Sports Interactive is a professional and ambitious company, which does not rest watching the money flow into bank accounts, but rather keeps on going forward and improve. With their flagship game, which is Football Manager, they've managed to achieve practically everything - a recognition in the world of computer games, nominations for many prestigious awards, love of thousands of fans and a reputation of the best product in the category of football managers. Still they try to go forward, not looking back at their competition, which is left far behind regardless of their best efforts. However, this is not all - about a year ago they announced that they had begun working on a new project - Football Manager Live, which would be supposed to join the community of MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online) which are nowadays very popular in the world of gaming entertainment. The release of the product is being planned for this summer, but in Poland not many people know what FML is all about. For the past few months I had the pleasure of being one of the beta testers and get to know the game more thoroughly. I would like you too, dear readers, to get as friendly with it as I have, since very soon it might win you over.

What am I doing here...?

While going through all the necessary steps before starting off with the game, I did not have an idea what I was to expect of FM Live. Is it going to look identically to Football Manager, or is it going to be completely different? How am I going to choose my first squad? Are the players going to be real or maybe made up for the game purpose? Most of the answers to these questions I was able to find in the short tutorial, reading of which was required to start playing the game. However, as everyone know, theory and practice are two different things, therefore I was about to experience all of that very shortly after starting off the program.

At first Football Manager Live was a bit... overwhelming. Two windows simultaneously jumped at me, one with the actual game and the second one with the chat. I was about to close down the latter, so I could get on with gaming, but then I saw that a few people welcomed me with my name. It was quite surprising since it really was the first time I ran that program. I started chatting with them and right away they offered me their help. There was a very friendly mood to all of it, which I really hope will continue onto the full version of the game. It was so pleasant just chatting with them, that it took me two hours to move onto the second window, the one with the actual game. Don't be afraid to talk and ask for help. You will not be ignored and you can learn loads of useful things from more experiences gamers.

I was expecting a lot from FML and it really did not disappoint me - the gaming itself is very pleasant and is very addictive. If the makers manage to get rid of all the problems with the slow servers, FML should without any doubt be a success.
Barton

However, let's get back to the game. I have not mentioned yet how the virtual reality is divided. At the moment there are a few GameWorlds with about 1000 managers each, who play each other in various leagues or tournaments. In each of the worlds there is a set list of players, most of whom have a reflection in reality. Therefore, in each GameWorld there is only one Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi - however, getting them is not that easy, since they cost a lot and have very high demands regarding their wages. There is not even a chance to get a star of such level at the very beginning, however someone a little bit worse, but also well known, yes. I managed to get a hold of Marama Vahirua quite early in the game, who quickly became one of my leading strikers.

Navigation in FM Live is very intuitive, quite similar to Football Manager, but it takes a bit of time to get used to it, because of all the novelties. Just a few hours and FML will become your second home. It is worth mentioning that the interface itself reminds more of a web browser than a computer game. Every window can be linked up and shared with other gamers, if we want to brag about the goal our players scored or just show someone one of them. On the top bar we have a "Pages" button, which allows us to see the pages which has been the most viewed or the most recently viewed by us. Of course there is no need to mention the arrows, which - just as in Football Manager - allows us to go back or forward.

The most primary and at the same time most interesting part is creating the image of your team. This aspect does not have much to do with the actual matches and such, but I'm telling you, it will take you a good few minutes to only choose a name for your club. Afterwards you can put up your team's logo and decide on the colours, the way the grass is cut on your stadium and the stadium's name. We are creating our own football club from a scratch, however we like it - it is something that we have never gotten a chance to experience in Football Manager.

Now it's time to move on to the most important part of the game - choosing our players. You might be wondering how exactly it works in FML. It is quite simple - we get a limited budget for buying players and it is all that we need to remember about when choosing the players. Still, it is crucial to remember about the wages, since we do not have an official limit on that, but it is easy to go over the line and end up in a debt. Therefore try to pay attention to both - the price and the wages of a footballer - since two players may cost the same, but what we pay them weekly can be of quite a difference. The makers of Football Manager Live knew that getting a team of twenty-something players is not that simple and very time consuming, therefore for the lazier gamers they created an option for randomly choosing players. It saves us the two hours of work, but ask yourself if it is worth it. You can find very good footballers on the free transfer, which you might find much more useful than a bunch of some completely unknown guys.

Afterwards it's just pure Football Manager - we set up our tactics, individual instructions, mentality and such. However, even here we see differences to the older brother of FML. Sports Interactive decided to put in an interesting innovation - every manager has to learn specific skills, in order to be able to change his tactics. That is why at the beginning we are quite limited in what we can do, but it seems logical - we cannot start with managerial skills of Jose Mourinho or Rafa Benitez. We need to work for them, wait the set time for learning the specific skills. It has not been only implemented for the tactics, since even the training requires some time, not mentioning management or physio. Also, you need to keep in mind the option of learning scouting skills, since teams in FML do not have any scouts. The manager himself needs to make the abilities of judging player potential or getting to know different parts of the world, which helps him find better players there. Making the decision of what to learn may be quite a tough one, since it is not easy to decide if we want to work on developing our players, getting more tactics options or making more money. But has anyone ever said that the job of a manager is an easy one?

Let's play!

FM Live is in my opinion a perfect mix of modernity and classic. Modernity, because we are dealing here with a quite new kind of gaming which is MMO, and classic, because it addicts as well as CM in the best years.
jakubkwa

In Football Manager after we do all the moves we click "Continue" button and are transferred a few hours or a day ahead, where we have to deal with some new events. Non-existence of that button was something I found quite difficult to deal with at first. FM Live is a continual game which goes on parallel for thousands of other gamers. We can search for new footballers for our team, play league, friendly or tournament matches, relax on the chat or working on our tactics to make it perfect. Of course if we do not need any new players, we have no games to play and the friendly ones you start finding boring and the chat is empty at the moment, then you can just turn the game off and do something else. The FML world will keep on going on, but you are not losing anything on logging out of there from time to time. That's the beauty of it.

After creating our club a very important thing to do is to joining a federation. There is quite a few of them and each of them divides into a few divisions. After signing up to a chosen federation (depending on the available time for playing matches and intensity of them) we are given a division in which we find teams of our level. Afterwards it goes as in the real world - we play matches, gain points, get promoted or relegated, we play in a federation cup or a cup made as UEFA Cup or Champions League.

Before we start playing the official games it is important that we play as many friendlies as possible of. We can do that by challenging one of the fellow gamers, by using the search filter for an opponent or by playing a friendly tournament/league with our friends or total strangers. But they will not be strangers for very long, since in the match window there is a small chat, where it is expected of both managers to greet and wish each other good luck, and thank for the game after the final whistle. It is quite an important aspect of the game, because if we are nice then the opponent might give us a positive opinion after the match. However, he can also give us a negative one if we were not following the FML etiquette. But as I mentioned before, so far I have not come across any sort of rude behaviour during beta-testing and I am really hoping that that will never change.

Matches in FML do not differ very much from the FM ones, but a few innovative solutions, as the already mentioned chat, have been implemented, because of the game being a MMO. Gamers have a limited time to do many things - for example to accept a match challenge, or when they decide to make substitutions or changes in tactics, they have a so called Time out, which stops the game for both players and allows for the modifications to happen. Of course there is no need to use this option at all, since we can make all the moves while the game is going on, which has usually been happening when I played the beta. A very interesting function has been added to the 2D view. At any time of the match we can rewind it to any point we'd like, which allows us to watch the game as if we were watching a movie on a VHS or DVD. So if you at any time miss an interesting action, then you can just press the two arrows facing left and go back to that moment. A very useful option which I used frequently, I'm very curious if it is also going to appear in Football Manager.

In the virtual world we play a number of teams created by other users, which we do not know and have no idea about their strength. We are able to judge their abilities by the number of stars from 1 to 5 (change every 0.5) which they have or by their position in the ranking. The ranking is updated every day at midnight (English time) and the position which we occupy is affected by our form and the number of won matches. It's worth mentioning that in FML there is an addition called "Achievements". We get them when e.g. we go over 75% ball possession in a game, or if we have more then 15 shots on target. For each achievement we get a statuette and a record in our managerial profile, also get a news item about it. So far I have not noticed any influence it has on the actual game, but they might have some value when it comes to a number of stars which each team has got.

One of the biggest differences between FM and FM Live is the transfer system. In the latter even hundreds of teams may be fighting for one player, therefore there must be some changes. Buying a player can be done by a few ways: buying on auction, winning wages auction or just paying cash. There is no need to get too much into the third option - we offer another club some money for the player and if they accept it we have got ourselves a new footballer. There is no contract negotiations - the FML world is more unrealistic in this aspect of the game and the players have nothing to say in a choice of their team or their wages. When a player is set for an auction, the manager decides upon his starting price. Since then any interested gamers make offers, in which they say what the maximum price is they are willing to pay and the highest one wins. Seller may even set a "buy now" and if anyone offers that kind of money, the football automatically joins their team.

Life is a novel

I've already mentioned the FM Live community, which seems to be developing well and is made out of nice and helpful people. In the game we have the option of adding friends and of global and private chats. We can exchange messages between each other, which allows people to get to know one other managers better, but is also very useful for the gaming itself e.g. for buying players.

If it wasn't for the constant lack of time, I would not stop playing FM Live. Even now, as an unfinished work of great artists, it gives me more pleasure than the last two Football Managers put together.
M8_PL

FM Live allows to personalise our settings, so the game reminds of itself whenever we want it to. We can turn the sounds on or off, which will alert us with a sound whenever we receive a new message or get challenged for a friendly. Of course there is also a very popular option borrowed from MMOs, which is receiving e-mails which would inform us of any significant happenings. It can become crucial if we do not have the game turned on non stop and someone is overbidding us in an auction. Then we quickly turn the game on, click a few times and afterwards are able to come back to whatever we were doing before.

Some might think that the game will be very time consuming and if we do not turn it on everyday we have no chance of succeeding in it. Well, you can't be any more wrong - if we only stick to the set dats and systematically strengthen our team, then we should move up the ranking ladder. It is just important to be present during our matches and the game was programmed the way, so that two players have plenty of time to meet up. But if one of them is doing a bad job, then the other one will get the chance to play against the team anyway, but managed by an assistant manager. The same tactics, the same players - just lacking the managerial hand, but if the team is well composed, then even without it we can do very well on the pitch.

Is it worth it?

Personally, I think that FM Live is a thought-through game - every detail was planned carefully and it all was very well organised. If it wasn't for the fact that we must pay for this pleasure, I would tell every FM-fan to try his tactics against manages from all over the world. However, I warn you - if you decide to pay the money, you might forever fall into the trap called Football Manager Live.