Interview With Championship Manager's Roy Meredith: Part 1
Championship Manager has been catching the headlines for all the right reasons lately, as after taking a two year break from the scenes, it's back with a bang.
Sporting a ton of new features, and a new 'pay what you want' campaign, that has really shaken up the industry, things are looking bright for the future. Gaming Union had the chance to catch-up with Championship Manager General Manager, Roy Meredith, at GamesCom 2009 to ask him his thoughts on the latest installment to the franchise and what he thinks about the future of Championship Manager, as well as Beautiful Game Studios.
Gaming Union: What do you think really sets this edition of Championship Manager apart? What's new and innovative?
Roy Meredith: As you've seen, there are four new features that set it apart for me, as well as the 3D match engine. We build the 3D engine totally. FM [Football Manager] have built there's but they brought in the animations for everything. We did the animations ourselves, motion capture etc. The four new features take it towards that degree of realism without making it a labour.
So, there is the Set Piece creator, Scouting Network, Practice Matches and Season Live. Season Live is a big innovation; Man Utd losing last night at Burnley, fantastic, if they lose 3-4 more games, Man Utd are struggling near the relegation zone. If they lose 3 or 4 more games, they are struggling near the relegation zone. Wouldn't it be great in October to just go 'I'll see if I can still win the league as Man Utd'!
GU: Especially for a casual audience, that could be quite fun
RM: A lot of people have a main game, and they don't want to spoil it and occasionally they think, I want to play as other teams. So they dabble a bit and play as Barcelona because of the money, or a team in Serie C and seeing 'how would I struggle there'. But afterwards they'll go back to their main game and it allows them to do that, while having short bites of realistic challenges.
GU: In old games if you wanted to do that, you had to go all the way back to the beginning
RM: Not any more!
GU: Exactly, if you've been playing the game for 8 months, a lot of stuff will has happened in the real world.
RM: Absolutely, I mean where were we last season? Man Utd lost their first game, and Spurs were in the relegation mire. At one point it was October and people were saying they were too good to go down. To get those touch points to go in to a season is really great and people might then want to take it as a main game. Say you can save a club; you might want to carry it on. It's great that you can now start a game when you want to start it - you can choose if you want to start it in June, or after the transfer window for example.
The good thing about all these features is that they don’t take away from those people who want to have it as a faster experience. You don't have to do set pieces if you don't want to. It makes the game more enriched for those people who want to dive in to it, but if you don't want to, don't do it. You can go from match to match, and still enjoy the core of the experience. We also aren't making anyone buy Season Live. We've priced it fairly and it's £5 for 6 updates so you're at least going to get 5-6 games out of that.
GU: It’ll become especially fun after the transfer window.
RM: Yea, it allows people to play the game how they want to play it.
GU: Are there any plans to add LAN play?
RM: Not at the moment no. Multiplayer is very complex on a game like this and it will come, but there are no real plans at the moment. Obviously not in Championship Manager 2010, but it probably won't appear in the next version either.
GU: Are there any plans to expand to other types of management games?
RM: Not at the moment no, but I'd like to, I’d love to. I'm a Football fan first, sports fan second.
GU: Something that's not necessarily British, like American Football, would be huge!
RM: Absolutely. Fantasy Football has only broken into the States in the last 3-4 years and now it's really big over there. From a strategy point of view it would be perfect. American sports are great on strategy and numbers, so is Cricket, but I want to get Championship Manager perfect before I start looking elsewhere. When I've got moments of time for thinking, I think 'wouldn't it be great to do a cricket game?'. However, we have a lot of initiatives coming out to Championship Manager, for example a version with PSP Go that will launch with the PSP Go store.
GU: Does that mean there will be other console versions?
RM: No, I don't think there will be console versions. I can't see a way this game works on consoles yet, so we won't go down the console route.
GU: Do you think you'll take another two years, or will it be out against next year?
RM: I don't know. I know what we're aiming to put into the next version, and some people are already working on that. I don't want to take another two years though, as it's unfair on the consumer, but we'll see what happens.
GU: What do you think about online management games, like Managerzone?
RM: I don't want to pick on any in particular as I've played a few. I find them mostly frustratingly light and dull. There's no realism to them and they seem much closer to fantasy league than they do management games on the PC. I just find the interest wanes very quickly as you have to wait for a scheduled match to happen, or it happens without you.
GU: There could be a niche for you there
RM: Well there could be, watch this space. That's all I can say.
