Thinking about Software Star
I was reminded of Software Star today. It was a simple game of managing a software business. It captured some truth, and I played with my son a while ago. That was a strange experience, to play a game you wrote, so long ago, and find out it is still fun to play! And you can remember little about writing it, except the animated chart idea being a good one. Oh, and the thing about Hype versus Honesty, which was a good idea!
Football Manager on Championship Manager Online
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.
1982 to 2009 World Cup New Zealand Coincidence
In 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
I 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.
Daily Record have wiped me out of history!
I 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!!!!!!
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
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.
Games Design and the Birth of an Industry
All those years ago, in the early eighties, I wrote the original Football Manager. At that time, the only option was to sell it yourself. I formed a company, placed adverts, and started shipping the game by mail order. The inexpensive home computers that came onto the market at that time provided the tools for people like me to write games, and created a market.
Most of the people selling games in the early eighties had created them themselves, and worked to a simple idea- producing a better game next time. No-one at that time was thinking of movie licence tie-ins or other commercial decisions. It was a time of creativity and fresh games ideas. In a way it was innocent. It is one of the reasons the Retro scene is nostalgic for that time.
With no licence tie-ins, no commercial spin offs, the key to success was a good game, and something innovative, to draw attention. Few of the people that were running the businesses then had run one before, and most were young. Everybody was learning as they went. I even remember a top flight accountant who was advising me, saying “If this is just a passing fad, computer games, we’ll help you to wind up the company with minimum damage to you”. – Hardly a passing fad, an industry that is now an enormous entertainment industry. The funny thing was, even then, I thought “He’s wrong, it’s not a new fad, only the technology is new, games have been around for thousands of years.”
But it was the birth of a new industry. In a few years we went from selling only by mail order to being in the main high street stores and selling across the world. People in business suits got interested, and the industry steadily changed as it was no longer being run by pioneers breaking unknown ground.
It was good to experience those times.
Retro Gamer Interview
I haven’t read it yet, it has not made its way to New Zealand yet, but a “Desert Island Disks” interview with me has just been published in the latest issue of Retro Gamer
Doing the interview brought back a lot of memories of those early days, and I still keep remembering new things, some of them funny, some of them interesting, some of them poignant.
I’ll write some up in this blog over time…
Playing Football Manager – Nostalgia
In this article here, Richard Herring writes well about what it is like playing the online emulated version of Football Manager after many years. It conjured pictures in my mind of what it was like for him. His comments about the simplicity are right. But, it had subtlety underneath. Like a lot of good software, it should not be complex to use, even if what it does IS complex! Of course it was a long time ago, and I would write it quite differently if I was doing it now. But the balance of that game is something I was happy with.
-
Archives
- March 2010 (4)
- February 2010 (17)
- January 2010 (25)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (8)
- October 2009 (4)
- September 2009 (2)
- August 2009 (1)
- July 2009 (3)
- June 2009 (4)
- May 2009 (3)
- April 2009 (4)
-
Categories
- Addictive Games
- Comedy
- Football
- Football Manager
- Fun
- Games
- Games Design
- Google Android
- iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
- Kevin Toms
- Life Thoughts, Philosophy
- Money and Business
- Premier League
- Present
- Software Development and Delivery
- Software development tools
- Software Star
- The 80s
- Tools
- World Cup Football
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS

