Football Manager 2013 New Features Revealed

Quick overview:

• More than 900 new features and improvements
• Brand new: Football Manager Classic mode
  FMC is a new less time consuming way to play. Manager's duties are greatly reduced. Training and team talks streamlined.
• Brand new: Challenge mode
  Tests manager's skills in short-term scenarios.
• Brand new: Unlockables
• Improved match engine for more realistic action
• New camera angles make match action more realistic
• Director of football introduced
• Complete revamp of network game
• Revamped loan, scouting and training systems
• Authentic tax regimes for added financial realism
• Tone of voice introduced to dealings with media
• Manager's personal contract negotiation introduced
• Now easier to compare players and staff
• All 51 playable countries updated
• More than 500,000 players and staff in the database

Excerpts from Miles Jacobson press conference:

Football Manager 2013 is of course the best Football Manager we've ever made. I know we say that every year but that's because it's always true. Football Manager 2013 is bigger, better and more immersive. There are more than 900 new features and improvements in total. This year there some genre-defining changes in the game. We've not only introduced lots of new things, we've also improved and massively enhanced a number of existing features including network game, scouting and training.

In previous releases, the home screen offered the player two basic choices, whether to play Football Manager or to play the network game. This year those two options are joined by two others. The first of these new modes is what we call classic mode.

Football Manager Classic or FMC is essentially a less time consuming way to enjoy Football Manager. The essence of the game is exactly the same. The manager still takes charge of a squad of players and competes to whatever level he/she chooses, but you'll now find that there is a number of responsibilities delegated to support staff. For example, when a player takes charge of training in FMC this is carried out for the full team level only and there's no individual player training. And it gets to matches themselves, there are no team talks or opposition reports; you just go straight to a game, which is played in a much quicker highlight-only fashion.

The other new way to play is challenge mode. In challenge mode you'll find yourself in a particular situation which will test your management skills over a shorter game time, usually half a season. We first introduced challenged mode in Football Manager Handheld 2012 and it's proved to be so popular we've decided to include it in FM too. As an example of a challenge, one is to move your board's expectations despite the fact that most of your best players are injured, while in another you find yourself unbeaten half way through a season and you must stay that way for the remaining matches which is pretty tough.

FMC also features a number of unlock-able features, which in effect will be small ways to make the game a little easier to play... removing the needful work permits for example or the ability to add a few million to your transfer budget.

Away from FMC, we've also introduced a number of enhancements and improvements to what is the main career mode. Perhaps the most visible enhancements to this year's game will be those we've made to the 3D engine. For FM13 everything you look on the pitch will look more realistic; from the stadiums, through player movements and the way the ball moves through the air. As well as the most dramatic changes to the match engine's AI since Football Manager 2009. We've also introduced hundreds of improved animations to make the game feel more realistic, and to make the whole experience more televisiual we've introduced a new camera angle and making significant improvements to the others.

We've also completed a restructure of the manager staff and revamped their roles. The most obvious of these is that we've introduced a director of football in the game for the first time. This will allow managers to pass on much of their workload, such as contract negotiations but only if they choose to.

Then there's the new network game. We've fully integrated Steam's network functionality into this year's game, which means the players should be able to set up and enjoy games against their friends far more easily from before. The deeper integration with Steam also allows us to have worldwide leader-boards for the first time.

We've completed revamped the loan system, we've also overhauled the scouting and training system. And for the first time, we've added individual tax regimes for each major country and that shows quite how deep we go with Football Manager 2013.

Press Conference Questions

Can you give us a release date?
No because we don't know what it is ourselves, but we're aiming before Christmas as we always do and I'm confident that we'll hit that.

FM Classic sounds intriguing. Why have you chosen to do it now?
Simply it's feedback we've received and research that we've done. A lot of people saying how they'd like to be playing the game but they don't have time to anymore; family life is taken over, they got themselves a proper job, or they just like going out. There are also people in the studio who are exactly in the same position as that. So we decided to do something that was gonna take a bit less time to play.

They have been lot of changes in the real world of football over the past year. Are they included in the game?
All 51 countries that are playable inside the game have been updated and for the first time we have over 500,000 players and staff in the database this year, so there are even more players to choose from.

Dealing with the media has been a big part of recent games. Have there been any advances in this area?
Yeah, as well as more news items inside the game and more interaction and a special way of dealing with it in FMC. We've also added the tone system - that was in the team talks - in the press conferences as well, which means you've got a lot more variation in how you deal with the press and how you define your character in the game.

Will you be releasing any more information between and now and launch?
Yes we will. Last year I think we had 25 video blogs, this year we might end up with more than that.