FOOTBALL MANAGER’S FIRST LOOK AT WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

When I discuss women’s football on social media, people always ask when we’ll be releasing a Football Manager version for women’s teams. “When we do it, we’ll do it correctly” has been my standard response until now.

We’ve been working on women’s football in the background for a while now, but we prefer to keep our intentions under wraps. In my opinion, the best time to make our thoughts known has arrived, as we’ve been talking about it behind the scenes with a few people in football.

Let me make one thing very clear: We have no intention of creating a separate FM version for women’s football.

We’re introducing women’s football to FM, a single sport and a single game. Those who play FM will switch between managing a men’s and a women’s squad without any difficulty at all. All of your FM saves will include women’s football; it will just be a larger and more diverse version of the world you already know and love.

Adding women’s football to Football Manager will cost millions of dollars, but the short-term return on that investment will be negligible, we know. Therein lies the rub.

There is a glass barrier for women’s football that cannot be hidden. Therefore, we must do all within our power to help break through it. Everyone should be treated equally, and we want to help make that a reality. Women’s football needs our help to gain the same level of popularity as men’s football. Even though we know we’re not the only ones in this, we want to do everything we can to bring women’s football to where it deserves to be in the eyes of the public.

We are aware of the power of our voice, and we intend to use it for the greater good.

When women’s football becomes more popular, we may reap financial benefits in the long run, but for now, we’re doing this because we believe it’s the right thing to do.

So, let’s take a closer look.

Introducing a women’s database compatible with the FM has been a long-standing request. Adding women’s football to FM is more complicated than simply replacing the male players with female players. Still, the subject of women’s data is fascinating, so let’s begin there.

To begin, compiling a comprehensive global database on women’s football will take some time. Because of the huge amount of data already in our database , even adding a single team or league will necessitate extensive study.

For our women’s database to be accurate, we must evaluate every in-game attribute and determine exactly how we judge the data; attributes such as pace, acceleration, and agility are likely to stay within the same range, but certain features may need a different scale. Indeed, the work done in this area will assist the overall match engine, such as looking at player heights and how it may affect how they play (such as shooting higher at smaller goalkeepers).

Of course, data is only one of several factors to consider.

However, our staff models are really simple and require just a small number of motions, so we already have female character models that can be used in the game. Our male footballers have thousands of “motion-captured” animations, and when applied to female bodies, they move like cowboys.

All of our existing motion-captured animation data must be re-created using female players because women’s body forms and bone structures are very different from men’s. The data created by each motion capture session takes months to clean up and refine in the match engine before it looks good, and it’s not just a couple of days in a motion capture studio.

Since our female 3D models have traditionally been less developed than the male counterparts (again, due to the various body types), there is still more work in that area. Over the past few years, our art and animation teams have grown in size due to this additional work.

But it doesn’t end there. Additionally, women’s football’s financial and salary structures are distinct from men’s. Many women’s leagues have their own set of rules, so we’ll have to make some adjustments.