Dai Smout has written an entertaining article starting here on Championship Manager Online about the history of Football Manager. He has written it with plenty of humour and with some questionable quotes attributed to me! 
Well worth a read though.
Football Manager on Championship Manager Online
November 28, 2009 — Kevin TomsRihanna singing for Microsoft
November 23, 2009 — Kevin TomsI tell you it’s true! Rihanna is singing for Microsoft!
Thierry Henry and Ireland, is it that hard?
November 20, 2009 — Kevin TomsThierry Henry’s handball cost Ireland a place in the World Cup, the biggest event in Football. No wonder they are angry, and a lot is aimed at Henry. But what about FIFA? I watch Rugby regularly and questionable trys are put to the TV official who can review what happened in slow motion and help get the decision right.
Is it that hard for Football? It’s not even necessary to put the decision onto the already pressured referee. Just give the coaches of each team a certain number of dispute calls, and maybe an extra one for any goal in the last five minutes. The disputes could go to TV for decision. In the big games there are millions of dollars at stake and TV is always there. It is antiquated and backward looking to not use it. It just makes referees into scapegoats. Managers and coaches make mistakes too, but a referee not being able to see all corners of a pitch during a high speed match leads to mistakes that he cannot help. Technology can stop this. It is not that hard to do. Those in power are just refusing to.
As Trapattoni is indicating here, where is the leadership from Sepp Blatter on this?
(Video and Arsene Wenger’s wise reaction on my fanpage)
Drink, Drugs and Wild Sex
November 19, 2009 — Kevin TomsNo wonder I am tired, that has been my week. Is it the rock star lifestyle that I lead? Well it could be, but no, the drink was coffee, the drug was caffeine, and the wild sex was the constant spring mating of birds outside my window!
1982 to 2009 World Cup New Zealand Coincidence
November 14, 2009 — Kevin TomsIn 1982 I lived in England.
In 1982 I launched Football Manager
In 1982 the New Zealand team was coached by Kevin Fallon
In 1982 New Zealand reached the World Cup Finals
In 2009 I am living in New Zealand
In 2009 for the first time since 1982, New Zealand have qualified for the World Cup Finals
In 2009 the winning goal score was Rory Fallon
In 1982 Rory Fallon was born
Rory Fallon is the son of Kevin Fallon
Read Blowing away Rugby’s Dark Cloud!
Historic Football Manager ZX Spectrum Video
November 14, 2009 — Kevin TomsI just added a historic Football Manager Spectrum video to my Facebook page. Absorbing for me to watch. Calm, quiet commentary, a little bit of crackle on the sound.
Celtic, Rangers and the Premier League
November 13, 2009 — Kevin TomsThis has been rejected by the Premier League. It is something that often comes up. No other clubs besides these 2 have won the Scottish League for 24 years! Basically, it’s like having Chelsea and Manchester United permanently playing in League One. When you realise that, you have to have sympathy with the Old Firm. There’s a lack of real competition and a lack of revenue.
It’s a problem for all of the big clubs across Europe. They are all businesses, and their aim is to make the maximum profit. They get that most by playing other big teams. So the best thing for their success and prosperity is a European league of the big clubs and to leave their national competitions. Celtic and Rangers would join that in an instant. But there is a problem that comes from this..
..It’s the problem that afflicts the Premier League. Once you get into that top competition your club makes the most money and gets bigger. And the same is true for the other 19 clubs. So you have 20 successful businesses together and if they leave that league they will lose a lot of money. So much so that the Premier League provides parachute payments to soften the blow.
So what is the problem then? The teams inside the Premier League want to pull up the ladder and keep the competition for themselves, banning promotion and relegation. Of course they want that, it is best for their businesses. But it is not best for Football. It’s only the Football Association and FIFA that are preventing this happening. The clubs would do it given the chance. Probably a closed Premier League, then a European League, then a World League. And only the top clubs in it and barriers to entry from smaller clubs.
Promotion and relegation is what makes league competitions so much fun, and it needs to be preserved. Without relegation from top leagues the top clubs will become slack because they have nothing to fear.
But, maybe a real European League, as the next step above the National Leagues, with promotion and relegation, is the way the future will go.
Intense Game Development
November 5, 2009 — Kevin TomsGame development goes through phases.
There’s a discovery phase, when you are trying out ideas, to see if they will work. No matter how much you visualise how a game is going to work, it’s impossible to picture everything that happens until you have a prototype to test. Then you are trying to see if your ideas are as fun as you thought they would be.
It’s a choice how many new things you are trying. The more there are, the longer the discovery phase takes, as you try to prove all the new ideas. One of things that delays delivery is too many new things being developed at once. Against that, is the fact that innovation is needed, and lots of new things can make a game attractive.
Once you pass the discovery phase, and the basics work, you need to expand and flesh out the game. So then, you are creating the game enviroment, the background, the components that add to the realism of the experience. This is a more linear task, more predictable.
Not long after comes a crunch of activity. Now the picture is clear, you know what you are creating, and it’s just intense work to pull it all together, to add and add to the game.
– That’s the phase I am in now!
What’s in my new Football Manager game?
October 28, 2009 — Kevin TomsI’ve been thinking about this. It would be good to talk about it a bit. Certainly it’s intended to be suited to the iPhone, and it’s got a bit of retro about it. It ties back to the original Football Manager game I wrote for the ZX81 and then Spectrum. So it’s not complicated!
But, that is what I want, that is how I want it to be. Of course, the tricky part is making it fun. That is where most of my effort goes. Another reason for keeping it simple is the iPhone itself. It’s small, the screen is small and you cannot get much on it. There is no keyboard and control needs to be straightforward. This is another area of design I am working on.
I have set a launch date that I am working to. So the pressure is on!
Daily Record have wiped me out of history!
October 24, 2009 — Kevin TomsI was sent this article to look at. I was amazed to read the following excerpts:
“It’s all a far cry from the first version of the game, developed by the Everton-mad Collyer brothers Oliver and Paul, which launched in 1982 for the late, lamented ZX Spectrum computer.
Players in those days simply picked a team in the Fourth Division of English football and tried to work their work up the leagues. It was an instant hit and was named Strategy Game of theYear in 1983.
Five years later, the second in Football Manager appeared, with better graphics and the ability to choose formations, training and substitutions. By this time, the game was on the Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64 and Amstrad computers.
The game morphed into Championship Manager in 1992 and is still known as “Champ Man” by many fans. But in 2004, the Collyers’ company Sports Interactive teamed up with Sega and the latter-day version of Football Manager was born the following year.”
It’s simply not true!!! The Collyer brothers had nothing to do with the Football Manager written by me and launched in 1982.
The truth is I wrote Football Manager in 1981. I launched Addictive Games to sell it in January 1982. I wrote and launched the Spectrum version in 1982. I won the Strategy Game of the Year award. I wrote Football Manager 2 a few years later. The games were number 1 sellers, sold in the millions, and I am credited with founding the genre of Football Manager style games.
Yet the Daily Record have written this obviously with either not checking the accuracy of what they are saying or even possibly deliberately writing me out of the history of the game genre I started!
Help!!!!!!
