there's no point.''
Both us and Eidos appreciate the fans and realise how much they contribute to the game's success. And it's only 20 quid, so it's not like we're taking the piss like FIFA. It's another year of adding little bits and making it as perfect as we can. The first thing is that, if you just edited the players, you'd still be starting in 1999 and that's not much use because it would get messed up anyway.
"You bastard! Why bring it out? Because it's going to be better.
SCUDETTO CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 4 PC
The game has a vast online following and home-made data updates are freely available, not least on PC cover disc.
SCUDETTO CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 4 UPDATE
We happily rip into EA Sports for bringing out the same game every six months, so why should CM be reprieved? Admittedly, it's only an annual update, but it's an update nevertheless. So we've established that it's great, but let's not lose sight of the fact that in real terms this is simply another update. No one says the Internet looks like a spreadsheet, it looks as much like a spreadsheet as CM." The Data Day Even though people generally say it looks like a spreadsheet, it looks really dull and uninteresting, I don't think any of the other games' user interfaces have come near the intuitiveness."Īs Paul says: "It's like the Internet, isn't it? You can click on something that interests you. But there's also other peripheral stuff such as the user interface. And that's like real football, isn't it? As a manager you're just part of the big jigsaw. Without you it would just quite happily carry on, and you're almost insignificant. So you're just part of the machine? "Exactly. You know that you're on a par with everybody else." As the younger Collyer, Oliver, says: "With Championship Manager, we create the football world and then just put the user into it rather than the other games, which build the world around the user. People love transfer rumours and stuff like that, they love it, they want to pick the team and you have people phoning up Richard Littlejohn or David Mellor and saying: The England team should be like this.' We've basically tapped into that enthusiasm."Įnthusiasm is nothing without application, though, and fortunately Championship Manager is a miracle of programming and design. It's giving people a chance to do that, but to have control over what happens. You know football fans like to read Teletext, page 302, or if they've got Sky, 413,, whatever. One of the game's co-founders, the elder Collyer brother, Paul, concurs: "It is like a world of football. In the opinionated world of football supporters, everyone is a self-appointed expert, and CM lets you prove just how much of an expert you actually are. By the time CM 2000 is released in mid-November, many clubs' ambitions will have been shattered on the rock of ineptitude, and the game offers a unique opportunity to enact how it could have been so different.Īnd that really is the crux of the Champ Man phenomenon. In fact, for many football fans, it provides a welcome respite from the reality of watching their team's early-season hopes fall apart in the harsh reality of a bleak English winter. The annual Champ Man update has now become a fixture in the football calendar rivalled only by the start of the actual season.
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