Have you ever heard of a game called “Football Manager”? No? No problem, read on.
It is a football management simulation game where you, as a player, take over the reign of a football club (virtually any club in the world football, thanks to their huge database and intensive research), build your own team and take it to glory. A quick search for this game on Google will tell you how popular this game among its players and why it has been continuously number 1 on the charts every time a new version is released. The game was first released in early 1990s and after regular refinements over the years, is released every year with updated teams, squads and game play experience.
I fumbled on to this game back in 2006 and since then, it has been my favourite computer game. It has always been a challenging and exciting task for me to make my team, buy and sell players, decide finances, soak appreciation when I win and face wrath after a crushing loss. It has almost everything that a real world football manager goes through except one thing.
You see, the real world is unpredictable. The reaction and responses changes from person to person depending on various situations. And that makes it so fun. You never know what’s coming next. The uncertainty factor is always there. The managers of Barcelona and Manchester United might be friends but any untoward decision in the game against a team might change each other’s opinion and answers to the press conference later. That creates controversy that give birth to gossips and god, how much we love it.
Now, this game, no doubt is just exceptional with flaws that only the hardest of critics will find, is not unpredictable. The developers have pre-fed numerous scenarios that give birth to different questions. There are lots of them and you need to play the game a lot to go through all of them. But when you have played the game time of 12-15 years; you get bored. Because you know what kind of questions will be asked, what will be the press reaction to it and how can you control the responses to generate a desired reaction.
Being a huge fan of this game, I wanted to find a solution to this game that would introduce unpredictability in this. And after few brainstorming sessions, I managed to find a way. I have thought of a game play where there will be more human interaction and more controversies. For obvious reasons, I can’t discuss or reveal the idea but I very firmly believe that will revolutionize the game and will make it more popular.
They say that if you can’t find what you are looking for, then do it yourself. I fiddled little bit, tried to get a hang of the software and codes used but it all looked alien to me. I am a computer engineer but now a banker and programming and coding has long been flushed out of my system.
So, I made a presentation with everything explained in detail- what is the game, why it is popular, what it lacks and how it can be improved to a level that would raise its popularity. And for someone who shows his interest, I made a detailed presentation explaining every aspect of the game play.
I searched extensively and mailed 20 gaming companies in India, hoping to hear from them. I was excited that somebody will reply, we will discuss the plan and the opportunities in this are endless. I was looking for some thrilling weeks ahead. It never happened.
May be I was too much moved with the thought but not a single one replied. They did not even have the courtesy to reply to my email, even if the answer was no. Guess they are happy with making mobile apps and games and nobody want to think big.
I know it is easy to rant and complain. But in a country where software industry is booming, there is not a single company that can come forward to code this game, Indians are at the helm of major IT companies all over the world but here, they stick to useless developments. The lack of opportunities here are appalling.
I am still trying to get in touch with few of them but now I am staring to lose hope. I fear that this will infest, manifest and die in my mind. And this will sadly be the worst conclusion of it.
Tushar's Blog 
Blogging is the new poetry. I find it wonderful and amazing in many ways.
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