The FM Library

Welcome once again as we reveal more and more about the fm community with every passing week. Sometimes slightly more than they intended. This week we travelled to Germany (via Scotland?) to speak to BjoernsFM and to understand what makes a German play Football Manager?

Creator Name & what made you choose it? BjoernsFM. The standard thing: First name plus FM.

Real Name? Bjoern (Editor: Should have guessed that really…)

Football Team? I follow two these days.

1. Dynamo Dresden (2. Bundesliga, Germany) — they are my home team and you should support your local team, right? As a 14 year old I saw their last Bundesliga match against Bayern Munich. Didn’t follow them closely until I moved to Dresden in the early 2000s. Was a season ticket holder for 10+ years, then I had kids and like to spend my weekend afternoons differently.
2. Forres Mechanics FC (Scottish Highlands League) — I discovered them by playing FM (some time around FM12) when I got into Lower League Management. They have been my go-to save for several years. I even ordered a shirt from their tiny online store back then. It took 3 months to arrive in Germany (I had already forgotten about it) and contained a handwritten note from someone named Grant. Made me feel like a part of the family. 🙂 I haven’t made it to a match yet, but once I’ll get to Scotland I will make sure to visit their ground. And I knew Fort William FC before it was an FM19 hipster thing 🙂

Talk me through your FM journey – where does it start? When was the moment that you first clicked on that little icon – and when did you realise that you couldn’t stop!? I grew up in small-town Germany in the 1990s. One of my friends had “Bundesliga Manager Professional” https://www.mobygames.com/game/bundesliga-manager-professional (see how I am using the word ‘had’ instead of ‘owned’ here? This was the 1990s! Free love!) and we spent ages playing it together. A few years later I got hooked to the On-the-ball series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Ball_(video_game_series) Editions 2 + 3 had extremely cute graphics for the time. (Fun fact: Ultras Dynamo, my local die-hard fan group, have a logo closely resembling the “Play Aggressively” icon from On the Ball 3.) I enjoyed that they took the genre with a certain sense of humour. Sadly, the German football manager industry went downhill after that as the On-the-ball folks sold out to EA and their later products mostly lived off having an exclusive license for the German market rather than a soul.

In the early 2000s I was out of a new Football Manager game and of course I had never heard of CM/FM until then. That changed in 2008 when I spent a few months in the UK for an internship. Some late evening, after a few beers, a colleague mentioned this game called Football Manager. I think he used the terms “extremely hard” and “glorified spreadsheet”. I was intrigued, but addiction came later. Mind the fact that until FM19 buying the latest edition of FM from Germany would mean registering your email address and financial data with some CD keys website online that you had never heard of before and that was nice enough to not perform geo-location checks on your credit card. Who knew what else they would be doing with that data? Those sites (which all turned out more reliable than anticipated! There is good in the world!) would email you a Steam key that you could copy into Steam’s activation dialog and thereby circument licensing restrictions. Thank god, things have improved these days!

I went to check my Steam history and found that I played a couple of hundred hours (less than 400) each year for FM13, FM14, and FM15 (let’s called those my Forres Mechanics Years…). Then I had kids and the number of hours went below 100 for FM16, FM17, and FM18. And then I logged 1,073 hours for FM19. Which leads to your next question…

Ok, you’ve been playing the game, what made you jump from “player” to “creator” and how have you found the journey? I’m kind of isolated when it comes to FM over here in Germany. None of my friends play it, so I can’t talk to anyone about it in person. My wife maintains a kind and loving interest, similar to the way you appreciate your kids when they learn to walk or draw stick men. If you think about it, that’s kind of sad, because one of the defining features of Football Manager is that it creates stories. The last minute goal sealing your promotion. The youth player that you take with you while moving from club to club. The countries you visit and strange rules you experience.

So some time after FM19 came out I decided that I wanted to keep these stories as kind of a diary. And at this point the addiction started. I found this whole community of blogs sharing their stories. I found all the guides and forums and YouTube channels. So I figured I’d try this blogging thing myself. I started a new save in Sweden and let people take in the story of Sigurd Hansen, a small tax assessor that some time decided to become a football manager in the Swedish 5th division.: https://bjoernsfm.wordpress.com/sigurd-hansens-swedish-career-fm19

Blogging really stepped up my game. I read a lot about tactics (and I admit I’m still not good at it and rely on stuff other people discuss on the SI forums or the wisdom of people like Rashidi/BustTheNet). I bumped my SpreadSheeting skills — I now have a fancy Google Sheets document where evaluate my squad, compare scouted players, and keep track of my season history and financial progress.

As I’m fairly new to the blogging community, I’m still experimenting to find the right style. I had the Hansen story which was fairly story-driven with different perspectives. After that I had another save in FM19 where I went from German 4th tier to Serie A and eventually 5 consecutive Bundesliga titles with Schalke 04, which I shared on Twitter only. (https://twitter.com/BjoernsF) This year I’m a bit more conservative giving more standardized season updates for my journeyman save. This is definitely not the end. I have already kind of decided what to do in FM21.

What’s your style of play? Within the library we have a couple of guys who plough through seasons letting the Assistant Manager’s do the vast majority of stuff, mainly getting into the late 2060’s trying to complete bizarre and random challenges, but we also have guys who are very much into the finite detail and will manage every aspect and would consider a save done after 5 or 6 seasons. Where do you fit within the scale? There is of course, no incorrect answer.. I used to solely play Lower League Management saves (cf. The Forres Mechanis Years). Looking back I think this is because I suck at tactics and they don’t matter that much there. And who doesn’t love hoofing the ball over inept defenders in a promotion playoff? These days I my style is best described as journeyman. I like exploring new clubs and countries. I enjoyed Sweden in FM19 and this year my greatest discovery was South Africa. My most favourite part of the game is figuring out where the squad needs improvements and then go and find them. So once a squad is fixed and successful, there is a dire need for me to move on.

I’m not particulary fond of managing yet another big club for the first 2-3 FM years. I rather aim for a “one game universe” kind of play where even if my manager retires, I create a new one in the same save. I reached 2040 in FM19 and I will probably get further than that in FM20.

And I tend to have too many central midfielders, though I have never tried strikerless systems so far. Just some pet peeve of mine.

Favourite version/save? Any particular bittersweet/comic/down right depressing memories? My favourite is always the latest version. Given my late FM socialization I don’t have any childhood memories of game-breaking exploits from yesteryears. I just happily pay SI every year to give me a big database update. I do have some favourite memories for sure.

Forres Mechanics FC have been my go-to club for many years. I never won lots of trophies with them, but at least I got them into the Scottish 2nd division, which was a feat in itself. Interestingly, I never manage my other club, Dynamo Dresden. This has historic reasons because I tend to fail at some point and I was afraid this would break my heart when managing the club closest to it. I think I have gotten better in the last 1-2 years, so I might have a go at it some time.

Oh, and I once started out in the German 4th tier with Babelsberg 03 and when I mentioned my first season success on Twitter, I got a like from the club’s Twitter account. That was highly motivating.

Which bloggers do you always make sure that you read? Honestly, I read everything that scrolls through my Twitter feed *if* it scrolls by at the right point in time. But if you ask this way, I’m loving myself a good story as well as interesting house rules people set up. For good stories, Ted Redwood had a great Jesus of Nazareth story running for FM19, which unfortunately never was resolved. House-rule wise I liked StratManGaming’s FC Europa series. And this year FMCheapSeats is delivering both story and interesting extra rules in his Nearly-Men series.

Who within the community, seriously impresses you – produces the type of content that you just think “Wow, I couldn’t even contemplate producing stuff to at that level – for me it’s Laura/Chilled Moose and the face packs that she produces – some serious design talent there. This can be across any format of creation. Start with the old guard. If you look at people like Rashidi/BustTheNet, he’s been around for years and helping out the community through his many channels. I learned a lot from him, although I still suck at tactics… I’d make the same point for Cleon if he was still around. There’s also constant quality coming from the DictateTheGame folks.

However, there are so many creative people out there. Laura/Chilled Moose and her graphics and Aswijan DB are certainly on the list. And have you seen FM19’s historegens project? And FMEadster building a new team in Pripyat in Ukraine? And the work spreadsheet gurus like FM_Jellico and TheFFM_ do to improve people’s squad analyses? And the people building huge databases like the England Lower League stuff or the 2003/04 database for FM19? I’m constantly amazed with what people come up with and how much love and effort they put into a computer game.

What puts you off reading other creators blogs – what makes you click that “X” button in the top right of the page. For me it’s using the correct grammar for team names – I saw a blog about 18 months ago where the blogger named his opponent as oxford united and not Oxford United – I’m still angry about this… I sometimes come across people’s big projects that then turn out to be a huge “This is what I’m going to do” post, followed by nothing else. I understand that life happens and sometimes your ideas don’t keep you invested in your save. Still, it makes me sad when I come across that lonely post months or years later. The guy with the grammar and spelling errors might as well be a non-native speaker. Just saying…

Ok, final question.. I have 5 minutes and I have a list of blogs in front of me – In 100 words, why should I click on your blog… FM creates stories in our heads and I try to turn some of my stories into things you can go and read. End of promotion so you can still spend 4:30 minutes reading bjoernsfm.wordpress.com/ 🙂

And with that we allow Bjoerns to travel back to Germany, once again via Scotland. We look forward to hearing from him again soon!