All About Football Manager 2012

We’re finally there, you can get Football Manager 2012 today! Get some sick leave, send the wife to her parents, run away with your laptop, you will surely need some time for the new version of your favourite game! :) I know that most of you have bought the game already, some of you will do that shortly, but for those of you who are still uncertain I will provide plenty of reasons to take action. This post is all bout Football Manager 2012, it’s a compilation of what we have already published about the new game but I also included some new goodies.

First of all, let’s see what Miles Jacobson had to say about the new game:

FM 2012 is the best in the series. But then it’s not surprising I’d be saying that, as I think it’s true of each new iteration, or else we wouldn’t bother. For the hardcore fan who likes playing career games we’ve added in the functionality to allow you to turn leagues on and off. So if you’re managed in England for a few years and decide you want to go off and get a job in Spain, you can put the Spanish league in and start applying for jobs there. We’ve made huge improvements to how you see the match being played, there’s new animations, new crowds, extra stadiums, a couple of new cameras. That’s all looking really good. We’ve got something for people who like technology in the adaptive layout, which means if you’re playing in a high resolution you actually get more information on the screen. We’ve improved the way you can talk to players and your staff inside the game by adding in a tone system, so now there are six different tones that you can use to talk to players. Which will have a massive effect on conversations you have with them. Some people like having an arm put round them and other people only see sense if you shout at them, so you have to be careful what you use for which person. There’s also loads of changes to contracts. One of the changes being for contract negotiations, if you’re in the midst of a negotiation and the agent keeps coming back asking for £6,000 a week and you can “only” afford to pay them £4,000, you can lock that £4,000 so the agent will know you’re not going to budge from that and might come back asking for different contract clauses to make up the difference. We’ve worked with scouts with a few different clubs to come up with the kind of report that a manager would get in real life for the next opposition reports. There’s all kind of information in there, including where goals have been scored, what time of play they were scored, analysis of the squad, tactical information. And the tactical information goes as deep to show you how you’ve performed against particular tactics, and how particular tactics have performed against you. And for people who have never played the game before there’s a brand new tutorial mode, which will actually give you a little hand-holding guide into how to play the game when you first start. Which is something we haven’t managed to do successfully before, but this year we think we’ve got there. (you can read the full interview here)

You want more details about the new features? Look no further!

Manage Anywhere, Anytime

Press release description: the ability to add or take away playable nations in your saved game as often as you want. Manage in that country at the start of the next season – meaning you don’t have to decide on which nations are playable at the start of your career.

More details: There are two important aspects to be mentioned about this extremely exciting new feature. Firstly you have to know that you can add a league whenever you want in the game but you can also take off a league whenever you want. For instance, if you manage, like I did, a Blue Square North side and you take it up to the Premier League then you can take off Blue Square South from the game in order to speed it up a bit. Secondly, Miles Jacobson revealed how this new system works. For instance, if you are in 2015 and you want to add the Romanian league to manage a team there then the initial database of that league will be loaded and all the seasons from 2011 to 2015 will be simulated so that you will most likely find real players and a realistic evolution of those teams when you take over. Miles also revealed that this feature was planned for FM 2011 but they were unable to make it work flawlessly before the release, now it seems that they are 100% sure that it will work like a charm.

Transfers & Contracts

Press release description: significant changes to the transfer and contract systems, including loyalty bonuses, better implementation of amateur and youth contracts, an improved transfer centre and the ability to lock areas of the contract negotiation when you aren’t prepared to budge. This helps you to manage your budgets and gives you flexibility in what you offer money hungry players, or agents, as incentives.

More details: Miles provided an example of a contract negotiation in which you lock one of the areas: for instance if you don’t want to offer more than 4,000 pounds per week in wages for a player and his agent insists for 6,000 then you can lock that area of the negotiation and try to work things out through the bonuses or other fees. This feature will be extremely important for those who like to keep the wage budget healthy and under control.

Scouting improvements

Press release description: using several real life scouting reports, a new in-game report was devised which includes squad analysis, tactics information and information about goals scored and conceded alongside lots of other scouting improvements, giving you all the information you need to prepare before kick-off and throughout the season.

More details: The most important example of this new feature is that the assistant manager report is a lot more detailed. For instance, your assistant will not only give you his preferred first eleven but he will also tell you who he thinks is second, third or fourth choice player for each position! This should be extremely useful when you take over a new club, it should give you a much better and accurate picture of what you have an what you need at the team.

3D Match Improvements

Press release description: new animations, a whole new crowd system, improved weather system, more stadiums, plus two brand new cameras – “Behind Goal” and “Director Cam” as well as all other camera angles being reversible – meaning you can watch and analyse every aspect of every game.

More details: Miles revealed that every camera angle in the game can now be mirrored, that is good for the new «behind goal» camera as you can switch between the two opposite sides of the pitch but that goes for every other camera angle in the game. The «director camera» will give you the look and feel of an actual TV football broadcast, the «director» decides which camera to choose at any given moment of the game and switches between cameras to give you the best and most exciting angles to watch the game. The «director camera» might be especially useful for replays, I like to see as much as the pitch as possible during the game to see the positions of the players so I guess I will use this one only for replays.

Intelligent Interface

Press release description: a new adaptive layout system, which means the higher your screen resolution, the more info is easily at your fingertips. The new interface also contains new filters, customisable columns, a new tactics screen, and lots of new overview screens.

More details: This was explained in a video released by SI, the bottom line is that if you have a high resolution monitor you can have a lot more information available on screen. You can watch the video again by clicking here.

Tone

Press release description: a whole new level has been added to team talks and conversations, with the new tone system, which allows you to specify the way you want to say things – be as cool as a cucumber by saying things calmly or throw tea cups around by saying things with passion. There are 5 different tones to choose from with specific comments per tone.

More details: There was a mistake in the press release, there will be six different tones and not only five! :) These six tones are as follows: aggressive, assertive, passionate, calm, cautious and reluctant.

Brand New Tutorial

Press release description: standing separate from the main game, a mode to help new players find their way around the game easily, whilst also offering tips to experienced managers on how to get the most out of the game, as well as a new in-game “how to” system.

More details: The first tutorial will be outside of the game and it will be mainly for those who haven’t played the previous versions of the game while the second one will be inside the game and will give you fool-proof step by step advice on how to do certain things in the game. However, it won’t give you the type of advice that we do here so look out for our Football Manager 2012 Handbook! ;)

More New Features!

Football Manager 2012 will have around 800 new features and that is simply amazing if you compare to FM 2011 which had «just» 400 new features! Those new features will be gradually revealed before the release of the game and the good news is that we already have found out a few for you from Miles’ podcast! Here we go:

New boardroom request — when you ask for a new contract you can use two reasons: based on trophies won or on time required to see through youth movement.

Stadium expected attendance — new database field that is hooked into the game so when a club has a future move to a new stadium it can set an expected attendance to avoid cases when the new stadium would never be filled.

Entertainment factor — this is calculated by the match engine and the match confidence includes information about the entertainment factor of a game.

Supporter types — each club will have an accurate type of supporters model based on the following characteristics: patience, passion, temperament, loyalty and affluence. Teams attendances will fluctuate more depending on results for teams that have glory-hungry fans while teams with loyal supporters will have more steady attendances and those fans will also be more likely to pay higher prices for tickets or buy more merchandise.

Calendar time bar improvement — it will also show previous results.

Tactics? Watch this video!

By now I guess you want to check out a few screen shots. Here you go…

Tactics Screen (click to enlarge)

Fixtures and Results

News

Player Information Button

International Overview

Team Talk

Back Button

Team Report

Youth Team

Match Comparison

Transfer Centre

Change skin colours

Last but not least, check out the two official trailers:

I think that Football Manager 2012 is an excellent game, probably the best in the series and surely the best football management simulation game out there. You can purchase it as a digital download by clicking on the image below or you can buy a DVD copy by clicking the Amazon image in the right sidebar. Enjoy the game!