“Things- things are good,” Miles Jacobson tells me, before a pause.
“We’ve taken on a lot, with FM25.”
In fact, keeping the hype in check is a recurring theme throughout our conversation.
If regular players have been following the news closely, some of that may well have filtered through.
Others such as social media and the data chalkboard have replacements of sorts in other in-game screens as well.
But a couple of other big changes are more surprising.
Jacobson is keen to explain why the function had to go this time.
The answer is ‘no’."
“Are we better off having all of their time spent working on getting that done?”
That’s gone in FM25.
The football world never really had email!"
And it does play a little bit differently.
But it’s still the core loop.
You’re still reacting to information, you’re being told the news that you’re being given.
And there are just different ways of interacting with it now."
It’s interesting to hear Jacobson be keen to offer some reassurance here.
“There is a lot of muscle memory involved,” he says.
“And some of that muscle memory is going to have to be relearned.
I want them to be discovering stuff 500 hours in, 750 hours in.
Going: ‘Where’s that come from?!’
That’s what’s led to the longevity of what we do.”
But these things are never easy.
What that means, in development terms, is changing scope.
Some of those scope changes come in the form of those aforementioned cuts this year.
Both questions Jacobson mentioned in our discussion last year about the big move.
And then what decision we have to make on that."
“Whenever you’re developing anything, you have to pivot at points.
“It’s not only de-scope.
Sometimes it’s re-scope, and sometimes up-scope.”
Has there been a specific obstacle, or specific reason there’s been so much change on the fly?
“I can answer that easily,” Jacboson says, “it’s our ambition.
It’s this part here good enough, to our standards?'”
Another challenge: “the amount of screens that we have in the game.
You know, we’re not talking 50 screens, not talking 100 screens.
And impossible to get signed off by legal.
And impossible to get signed off by licencing.
So we’re not using it in this way.”
When did it first look like it was finally going to happen?
“Two and a half years ago,” Jacobson says, right away.
“We’ve been working together for a long time on a lot of things.
And if you were interested, how much would you be interested?”
He gave them a figure in response, “and they laughed.”
“They said ‘Well, we were thinking 10 times that number.'”
After some back and forth, for some time longer, the two agreed a deal.
That licence is now shared, with the likes of fellow football seriesEA Sports FC 25and others.
“There are things that we actually couldn’t have done this year without their help.
“They could probably have quite easily asked for that to still be the case.
But that’s not the case.
“So I don’t see EAFC as rivals, I think they’re a really different game.
And we knew, and we had their IP addresses.”
“Now, that was wrong.
Is the studio making as much money as it would if it was selling 11 million copies?
But then as Jacobson puts it, it wouldn’t have sold those copies anyway.
“A million’s a lot of people - but it’s not 10 million.”
But what’s clear is the studio sees it as necessary.
“Everybody says that they want change, right?”
And then got used to it and realised it was better.
So it’s that weird-” he catches himself, another pause.
“It’s been a difficult year.
