FM Live hasn't been "hugely profitable"

By Robert Purchese Published 24 March, 2010

SI would be "very happy" with 100k subs.

Football Manager maker Sports Interactive has admitted that MMO adaptation Football Manager Live - launched in early 2009 - hasn't been "hugely profitable".

Speaking to Eurogamer, product manager Marc Duffy said today's reboot of the game should catapult FML forward, although he still "can't see millions of people playing it at the moment".

"I wouldn't say its been hugely profitable," he said, "but it has been profitable. One of the reasons why we've done the reboot is to give ourselves a firm platform to take the game forward. MMOs are ridiculously expensive; server costs, all of that, comes at a premium.

"Yes it's profitable," he added, "and the reboot aims to take the game to the next level."

Today's reboot addresses three key areas: gameplay, price, operation. Change highlights include perpetually reincarnated players, a low £4.99 a month subscription with no upfront fee and more densely populated servers. The offshoot, however, is that all servers have been reset.

"I'd liken FML to the original versions of Championship Manager that Oliver and Paul Collyer made back in '92," Duffy continued. "Initially, people didn't get it, because there hadn't been a game like Championship Manager. I see Football Manager Live like that.

"Although it's loosely a football management simulation, it's very different to anything else in the market. I can't see millions of people playing it at the moment, but we're not expecting that. We'd be very happy to have 100,000 people playing the game, upwards. We're not looking at the World of Warcraft numbers by any stretch. They'd be nice, though."

Pre-reboot, Football Manager Live was estimated to have around 30,000 subscribers.

Keep an eye on Eurogamer this week for a full and candid chat with Marc Duffy about server resets and their effect on the community, and why this reboot will be the last.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (31) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Faldrath #1 2 years ago

    "Keep an eye on Eurogamer this week for a full and candid chat with Marc Duffy about server resets and their affect on the community, and why this reboot will be the last."

    "effect". Sorry, nitpicking mode off. Interested in reading about the reboot, though.

  • uglygamer #2 2 years ago

    I gave up on Championship/football manager games years back. Just dont enjoy them anymore.

  • Buenos_Estente #3 2 years ago

    it better be the last... was playing up until the day they annoucned the reboot, although was losing interest at the time, was always playing for the long term (as encouraged) and to be told there was a reboot to come and hence no long term killed it for me and i didnt touch it again

    i used the spare time to go through my back catalogue and ultimatly play fm2010 - oh how fm steals my evenings!

    But still have now been given a few free months and a new gameworld tonight so shall see if I can get back into it!

  • Kill_Crazy #4 2 years ago

    " "effect". Sorry, nitpicking mode off. "

    Affect can be used here as it's generally used as a verb versus effect which is generally a noun.

  • X201 #5 2 years ago

    The problem is that the fanbase that want a football management simulator isn't big enough to support the thing as a whole.

  • Mkwone #6 2 years ago

    I played this from Jan 09 to sep 09 but had to give it up to give myself a bit of a social life.

    I was the manager of Thunderbolt Lightning in Le Tissier. Going to find out about these changes now.

  • thedaveeyres #7 2 years ago

    They need to sit down and have a good old re-think about both this, and FM in general, I feel. I've devoted more hours to their games than I have to any other franchise, but recently I've lost my FM mojo... is it me or them? I think it's a bit of both.

  • Faldrath #8 2 years ago

    @Kill_Crazy: notice how it was written: "their affect on the community". So it's being used as a noun, and should be "their effect on the community". He could have written "how they affect the community", using a verb, and it would have been fine.
    Edited by Faldrath at 24/03/10 @ 16:33

  • Ryze #9 2 years ago

    I was just about to post 'effect'.

    I guess I just did.

  • neilqpr #10 2 years ago

    I was in le tissier too, really enjoyed it for about three or four months. But once the GW's started to lose numbers it lost it's appeal, spending half the time playing against the AI. Gave up in August I think, it just became a drag.

    Heard about the reboot, can fully understand why people who were still playing had the hump about it. Tempted to fire it up again tonight and see the changes, probably don't have the time to put into it though.

  • grimmace #11 2 years ago

    30K subscribers? I'd be very suprised indeed - My Game World (of which there were about 25 pre reset) had about 40 active players left in it and about another 200 non active players whos subs hadn't ran out yet.

    The reset will have 8 gameworlds (or there abouts) for all the still active players and a gameworld has a maximum of 1000 teams in it (technically it can have 1100 which for some reason is described as 110% full) - but these new gameworlds will not be full because they want some space for new teams to join up.

    So, 30K? no way josay.

    All this reboot stuff is their own fault too - they just kept opening up new gameworld after new gameworld and it was mainly players who had a bad start in an old game world that left to start again in the new. It was inevitable that eventually old gameworlds would thin out to ludicrous levels.

    Shame as it is a very nice game if you like the football manager thing.

    Hopefully they have learnt their lesson - the latest updates should make it easier for player to join the game or even old gameworlds in full flow and fingers crossed they have a more rational expansion plan.

  • Eighthours #12 2 years ago

    Affect can be used here as it's generally used as a verb versus effect which is generally a noun.

    Indeed. Hence it should be "effect".

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #13 2 years ago

    "effect". Sorry, nitpicking mode off. Interested in reading about the reboot, though.

    Apolgies, head bamboozled with transcription.

  • X201 #14 2 years ago

    It wasn't the fact there were fewer players that made me lose interest. It was when the realisation dawned that to get anywhere near the top division for longer than one season it was going to take more of my life than would be healthy.

    It really needs an assistant manager to help point out whey you lost a match when you'd won the previous five 4-0 or the reverse, how you'd managed to break your losing streak against the top of the table side when you couldn't by a win against you fellow relegation candidates.

    Edited by X201 at 24/03/10 @ 17:05

  • omerga #15 2 years ago

    have played it since the beginning and I think it has tremendous potential.
    hopefully the reboot will iron out a few of it's shortcomings.
    I definitely will be playing on
    - see you in Sanchez, if you dare...

  • Eraysor #16 2 years ago

    I stopped playing it after I took a break from playing for a while and, when I considered returning, realised that all my players would have been sold and thus all my work basically deleted. Not fun.

    The other huge problem is the complete lack of players.

  • sarcasmoidosis #17 2 years ago

    "I'd liken FML to the original versions of Championship Manager that Oliver and Paul Collyer made back in '92"

    I absolutely loved those. Then they did something to the game, can't really tell what. But the new versions just don't click with me.

  • Slipstream #18 2 years ago

    Surprising, considering how popular the series is, as it's considered an MMO it's never too late to ramp up the marketing.

  • Cannibal #19 2 years ago

    I think the biggest mistake to long term viability was to give everyone the ability to create their own clubs. I think they should have just used real life clubs and had sackings and applications and stuff. It would feel more fun if there were consequences and pressures with your fictional job. It is hard to feel connection to clubs that have no real life history.

    Have teams outnumber people in the game world so someone will always take you but make the top jobs fiercly fought for.

  • neilqpr #20 2 years ago

    Oh god, I signed up again.

  • marcduffy #21 2 years ago

    @cannibal - the problem there is that you get into FM territory and FML was very much designed to be lighter and different. Most of the other games in this space have offered real teams but the reality is that everyone really wants to be a top team which causes other problems.

  • marcduffy #22 2 years ago

    @Micro_Explosion - I agree. The lack of activity was partly us spreading things too thinly and also towards the end the fact that we'd announced a reboot.

    As I write, the first batch of GW's we launched today have over 300 managers online in each and so far this evening we've had over 5000 matches played.

  • marcduffy #23 2 years ago

    @Eraysor - You raise some valid points about going away and coming back. Time moves on in FML land. with the reboot version you can now lock all players down if you wish but they may demand bigger wages.

    FML strips the FM database down to just 50,000 players so we really do have the best from around the world loaded in. The reset version also pre-allocates you a starting squad so no mad rush on day 1 of a GW now.

  • JACK_BURTON #24 2 years ago

    Fair play to Marc Duffy for getting in on the thread. I found the game "top top" quality. But I think one of the other posts put it well. To do well in it takes up way too much time. Way more time than I have to spend on just one game. It is the same reason that I only played WOW for a couple of months then stopped. If I were master of time I would play FML to death! ;o)
    I hope Sports Interactive have much success with the reboot!

  • YoungPayters #25 2 years ago

    i liked the idea and i liked the interface a lot more than FM2009 (before most of it was implemented in FM2010) but im not an MMO player and just didnt have the time. but i might give it another shot again since i have more than time on my hands now. i like the fact that it has been restricted to less players. i like to know who my players are rather than some selection of random player i never heard off, no offense to those player with my previous team

  • AaronTurner #26 2 years ago

    First night of the reboot and I have enjoyed myself. Hopefully there will be a long term game now but we will have to wait and see. The changes to the game are fantastic, it's the game it always should have been at launch, the patches from here on are the icing on the cake.

    I really hope SI have learnt their lesson regarding the amount of Gameworlds that were opened. It frustrated all the subscribers that could see what was happening and they failed to take notice. It's important to respect subscribers opinions rather than just ignore them.

    Anyway, it's a great start.

  • levitate #27 2 years ago

    I played this from Jan 09 to Apr 09 and I enjoyed it some of the time. Don't think I'll come back to this though, especially not if my old team and everything I did is going to be reset.

  • AaronTurner #28 2 years ago

    el9inoo - FMLive is nothing like Football Manager, they are two very different games. Take a look at the manual to get an idea: [link url=http://manual.fmlive.co.uk/?q=node/1
    ]http://manual.fmlive.co.uk/?q=node/1
    [/link]

    I would really recommend trying it out, the game is very good these days and has better pricing too since the reboot.

  • marcduffy #29 2 years ago

    @levitate - The chances are all your players had moved on to pastures new anyway. With the reboot you'll get all your skill points so the time you spent in the game isn't wasted. With skill queuing now a part of the game it's possible to not have to dedicate as much of your life in order to be a success. Well worth a punt for a month at a £5 :)

  • neilqpr #30 2 years ago

    FM and FM Live are completely different games. After canceling my FM Live sub last year I went and bought FM2010 and really didn't get on with it.

    Pretty positive first night overall. Only giving you 50 players to choose your squad from was a good idea. Not using real cash for player generated tournies was a good move too.

  • Spence1115 #31 2 years ago

    notmyrealname: "The brittish are often not very adept at ... their own grammar haha:p Must suck that you speak only one language, and... can't even speak that one correctly:p"

    It would seem we, the British, can still spell better than you...