We know we looked a bit stupid. It was a
little bit embarrassing. If we'd
released FM25 in the state that it was
in, it wouldn't have been good value for
money and it would have damaged us
forever.
So, right now we are uh in the reception
area of our offices in Stratford in here
east which is part of the Olympic
Legacy. and uh we're sitting in our
reception area and surrounded by
football shirts from some of our
favorite players of all time.
>> We've got to talk about the cancellation
of Football Manager 2025.
What led to that decision? So, first the
game was postponed and then eventually
the company said that the game wasn't
going to come out anymore. So, can you
talk us through what happened? The
reason for the cancellation was really
simple, which is I wasn't happy with the
quality of the game. And people work
really, really hard to get the money
together to be able to buy computer
games, right? They're they're not cheap
things. And whilst in FM's case, it is
good value for money, if we'd released
FM25 in the state that it was in, it
wouldn't have been good value for money,
and it would have damaged us forever. It
was the most ambitious title that we'd
ever set out to make. We'd changed our
engine. There's a lot inside the game um
was changing. But during the development
cycle um there were a few things that
went wrong during the cycle. And to be
frank, even if everything had gone
perfectly, we still might not have made
it to with the quality level that we
were expecting um that our consumers
expect from us as well. We originally
postponed the game actually for
different reasons to the cancellation.
At the time that we postponed the game,
not all of the content was inside the
game and there were three things that
went wrong on the same day. One was a
big development curveball of something
we'd simply forgotten about and then it
came into the mix and we were like,
well, how on earth can we do that with
all this other stuff that we need to do?
One of them was a legal thing and one of
them was was something with a third
party. And those three things happened
on the day that we announced that the
game was coming. If they'd happened a
week before, we would not have announced
that the game was coming. We knew that
we were going to have to postpone. Um,
so went down the path of what we could
do. And it meant that we'd done a big
announcement. We'd said when other
announcements were coming and then we
didn't make the other announcements
because simply we knew that we were
going to postpone the game, but there
was a lot there were a lot of steps that
we needed to go through before we could
confirm that. So, we know we looked a
bit stupid. It was a little bit
embarrassing, but it was also
unavoidable because of these unknown
unknowns that hit us. Known unknowns we
can deal with. Unknown unknowns we
can't. The the cancellation was
different. So, once all the content was
in, we had our own internal QA team,
quality assurance team who were giving
feedback. We'd brought in a load of
consumers to test the game as well. Um,
and the average rating we were getting
from the consumers was around seven out
of 10.
That's not a sports interactive quality
level. And um, I personally think that
they were being quite generous as well
with the schools. So, I got a build of
the game just before Christmas, which
was meant to be right, this is the the
final version of it, apart from bug
fixes and what we need to do. And I was
about two hours into playing it.
when I just said to myself, "This isn't
good enough. We can't we can't do this.
This isn't to our normal quality level."
And then waited a little bit because it
was Christmas. I didn't want to ruin
people's Christmases. Um and I carried
on playing and every time I was playing,
it was like, "Nope, still the same
thing." And first day back in the new
year, um, I spoke to the COO here, I
spoke to the coms director here, and I
spoke to my production director, and
then spoke to Sega's CEO
um, to say that this will be a very big
mistake if we are to release. Um, we'd
made too many changes to the UI. We
tried to be too clever with what we were
doing. We started going through the
corporate motions of what you have to do
when you're going to cancel. Spoke to
the team, the dev team a few weeks later
and put together the plan to make the
announcement. And we wanted to make the
announcement at the end of January
because we'd said there was going to be
more news in January. But again, we
looked a little bit stupid because we
couldn't say anything in January because
of Japanese stock market rules where our
parent company are based. So, um, at the
earliest opportunity, which ended up
being 2:30 in the morning UK time, we
put out the announcement to say that the
game was cancelled, um, mentioned that
again at 9:00. But um
but the the TLDDR version is I wasn't
happy with the quality of the game and I
wasn't prepared for people to be going
out and spending their hardearned money
on something that wasn't good enough. It
would be unfair on them.
>> There has been some criticism though of
the communication and the way that the
cancellation was handled. Some fans
saying that was a lack of transparency.
I guess what what do you make of that?
>> We own it. Um we would have liked those
announcements to be slightly different
but given the reasons why they've come
when they came. I mean when it comes to
transparency
historically I think we have been
massively transparent as a studio. I've
do multiple blogs a year. Up until last
October I was on social media for people
to talk to me directly. I didn't have
anyone managing the account. I would
reply to people. Um, and then I had some
abuse last year that was the final
straw. And th this this will sound
weird, right? But I'm used to people
having a go at me when they lose a a
game inside Football Manager. I'm used
to death threats, which is a ridiculous
thing to say, but I've had quite a few
of them now. What I'm not used to is um
anti-Semitic abuse,
which happened to me on social media.
Now, I personally don't believe in
organized religion. If people want to,
that's great. That's up to them. I
totally respect what everyone else wants
to believe. But my mother was Jewish.
Therefore, by birth, I am recognized as
being Jewish. And to camp to come at me
someone who has campaigned against
racism for his whole career,
that's the final straw for me. So,
unfortunately, that that has now gone.
But um we tried to be transparent and
where some of these accusations have
come from is I wrote in a blog that we
will be as transparent as we can be.
No corporation, no business can ever be
fully transparent because there are
there are laws that stop you from doing
so. So when it comes to postponing, you
have to let the stock market know first.
So that's why we were delayed at being
able to announce that when it comes to
cancelling, you have to let the stock
market know first. So it kind of limits
what we can do and we can't give hints
towards it until the city are able to be
told. So it's frustrating for us as well
because we wanted to be telling people
as quickly as possible. We just
couldn't. Has not releasing
Football Manager 25 had an impact on
what you've been able to put into
Football Manager 26? Yeah, it it has had
an impact on what we could put in FM26.
And it was it was very important for us
to take stock and actually look at what
had gone wrong in the process. And a lot
of the a lot of the dev teams inside the
dev team, cuz you split everything up
into smaller pieces, had retros to to
work out where they thought that things
had gone wrong. Um, not just in their
area, across the whole business. As part
of our first announcements, for example,
we spoke about how we weren't going to
have a an email inbox anymore. It was
all going to be WhatsAppbased now
because that's how people work in
football. The reality is that system did
not work well in game at all. Um, and
that was one of the biggest frustrations
or the second biggest frustration with
the user experience away from the
navigation was that system. That
system's now changed and we've gone back
to something a little bit more familiar.
It's still new. There's still a lot of
difference, but it's a lot more
familiar. One of the new features for
initially for Football Manager 25, but
now for 26 is the introduction of
women's football into the game.
Something you've spoken about in the
past wanting to bring in um but at that
time it maybe wasn't commercially
viable. What led you to this decision
and what challenges has it posed as
you've developed the game? So, you're
right that I did use that line that it
wasn't commercially viable. And the
reason that we changed our minds and
decided to do it was um at an event um
some of the lioness's came to say hello
and told me that it would never be
commercially viable unless people like
us actually got behind it. Um, and the
BBC have done that and Sky have done
that and uh, EAFC have done that and now
we are and we're late to the party. And
again, I apologize for that. But
sometimes it takes someone better
informed than you to give you some
information for you to be able to make a
decision. And that's what happened
there. Now,
since we made that decision, obviously
women's football has become more and
more popular, but there is still a glass
ceiling that needs to be smashed
through, and they need people like us
and yourselves at the BBC to help smash
through that glass ceiling. Um, because
the quality of the game is getting so
much better than it was. Um,
and
you know, there's the attendances are
definitely going up as well. We've got
next season Arsenal will be having most
of their league games, if not all of
their league games actually at their
home stadium rather than having them at
Bornewood. That's going to drive the
average crowd size up. The same things
happening at other clubs as well. You've
got Everton announcing that Everton
women are now going to be playing at
Goodison. Um, which is a huge commitment
from that new ownership because they
would have got a lot of money from
building flats on that ground instead.
Um, so we're now going to be part of the
the journey um that can hopefully help
it break through the glass scene because
at the end of the day it's just
football, right? Whether whether it's
women playing football or men playing
football, it's football. Um, so we have
gone quite big on on women's football.
We'll be making announcements in the
next few weeks and exactly how big, but
there there will be a good selection of
leagues. There's a good selection of
licenses
um to play and uh there will be um lots
of choice for people but you can also
seamlessly move between men's football
and women's football inside the game. It
doesn't differentiate um which is also
something that we wanted to ensure was
the case um when we were making the
game. So, it's something we're very
excited about and hopefully we will have
done um hopefully we'll have done the
people who originally came to talk to me
about it justice.