The legendary programmer who gave the world Football Manager - the original one!
So whats he up to now, and how did Football Manager come about?
I was a professional programmer.
Mainframes were the first computers I worked with.
The very first one, a long time ago, was an IBM mainframe.
When you saw the avalanche of home computers…
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That was it!
Id always been inventing games as a hobby when I was quite young.
Certainly from about ten years old I was doing a lot.
Board games, ball games and things.
And then the ZX81.
What fuelled your passion for games then, even before you came to computing?
I always liked games.
I like inventing them as well.
It was create your own entertainment really.
There was something about inventing them that had a lot of enjoyment.
Was it always destined that your skill as a programmer and your love of the games would meet?
Yeah, they did meet withFootball Manager, actually.
I was already a programmer, I had already been inventing games, and I love football.
The three things came together.
It was Torquay United, I grew up with them.
Theyre non-league at the moment.
I was at the match where Torquay went out the league.
Basically I started writing it and friends played it, and they seemed to be very gripped by it.
And I couldnt get them off.
Which was the source of the company name Addictive Games.
And at the time you could only start selling it by hobbyist magazines and mail order.
That was all there was.
Thats what gave me the name Addictive Games.
And how long did it take you to program the first version?
It was over about a year, the original one.
Was that as much learning the technology, pushing it, finding out what it could do?
It was evolving the game.
Id dabbled around with other games before, and I had written board games based on football.
I always found them deficient particularly on things like calculating the league table.
The scenario could be run by the computer, so it was a really good tool for the job.
Your friends were playing it, you launched it commercially.
When did you realise that you were onto something really quite special?
Id say that was when I got a large order from Smiths.
They said to me on the phone at work that they wanted an order for 100 games.
Then No, no, 1000 games.
Im giving up work!
And did you quit straight away?
Pretty quickly, because when I got home, it was 10,000!
In the course of one day it went up tenfold?
It was misreading of the numbers!
Which was the first order from them no, the second order actually.
Theyd ordered 2000 before, and that had almost got me there.
It was an easy decision!
And how long after the game was released did all this happen?
I think it was six months from the very first release.
It was quieter at first, because it was only selling by mail order.
Then the transition to a few specialist shops.
This guy who advised me said I dont know, because youre a new industry.
Its not established what the discounts are.
And I said okay, well Ive got something to go on.
Id decided that Id try and get no more than 60% discount.
I went down to see the guy, expecting it all to be quite difficult.
Its a two-colour inlay, weve got to have full colour printing.
I want a new inlay for it, to look good.
And he said I want 2000 units, and I want 55% discount.
That pretty much became the norm for others as well.
Was it a snap-your-arm-off moment?
But that was my negotiating ploy!
My memories of the game are that it seemed to ride the wave at just the right time.
One of the things about it is that it kept selling for such a long time.
It was not a fashion item like so many were.
I think it was still selling ten years later from when I first launched it.
It was high in the charts for a long time.
It was a different kind of game, and it appealed to people in different ways.
One thing that struck me about it, I played it on the Spectrum where it included graphical highlights.
And yet you had it in game one.
Yep, I remember writing that!
Id done the ZX81 and the Spectrum one was about the July or August of 1982.
The game was launched in January 1982.
I decided I wanted to do those graphics.
Obviously it was to do with what happened in the action.
There was a bit of gameplay design going on there.
Made it that you were never sure what was going to happen.
That would be boring.
And I didnt know what was going to happen.
It was part of why it worked so well.
And I think it worked really well, and it fitted into the game.
It wasnt like it would be oh, thats last years now.
It was a real pain, in that every new format had to be converted for.
I did start employing programmers to help with the conversion.
Some of it was interesting.
But the most fun was writing the original, really.
And marketing is interesting, it was creative in itself.
Writing the ads, designing them and stuff.
And which format holds the version of the game youre most proud of?
The Spectrum, definitely.
The other one Id liked if I remember rightly was the Amstrad CPC.
But presumably that was reflective of what you were going through?
Yeah, it was.
Its an interesting point.
That you could successful hype even the worst games and theyd be a success?
That was a true story I put in the blog!
The thing was it wasnt quite true what he was saying, because there was a balance in it.
Hype wasnt actually always more successful.
It was high risk, but what I was reflecting there is that people do use hype.
There was lots of hype or ambitious advertising, and still today its happening all the time.
Sometimes it works, sometimes people just dont believe it.
Theres no guaranteed success strategy.
People dug really deep.
They were 20, 19 and 20 or something.
People probed the edges!
Why did you do it?
It was very simple, actually.
They were sales people for us!
That meant a lot to them and it clicked at some point.
It was this is a bit like being a book author, or musician or something.
I thought surely this business is just like books.
I dont care who published the damn thing.
And I still believe that.
Thats what started it.
It was credibility as well, but that was the key driver.
That was where the plan didnt work out as intended.
Were you recognised much as a result of that?
And what kind of things would people come up and say to you?
Well, theyd shake my hand or something, or buy me a drink in a bar.
At fairs they would ask for autographs.The association of programmers with games has waned a lot afterwards.
Does that disappoint you in a way?
I think its bound to happen, and it depends on who is in control.
Theres not a lot of vested interest.
You see it in the music business all the time.
So the deals arent right for it, really.
Isnt that why United Artists was formed?
George Michael had a famous case where he took on Sony, too.
In the movie business though, its generally 100 to 200 people to make a movie.
Yet a lot of people though could name the director of a film.
But games arent like that.
And yet programmers are hidden away?
I think theres no need, I think its human.
Do you have an interest in politics that drove you to writePresident?
And yeah, that did interest me.
That was really the core of President.
I playedPresidentquite a lot, and I think its the most difficult game that you wrote.
Was that a conscious thing, or was it the amount that you were trying to cram in there?
I think I was ambitious, probably, with what I was trying to do.
But you tend to do that, you tend to push yourself a bit further each time.
Sometimes you probably shouldnt, I dont need to go that far.
You end up with feature-itus!
And at what point did you bite the bullet and decide to a second one?
It was a real major conflict.
I was quite good at some of the business aspects, the marketing side I was quite good at.
Yeah, that was a good example.
There were a few of them.
Some were, some werent.
Forget writing and become a business man, or do you want to go back to writing software?
Make that decision and well work out how to do it.
Writing more games was more attractive to me.
Was that something you were missing at the time?
Yeah, I wasnt doing it.
It was part time and it was really difficult.
Because if you imagine that was a really hard way to do it.
When it was more and more competitive, you really need to be dedicated to it.
I was having dinner with them, and we were doing some other stuff, some other business.
And they said were going to go public and were looking for an acquisition of a games company.
And Im sitting there thinking to myself shall I say something or not?
Because Id only just got to that decision, and this was an opportunity.
Thats what freed me up to go and writeFootball Manager 2.
Was that something you always thought youd do, or was always in your mind?
It was always in the background to do so, more and more over time.
But I wanted to do a decent job of it.
It wasnt the easiest of projects, there were some difficulties with it.
But it was okay, it came out alright.
I think I could have done a better game, but I think what I did was good.
It was certainly successful.
It was three months at number one or something.
Was it more pressured?
You said that the market had changed, but it was all new when you wrote the first game.
It was more pressured, because it wasnt set up in the most ideal way.
I had six developers working with me on some graphics routines for the multiple formats.
So the workload on me was enormous.
When I look back on it I dont know how I was doing it.
It was very tough in some ways.
Then there came theWorld Cup Edition, which was the last one you were involved with?
That was even more difficult!
What was the difficulty?
We lost a key guy who was managing things, and he wasnt replaced.
It made it really exacerbated.
It was a very tough project, very exhausting.
I dont think it was complete to be honest.
Is it the one you were least satisfied with?
Im curious about the parting of the ways?
The working relationship wasnt working, really.
What is it they say?
Do you regret selling the company in the end?
[Pause] In some ways.What did you think when Sports Interactive revived theFootball Managername all that time later.
Do you take that as a pat on the back?
It has two sides to it, yes.
It is a pat on the back, and it surprised me that it still has that credibility.
On the other hand theres a certain loss to me with it going away.
Are you a fan of how theyve taken the genre?
Im certainly a fan of some of the things they do.
Im a big fan of how theyve cultivated their community.
ObviouslyFootball Managertoday generates so much fondness, nearly three decades on.
Does that still surprise you?
Yes, of course it surprises me.
They get a lot out of it, they experience a lot doing it.
Its not like a mechanical, cold thing.
Or you saved yourself from relegation.
All that stuff was what I wanted to create.
The last few years youve been back involved in theFootball Managergenre, withFootymax, an online football management game…
I did complete that, but unfortunately the marketing didnt really take off.
It was kind of a frozen project, or a project that stalled you might say.
And do you miss being slap bang in the middle of the games industry?
Yeah, I want to do that.
That is an interest, and I think theres more!
What should we be looking for from you next?
Theres no client to install.
That makes a big difference, and its really attractive.
All this time later youve not lost the thirst for all the brave new worlds out there?
No, I havent, no!
Kevin Toms, thank you very much!
He also has a blog, which you could findhere.
