Have you even pondered on the fact that although Chinese is the most widely spoken ‘first’ language*, it is still largely seen as difficult to get a grip on? Football Manager developer Sports Interactive learnt the hard way not to ignore the pleas of the surprisingly populous Chinese fanbase.
As of the first of November, Football Manager 2017 sits at a measly 30% score; a result of what appears to be a flash mob of discontent fans from Far East brutalising the software with negative reviews. Again and again users cite lack of Chinese language option as the sole reason for the adamant no, with some users expressing pure, unadulterated anger with Miles Jacobson – the director of Football Manager series. The source of this unrest stems from the emotion of betrayal; in an October 2011 tweet, Miles Jacobson seemed to hint that increased sales in China would permit Sports Interactive to include Mandarin language within the game. Five years onward, and the translation is nowhere to be seen, leaving a surprising margin of the buyers displeased.
In response to allegations ranging between fraud, false advertising and scumbaggery, Jacobson replied that Football Manager 2016 did not actually sell more copies than the 2010 release did. Not only that, but he also stated that the newest iteration of FM has much more content and a smaller price to it, than what was available a couple of years back. As per portrayal on FM2017’s Steam page, the game supports fifteen languages (including Greek, Korean and Turkish), which gives some justification for the outrage, especially taking into consideration that the 2016 game included both Brazilian and European Portuguese.
A solution to this crisis could be developer-led community effort to bring Chinese into the game. Nowadays, there’s naught that ‘we the people’ cannot achieve, after all. Perhaps Sports Interactive could invite a few Chinese fans adept in one of the languages already available, and begin translating the game; it would certainly show that the devs care about all fans, making it a brilliant PR move and possibly finally fulfilling the desires of buyers.
However, the negative reviews simply cannot be all attributed to the disgruntled Chinese customers. A substantial chunk of the big red thumbs down is composed of people protesting the similarity of the game to the last year’s version.
Meanwhile, on the Steam page of Football Manager 2016, we are shown that this year history has indeed repeated itself. Fundamentally, buyers of FM2 017 say it is too similar to FM 2016; buyers of FM 2016 condemn lack of ground-breaking improvements from FM2015. Therefore, just because you are an English speaker it does not mean there is nothing to be unhappy about – you might want to think twice before doling out £34.99/$49.99 if you already have an older version. On the other hand, it could also be argued that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Football does not change radically each year, so besides the always-welcome quality of life and performance improvements as well as roster updates, there isn’t much room for brand new innovation. The aforementioned upgrades might have actually been achieved, as the far-and-few-between positive reviews praise the improved performance and stability. Judging from this, Football Manager 2017 might be a worthwhile catch if you’ve always wanted to lead a team to victory in something else than the bread-and-butter MOBAs, Dungeon Raids or FPS games.
*Total number of English speakers is estimated to be just a few notches above half of the total number of native Mandarin Chinese speakers; fancy that!
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