Exclusive FM2011 blog with Miles Jacobson day three: you want more news? You got it!

By Miles Jacobson in Football Manager 2011

Published 23:59 29/09/10

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One of the reasons why Football Manager is enjoyed by so many people is the immersive aspect of the game. When you are in your Football Manager world, it feels like a parallel universe where you are the manager. You know every little detail about your club, but obviously also need to know about the world around you, and that's where the media in FM becomes so important.

A couple of years ago we made a decision to split the news about your team, and about other teams, in two. The decision was made as there was so much going on in the world that people playing it might complain about becoming lost.

The approach we took was wrong. It led to people knowing everything about their clubs, but unless they really took notice, they didn't know what was going on elsewhere.

This year, that problem is gone.

For a start, all of the news goes to the same place, whether it be about your club or others. But the news is very configurable via a vastly improved subscription system.

By default, you'll get all important news about your own league. That includes transfers, how other teams are doing, players you are interested in, big tournaments, the national team, your favourite club and, of course, the things that are going on at your club.

If that's too much for you, you can turn things off with a couple of button clicks. If you want more, again, a few button clicks and you can be subscribed to every bit of news about every player and team in the world!

It's your game, so you choose how much or how little you know about the world you escape into.

You also get more information from the in game news than ever before. A new module that someone much more clever than me has worked on has added an extra element to news items by calculating all of the possible combinations before a match on what winning, losing or drawing that game will do to your league position. That then gets factored into a lot of the news items, which makes the game more immersive, yet easier to find information. It's also used to work out at what point you've qualified for European competitions or can get into the playoffs etc, so no need to work it out yourself anymore!

There are also dozens of new news items that have been introduced this year to also provide more information to the manager, and some nice changes to existing news items.

I'm not going to detail all of them because firstly it'll break the internet as there are so many, and secondly, I don't want to give everything away, or else there'll be no surprises when the game comes out!

Here are a few of my favourite additions this year.

- More varied goal descriptions and better descriptions of player performances for post match reports.

- New news item to show when players are about to trigger contract clauses or their contracts are running down.

- More information on why someone has been sacked, or why you've been sacked (!) in the news item.

- A fortnightly competition round-up highlighting statistics such as scoring and assist charts, man of the match charts and other bits and pieces to keep you in touch with the world around you.

- News items when shock transfers are made, such as a player or manager dropping a couple of divisions.

- A season expectations review from your board to let you know how they think you've done in the last season.

- Player debut news items.

- Improved news items regarding major finals to give them the build up that they get in the real world.

- Squad number reaction news, where the press react and comment on squad number allocation and situations where players have not been registered in a squad.

- A yearly training round-up which goes nicely with the new training system in Football Manager 2011, which will get discussed in proper detail in a future blog.

Plus lots, lots, more...

Tomorrow I'll be looking at another side of the media, on the day that every manager dreads in real life. Friday is press conference day!

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