It’s been a question for quite some time, but it looks like we finally have an answer. On Thursday, Miles Jacobson, studio head and director of Football Manager, announced plans to incorporate women’s football into the game. Jacobson took to FM‘s website to present the team’s plans. The studio has no plans to release a standalone women’s Football Manager, but rather an all-encompassing manager marrying both sides of the beautiful game.
“FM players will be able to move seamlessly from managing a men’s team to a women’s team and back again,” Jacobson explained. “Women’s football will be a part of the living, breathing world that constitutes every one of your FM saves; that world will just be whole lot bigger and a little more varied.”
The studio director acknowledges the enormous cost it will take to add the women’s game to FM, relative to the short-term gain, but “that’s not the point.”
“We believe in equality for all and we want to be part of the solution. We want to be a part of the process that puts women’s football on an equal footing with the men’s game.”
Adding women to the game is, of course, going to take some time. The studio is tasked with going back and recapturing all existing animations with female players, taking into account the unique rules of women’s leagues, and more. It’s a pretty big undertaking for any dev team. That said, the Football Manager team has already completed its first two mo-cap sessions.
Jacobson did not share a ballpark date for when fans can expect to see women join FM, but he plans to keep fans up to date semi-regularly with blog posts. Cheers to the Football Manager crew for moving the ball forward for women in the gaming space.
