Kevin Toms Blog

Original author of Football Manager computer game

The Making of Football Manager Edge Magazine

Edge magazine contains the Making of Football Manager (Spectrum) article

Edge magazine contains the Making of Football Manager (Spectrum) article

In the July 2009 issue of Edge magazine is a retrospective interview with me about the making of Football Manager with focus on the original Spectrum version. It focuses on the history of making it, but also a good deal on my design thinking of how I put it together.

Quoting the article:

“The term ’squeaky bum time’ may have been coined by Alex Ferguson during the 2003 Premiership title run-in, but it couldn’t be a more appropriate one for a game made some two decades before. Addictive Games Football Manager wasn’t just the template from which all future stat-crunching management titles would draw their inspiration, it also had a special ingredient that others failed to capture: the capacity to make you squirm in your seat as shots rained in.”

Here’s a snapshot of one of the pages from the article:-

Snapshot from the Edge Football Manager Kevin Toms interview

Snapshot from the Edge Football Manager Kevin Toms interview

June 25, 2009 Posted by Kevin Toms | Addictive Games, Football Manager, Kevin Toms | | 1 Comment

Another Language

I’ve been reflecting, mainly because I am learning to use yet another programming language, I’ve been reflecting how many languages I have learnt and used in my software career. Here’s my list:

PL/1, RPG, COBOL, FORTRAN, DBASE II, Basic in various flavours, Z80 Assembler, 6502 Assembler, 68000 Assembler, 80×86 Assembler. Forth, C, C++, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Java, Ruby, and now Objective C. There are others that I can’t remember the name of.

That’s about 18 or more. It’s the way things go, the profession has fast moving technology. Things continually change. I could add in the dozens of architectures and hardware specifics I have worked with too.

The consequence is that you are continually learning, you never get mastery of everything you need, as in other professions. Even medicine has changing technology, but I think, software development is maybe a leader on requiring constant retraining and education for its professionals on such a scale.

June 19, 2009 Posted by Kevin Toms | Software development tools, Tools | | No Comments Yet

From Bedroom to Boardroom

I gave a presentation to the Auckland Game Developer Meetup. It was describing what it was like to start a company (in the bedroom of my 1 bedroomed flat!)  because I had written a good game, and some of the experiences, good, bad, and strange, that came with doing this at the birth of a new industry. It was a challenge but good to do. And, as usual, reminded me of more anecdotal things I had forgotten. It’s best given in person but the slides give you the idea!

It’s here

June 10, 2009 Posted by Kevin Toms | Addictive Games, Football Manager, The 80s | | No Comments Yet

Retro Gamer interview – finally read it!

It took ages for the Retro Gamer interview to reach me here in New Zealand, and I only read it now because a friend sent me a pdf of it. It was well written and entertaining. What it also reminded me of, was not only some of the events and history of what I did, and the industry I was involved with; but that I was there at the very beginning, at the beginning of an industry that is now bigger than the Hollywood movie industry, and possibly more influential.

I had written a game, a game that I thought was good. But, there was nowhere to sell it! No shops selling games, no computer fairs, nothing. Some people I dealt with at the time thought that computer games would be a passing fad! Laughable now, but it was seriously put to me at the time to be prepared for when the computer game craze passed.

The only way I could reach my customers was by black and white ads in hobbyist games magazines. And the only way I could get the games to them was by post.

June 4, 2009 Posted by Kevin Toms | Addictive Games, Football Manager, The 80s | | No Comments Yet