Football Manager 2025

[Villaphan04]

I know this is not even going to be the next installment in the series, but the announcement earlier today basically said that after '24, they will be revamping the whole series starting with Football Manager 2025. 

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FM25: THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL BE LIKE NOTHING BEFORE

As mentioned before, FM24 will be the closing of a chapter after 20 years at the top of the management simulation league. But it is far from being the end of our story…

For many years now, we have been planning the next revolution of Football Manager, something we haven’t claimed since the 3D engine first came into the series back in FM09. 

With the average play times we enjoy and the health of our game’s performance in the market, it's an important decision to get right. How can we bring new people to the series, whilst not alienating our existing audience? How can we cater for all the different ways that people play our games?

There are a number of key projects we have been working on for some time now that we’re supremely confident will propel Football Manager forward for all of our player types.

PROJECT DRAGONFLY: A DEEP DIVE INTO OUR TECHNOLOGY

We last had a revamp of the graphics engine running behind our match engine in 2017.

The last major update of the engine behind the wider game, such as the UI, was way earlier than that. 

Whilst what we did in 2017 was good for the 3D engine, some other things actually went backwards from a consumer-facing perspective. For example, we made the decision back then that the faces of Newgens would appear on the player bodies in the graphics engine, but the technology we use for that has stagnated and we’ve been a bit stuck. The rendering engine we chose to use also didn't keep pace with other engines - and nor did our own internal engine.
 
Whilst we’ve constantly been having discussions over the years on how to improve our backend technology, back in January 2020 a small group in the team were assigned to start discussing the future more intently across the studio, to work out what to do to really push our technology forward. This became known as Project Dragonfly; a root and branch look at all the technology we use in the studio. Alongside this, we also started looking at different business models, platforms, working practices, and Games as a Service, and if and how we might tie these things together.
 
The original plan was to deep-dive into the potential and then propel the learnings forward with the aim of a new-look Football Manager for FM22. Due to the pandemic and the impact on working practices at the studio, Project Dragonfly slowed down, mainly so we could deliver the games that we did during this time on time, which many other studios weren’t able to do. So we switched the planned revolution to FM23.

We started adding to the team to not impinge on other releases and games projects in the studio to try and deliver Project Dragonfly, but in the run up to the release of FM22, we still weren’t where we needed to be to hit our FM23 deadlines. The strong recommendation from those working on the project from a design and engineering perspective was to move not to FM24, but to FM25.

And that’s what we’re talking about here today.

NEW CHAPTER, NEW ENGINE

So, Football Manager 2025, FM25 Console and FM25 Touch will be our first Football Manager releases to use a new engine – Unity. Incredibly well-known in the gaming space, Unity powers many of the best-known games in the world, from Genshin Impact through to the Cities Skyline series. Project Dragonfly explored a number of game engine partners, but after all our research was concluded, Unity was the clear favourite to take us into an exciting new era for the series. 
 
The switch to Unity is going to give us a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools. We’ve been working closely with Unity over the last few years to be able to deliver a whole new UI which will dramatically improve the ways you are able to interact with the game, both inside and outside of a matchday. Unity's Universal Render Pipeline (URP) allows us to create more optimal graphics across a range of platforms, from mobile to high-end consoles and PC/Mac - but we're also adding some enhancements on top. The switch to Unity means there is the possibility of better-quality graphics across all supported devices, however it should be expected that there will be some changes to the minimum spec requirements, which will be communicated ahead of FM25’s release.

For those of you who are not familiar with gaming technologies – in simple terms, FM25 will have a significantly better looking matchday experience - both on the pitch and the supporting stadium environments, alongside a vastly improved user interface that will dramatically improve how you navigate through screens and access all the information available to you as manager. We’ll also have new technology for Newgens and manager creation which are already looking really promising at this early stage.

The only platform that won’t benefit from the switch to Unity in time for FM25 is FM25 Mobile, but it is absolutely our intention to incorporate the new tech in Mobile at some point in the future.

A TRUER REFLECTION OF REAL-LIFE FOOTBALL WITH NEW ANIMATION TECH

We’re also taking a big jump with animations, through new integrations with an exciting partner from the professional world of football. The first part of a multi-year shift will happen in FM24, so you’ll get some of the benefits in our next instalment, with a particular focus on ball physics and player locomotion. This lays the foundations for the bulk of improvements to come alongside the graphical upgrades in models, stadiums and the surrounding scenes that will be introduced in FM25 – although FM24 will still look better graphically than FM23.

Simply put, the way that everything looks and moves will be far more true-to-life than ever before with FM25. This obviously requires considerable investment – but with the aforementioned growth of the studio in recent years, we now have the resource available to ensure both FM24 and FM25 are progressing simultaneously.

WELCOME, WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

The FM25 cycle will also see the long-awaited introduction of women’s football to the Football Manager series. Before I go into the details, I want to acknowledge that since we first announced our commitment to introduce the women’s game back in July 2021, we haven’t provided any further public updates on the project which has led to speculation and some frustration.

The facts are that we’ve made really good progress in many areas, including research, the match engine and translation. But there are other areas that haven’t made enough advancements, a lot of which are legal issues. The women's game deserves to be the best it possibly can be when it is released - and the new graphics engine will help deliver that.

Supporting us in bringing this project to life are some key people from inside the women’s game, who are passionate about helping us deliver the most authentic experience possible. We look forward to announcing some of those in a future development update blog.

THE BIG QUESTION

By this point that I’m sure that most of you are asking the same question – when can we see what this all looks like? Well, as mentioned earlier, we've had resource on FM25 for some time now, building towards a key milestone at the end of 2023. So, this means we're aiming for the first major FM25 reveal in Q2 of 2024. Until then, the updates from the studio will be informing you all about Football Manager 2024 - and you'll be hearing more about that very soon.

The Future of Football Manager | Football Manager 2023

[Stevo985]

I'll be honest, a graphics upgrade for football manager is almost entirely irrelevant

[Demitri_C]

Just make it likw the odiginal championship managers.  Simple and easy. Stuff like press conferences no thanks

[hogso]

They're building the new engine in Unity I believe, which will be a complete game changer, it could like more like FIF- sorry, EA Sports FC than FM as we know it. 

What is interesting is that should invite some crazy opportunities for the mod community. Stadium edits, player model edits, shirt edits... 

FM23 has been the most played FM by some distance, so you have to wonder how much 25 will cater more to the casual player. They've been pretty accommodating over the years to old school fans though, so perhaps there will be functionality to more or less ignore the graphical changes. 

[tomav84]

10 hours ago, hogso said:

They're building the new engine in Unity I believe, which will be a complete game changer, it could like more like FIF- sorry, EA Sports FC than FM as we know it. 

What is interesting is that should invite some crazy opportunities for the mod community. Stadium edits, player model edits, shirt edits... 

FM23 has been the most played FM by some distance, so you have to wonder how much 25 will cater more to the casual player. They've been pretty accommodating over the years to old school fans though, so perhaps there will be functionality to more or less ignore the graphical changes. 

i hope so, i really don't want to have to buy a gaming PC just so that it can support FM

[HKP90]

I just hope they don't make it like FM 21 (I think it was 21, poss 20) where it was impossible to cross because the wingers would pelt it down to the byline and thrape it off the full back for a corner.......EVERY F-ing time. 

[bobzy]

On 29/06/2023 at 13:18, Demitri_C said:

Just make it likw the odiginal championship managers.  Simple and easy. Stuff like press conferences no thanks

I don't mind that - I just have everything as "Delegate to:  <Assistant Manager>".

There's really very little for FM to work on generally.  The gameplay is very, very good.  So it's not a massive surprise they're going for graphic output.

 

Personally, would like to see some sort of integration with owning a team / more freedom on decisions than having to ask the board.  Make your salary (which currently has 0 impact anywhere) actually do something, which in turn drives an actual career rather than starting with a club and just sitting with them (which is what I tend to do.  I get too attached to those newgens ).

[Milfner]

30 minutes ago, bobzy said:

I don't mind that - I just have everything as "Delegate to:  <Assistant Manager>".

There's really very little for FM to work on generally.  The gameplay is very, very good.  So it's not a massive surprise they're going for graphic output.

 

Personally, would like to see some sort of integration with owning a team / more freedom on decisions than having to ask the board.  Make your salary (which currently has 0 impact anywhere) actually do something, which in turn drives an actual career rather than starting with a club and just sitting with them (which is what I tend to do.  I get too attached to those newgens ).

Agree. A DOF mode would be good too, hire/fire the manager & sign the players then sim the games/watch from stands if you want. I sorta end up doing that (the Zealand skin with simulate game on is great for this)  but the assistant managers aren't great.

[Villaphan04]

On 29/06/2023 at 08:13, Stevo985 said:

I'll be honest, a graphics upgrade for football manager is almost entirely irrelevant

I keep going back and forth on this. I don't really play FM for the graphics at all, but that being said the current graphics are worse than they were 10 years ago. The year they switched the newgen face graphics I think really set back the whole series' graphics.

On 29/06/2023 at 15:47, hogso said:

FM23 has been the most played FM by some distance, so you have to wonder how much 25 will cater more to the casual player. They've been pretty accommodating over the years to old school fans though, so perhaps there will be functionality to more or less ignore the graphical changes. 

I do think they are announcing these 2 years ahead of the planned release to get the idea across that many will need to get a new computer to run the new graphics (sorry @tomav84 )

3 hours ago, bobzy said:

There's really very little for FM to work on generally.  The gameplay is very, very good.  So it's not a massive surprise they're going for graphic output.

 

Personally, would like to see some sort of integration with owning a team / more freedom on decisions than having to ask the board.  Make your salary (which currently has 0 impact anywhere) actually do something, which in turn drives an actual career rather than starting with a club and just sitting with them (which is what I tend to do.  I get too attached to those newgens ).

I think that can be a blessing and a curse. They accomplish what they set out to do in the game, but for the avid gamer, they generally don't have enough updates/new features from year to year -- which is bad because I'm sure all of us can think of things that might be basic but would instantly improve the overall experience (e.g. revamping international management). 

I have also switched to the NewGAN face generator instead of the usual generated newgen faces because, for me, it adds that element of more realism. But I always ask for a much lower salary in negotiations as well as there is zero impact. and as @Milfnersays, I've also started to do some type of a DOF mode / simulation. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Villaphan04

[Stevo985]

31 minutes ago, Villaphan04 said:

I keep going back and forth on this. I don't really play FM for the graphics at all, but that being said the current graphics are worse than they were 10 years ago. The year they switched the newgen face graphics I think really set back the whole series' graphics.

Maybe it's an age thing, but I still use the 2D mode with just the dots.

I just think it's a game that doesn't need graphics.

[Villan_of_oz]

On 05/07/2023 at 02:29, Stevo985 said:

Maybe it's an age thing, but I still use the 2D mode with just the dots.

I just think it's a game that doesn't need graphics.

Yes I'm the same mate, don't mind 3D highlights but I still play the game in 2D, much better to understand how your team is playing.

[villa4europe]

I don't even do the 2D, I'm on the text while looking at the stats / player ratings, that's what FM is

Its a game of imagination for me, when I see the words "the defender puts it out for a corner" 30 years of watching and playing football kicks in and 1 of 1000 scenarios goes through my head

I watch goal replays and that's it

I just want a fresh skin on it and a new script and I'm fairly happy

Edited July 8, 2023 by villa4europe