Football Manager and the Limitations of Fun

Gamers like to talk about “fun” a lot. It’s supposedly what defines gaming. This has always baffled me, given the different sorts of pleasures to be had from playing video games. A tense, precise, memorization-based rhythm game like Guitar Hero is quite different from the action-packed chaos of a multiplayer Halo session, which itself seems miles away from a long session of turn-based strategy in Civilization. Other than these being great games, what ties these together? What happens when something that nobody could imagine would be fun turns out to be great?

My most-played Steam game, and perhaps my most-played game in my life, Football Manager, forces me to confront this. There’s no way that I can describe Football Manager and make it seem interesting. It’s certainly not interesting to look at. Sportswriter Brian Phillips described it as such:

“...it's an exhaustive and insanely detailed simulation of (duh) football management, meaning you coach the team but — unlike in, say, FIFA — don't actually control the players. Sounds boring, right? It is the greatest video game in the history of the world.”

My core issue with calling Football Manager “fun”: I can’t think of any moment where my action directly leads to a fun moment. The closest I can get is making a substitution in a match and seeing the substitute score quickly, but that’s still nothing to pulling off a throw in Soul Calibur or even controlling a player who scores a goal in FIFA. 

It’s not just history, though, it’s also anticipation of the future. This is what drives me to keep playing Football Manager. It’s the knowledge that maybe my actions will make the next match a victory.

Instead, the pleasure I get from playing Football Manager (and its predecessor, Championship Manager) exists outside the now. It’s partially in my memory. I am building something with the team I manage. I have weeks then months then years of history with the club. My signings are proven wise or not, superstars retire, I have to decide if a promising young player is worth a massive pay raise, and then I see all those things come to fruition. Maybe I never replaced that superstar, and my club went from winning titles to middle-of-the-pack. Maybe I made a new rival, thanks to a series of intense, high-level matches over the years. The point is that building that history gives me a feeling of accomplishment, of pride, of frustration. That makes Football Manager worth playing.

It’s not just history, though, it’s also anticipation of the future. This is what drives me to keep playing Football Manager. It’s the knowledge that maybe my actions will make the next match a victory. And maybe that victory will move me in a better position in the league, and that better position will allow me to purchase a better player in the off-season, who will give me the opportunity to win the league next season. I watch other teams’ results, too, in the anticipation that their wins and losses will make the league more interest—I love it when five teams battle it out for the championship.

It’s come to the point where in fast-paced games—I was simulating a season per day in the Championship Manager 3 series—that I found myself saying “I can’t wait for the offseason, that’s the best part of the game!” After all, that’s when you had the chance to retool your team, buy and sell players and exist in a world where you know you’ll be better at the end of the summer. But then, during the offseason, I found myself saying to myself “I can’t wait for the offseason to be done, the season is the best part.” Because then, of course, I actually had the chance to test my players and tactics.

So is Football Manager “fun”? I can’t really say that it is, but I can say that, perhaps more than any other game, I am happy I’ve played it and I look forward to playing more. Greatness can transcend fun.