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"Football Manager 14 was announced earlier this month amid claims from developer Sports Interactive that they have crafted the &amp;quot;most authentic&amp;quot; entry in the series to date. With more than 1,000 improvements and features on board, this season&amp;#039;s instalment also promises to be the most accessible addition to the fold. We caught up with Sports Interactive director Miles Jacobson to discuss what&amp;#039;s new in Football Manager 2014. First of all, congratulations on the success of Football Manager 2013. Did you anticipate that it would be your most popular to date? &amp;quot;It was our most successful with about 20% more sales and, more importantly, longer average playtimes, so people seem to be enjoying it a lot more, which is great. &amp;quot;We forecast to do exactly the same amount as we did on FM12, so we&amp;#039;ve been able to hire a load more people, which is great because that means the games continue to get better every year.&amp;quot; What factors were behind this increase in sales? Did the introduction of Classic Mode bring back a lot of lapsed players? &amp;quot;Classic mode was played by just under 10% of the people who played the game in total, so that&amp;#039;s definitely a large part of it. Being brutally frank, the game didn&amp;#039;t get cracked for six months, so a proportion of people who would normally pirate it were going out and buying it.  &amp;quot;That added to it as well, but there was a good rounded feature set last year. The demo went down very well. The press were very kind about the game, giving us the best reviews we&amp;#039;ve ever had for an FM title. &amp;quot;So all in all it was just a good package and there was lots of word of mouth spreading [of] how good the game was.&amp;quot; Why did it take so long for pirate copies to be circulated? Was this to do with improved security? &amp;quot;The system that we had in the game was very clever, but we were amazed by how long it took for someone to crack it. We were even more amazed at how sales went up dramatically in countries where we hadn&amp;#039;t done any marketing or PR, countries where people are more likely to illegally download stuff than richer countries like the UK and the US.&amp;quot; You mentioned that you were able to expand the team. What did having a bigger workforce enable you to do on Football Manager 2014 that you couldn&amp;#039;t do before? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s probably 150 or so new features that are in FM14 that would not have been possible had we not been able to hire last year, because we did better than expected on FM12 as well, and in the longer term for FM15 it will mean better technology. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve got adverts out at the moment for a GUI programmer, a platform programmer and a junior programmer. We&amp;#039;ve hired a junior programmer in the last couple of months. The guy we had working as a programming intern this time last year has been given a full-time role.  &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re also hiring a bunch of people for the Football Manager Online team and extra people coming in for other areas. Any time that we [hire] extra people, it ends up resulting in a better experience for the person that goes out there and buys the game. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what we strive to do. We&amp;#039;ve only been going for 21 years, released 21 games, so there&amp;#039;s a lot of things that we want to do that we haven&amp;#039;t been able to do because of team size and time, so being able to take on more talent and growing the squad gives us more room to be able to do more interesting features.&amp;quot; Can you give us a specific example of something that is now possible because of this expansion? &amp;quot;Something that has happened this year that would not have had we not been hiring new people is the Linux version. We&amp;#039;ve wanted to do Linux for a while. We are supporters of the platform, we think it is very good to have a fully open PC platform out there. &amp;quot;A couple of the people that we hired around about this time last year are the people that ended up working on the Linux version and getting that up and running. Things like that just wouldn&amp;#039;t be possible if we weren&amp;#039;t able to expand. &amp;quot;Also, things like the match engine team - that used to be three people, one doing the AI, one doing the animations and one doing the 3D. That team&amp;#039;s now up to eight because there is a lot of ambition on the match team in the direction that they want to go, so we need extra bodies on there.&amp;quot; Which of the new features of Football Manager 14 are you most excited about? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s loads of headliners because it depends how you play the game. The transfer system revamp is obviously a big thing for anyone that&amp;#039;s going to do transfers. The match engine changes are pretty huge, particularly the tactics overhaul. &amp;quot;The new user interface is really important because it saves you time being able to do things directly from the news screen rather than having to look around half a dozen other screens just to find the information you want. It&amp;#039;s all there from the news screen now. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s all kind of different stuff in there, and it&amp;#039;s about trying to have something for everyone who plays the game. Everyone plays the game differently. There&amp;#039;s no linear path when it comes to Football Manager. You create your own story and there are so many different ways you can play. &amp;quot;We are trying to remove any limits for people. So a bunch of the new features are our attempt to do exactly that. It&amp;#039;s playing pretty well at the moment, much better than it should be at this stage of development, so that&amp;#039;s a positive.&amp;quot;  What can you tell us about the Steam Workshop feature? What Steam Workshop does is allow players to upload content for everybody else to be able to download. So with the game you have the data editor, but the data editor is a lot more powerful now than it was a few years ago because you have the competition editor in there as well, which allows you to create your own leagues and competitions very easily. &amp;quot;This includes competitions that don&amp;#039;t exist. If somebody wanted to do a world super league, for example, they could do that with the data editor. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve also added the Challenge Editor, which allows you to create Challenges for the game and is a very powerful tool. People will be able to upload these leagues and challenges for others to download. &amp;quot;We have a skin editor with a resource archiver that makes it easier for people to redesign the look of the game. Those will all be able to be uploaded to other people who have the game, as well as graphics packs, commentary packs - all the kinds of thing that the community work on will be in one centralised place now, [and] reach so many more people than it&amp;#039;s ever been able to before.&amp;quot; As players can create their own DLC, does this mean that you won&amp;#039;t be putting out any yourselves? &amp;quot;To be honest, I don&amp;#039;t know yet. I don&amp;#039;t know whether we are planning to keep the same challenges in the game or not available for download because we&amp;#039;ve created the Challenge Mode specifically so people can create their own and give them away. &amp;quot;There will still be the same unlockables as last year, which were incredibly popular, way more popular than we expected them to be. Particularly the \u00A350 million bank account boost, which a lot of people ended up using.  &amp;quot;That will stay because people want it. If people are going out and buying it, then they must want it. Challenges [are something] we wanted to give back to the community rather than control ourselves, so that&amp;#039;s why we&amp;#039;ve done that with the Challenges.&amp;quot;  How has the 3D match engine been improved this time around? &amp;quot;Because we&amp;#039;ve optimised the match engine we&amp;#039;ve had to rebalance the whole engine. We also have a bunch of new tactical roles that have been added to the game as part of the tactics revamp, which again meant that we had to rebalance some stuff. So it&amp;#039;s all pretty fresh.&amp;quot; How much further do you think you can you take this side of the game? &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t look photorealistic yet. We haven&amp;#039;t got everything absolutely nailed. I don&amp;#039;t think we ever will to be honest. I think anyone that&amp;#039;s trying to do a , simulation of something real world will never get there exactly and if they do, the computers will probably end up taking over the Earth [laughs]. &amp;quot;To be honest, every area of the game has room to grow. Every year we keeping going further and surprising ourselves. Right now we have enough ideas for at least another three versions of the game, plus hundred of new ideas come up every year. &amp;quot;We aren&amp;#039;t going anywhere for a while, but I doubt we will ever make a game that we think is perfect. If we ever do I will probably go and get a proper job.&amp;quot;      Have you made any alterations to Classic Mode in Football Manager 14? &amp;quot;The important thing with Classic Mode is to not add too much, because if you do then it ends up becoming FM rather than Classic Mode. So we&amp;#039;ve added transfer deadline day and we&amp;#039;ve got a new system in there called Match Plans, which is for people who don&amp;#039;t really want to play their matches but still want some tactical control. So you can tell your assistant manager to make certain tactical changes depending on scorelines and things like that.  &amp;quot;A lot of the other new stuff in FMC is actually merging screens together to make it even more streamlined. A lot of the work for FMC in the first place was based around that, so there&amp;#039;s a bunch of new screens in there. &amp;quot;The idea of the game being a fast experience, if we add too much to it then it&amp;#039;s going to lose that, so we&amp;#039;re deliberately being quite careful with it.&amp;quot; Are you ready to talk about the next instalment in the Football Manager Handheld series yet? &amp;quot;There is going to be another one, but as is normal with the mobile games we tend to talk about them much closer to release. When we have an actual release date, that&amp;#039;s when we&amp;#039;ll reveal what the new features are in that. &amp;quot;There will definitely be new new games on iOS and Android this year. There are no plans to be on Windows Phone or BlackBerry at the moment.&amp;quot; You have mentioned in the past that piracy has been particularly damaging to the Android series. Was this still the case with the 2013 edition? &amp;quot;Piracy was the same kind of rate, between nine and 11 to one depending on how you look at the stats, but we don&amp;#039;t set targets based on how many people are going to be illegally downloading the game. We set targets based on sales, and the number of sales we need to achieve on Android to justify another game are actually quite low, and we&amp;#039;ve hit them once again.  &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re fine with it. We&amp;#039;re not fine with the amount of people that are stealing our work, but I&amp;#039;m not stupid enough to think that one illegal download is one lost sale. You can&amp;#039;t base your business around stuff that you can&amp;#039;t control. The only people who do that are insurance companies, and you pay very high premiums for that. &amp;quot;If you run a shop you can&amp;#039;t base your business on how much shoplifting there&amp;#039;s going to be. You have to look at the actual sales, and we do the same.&amp;quot; How did the 2013 edition of Football Manager Handheld perform commercially? &amp;quot;Really well. We&amp;#039;re up year-on-year and continuing to grow, which is great to see.  &amp;quot;If the reviews weren&amp;#039;t good on mobile, then we wouldn&amp;#039;t sell any copies. It really is as simple as that. If you end up getting one-star reviews on the App Store, that&amp;#039;s it. Game over, so we&amp;#039;ve been very happy with the reviews from customers and from the press as well. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a very popular game because it&amp;#039;s a very good game, and I can say that because I don&amp;#039;t direct handheld, so I can be a bit more gushing about it. I love playing it, and thankfully others do as well.&amp;quot;  Everton entered a deal with you some years ago to use your databases. Have other clubs entered similar deals since? &amp;quot;Yes there are, but we don&amp;#039;t have deals with those clubs that allow us to talk about it. There are some clubs who use it officially and there are even more that use it unofficially. &amp;quot;Andre Villas-Boas openly admits that he used to use our database when he was scouting players for Chelsea. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said, &amp;#039;As well as working for Alex Ferguson for many years, I&amp;#039;m also good at Football Manager&amp;#039;, when asked about the reasons he went into management. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s loads of people in football who play the game, which is a really good thing for us developing the game because we have a lot more access. I regularly attend training sessions at clubs where I&amp;#039;m able to [ask] a lot more about the training and tactical side of things.  &amp;quot;I talk to the chief execs, scouts, agents - at least once a day I&amp;#039;m talking to someone from inside football who we get advice from about how things should work in the game, so it&amp;#039;s a really important part of it. &amp;quot;Being part of football is a huge thing for us, because the game doesn&amp;#039;t really sell to that many gamers. It sells mainly to football fans, so to be part of that world is very gratifying.&amp;quot; Football Manager 2014 will be released later this year on PC, Mac and Linux. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/interviews/a509401/football-manager-14-interview-miles-jacobson-on-the-latest-instalment/>