The Complexity and Uncertainty of FM
Average Rating: 9/10 Hits: 275 Submitted: Nov 21, 2007
This article gives an intellectual look at with Football Manager is an actual realistic simulation or simply a flawed design which has manifested itself as a realistic Football Management simulation.
Realistic Simulation or Flawed Design.
From a long-running SIG thread. I thought it may make clearer to some where I'm coming from with regards to Football Manager, and how I hope it develops. I also hope for some interesting discussion. Enjoy the read.
I don't think we should be so happily taking whatever comes our way, just because "it's a simulation". I see a lot of people assuming, consciously or not, that somehow it's okay to put up with obfuscation and aggravation because things like that "are supposed to be" in simulations.
The obfuscation of management.... management research and practice is split into two camps, roughly categorised as positivist and critical theorist. The positivists exhibit a truly modern world view, that everything can be reduced into smaller and smaller manageable tasks and by doing this a 'perfect' management system will eventually be created. The problem is, of course, that there are too many 'theoretical perfect worlds' hypothesised by a multitude of experts all contradicting each other. The organization chooses (often pretty much randomly) from one of these experts and implements his/her design. Everything is then supposed to fall into place. This is a little how many want FM to be, with the manual being the expert and prescribing 'how to manage' which equates to 'how to win'. That is how many real-life managers first expect the world to be before (if they are ever to become good managers) coming to terms with its illusory nature. Others FMers use the forum and choose their 'expert' from the dwindling number of gurus positing advanced knowledge of the game, following that specific methodology until success or failure. This is much more synonomous with how 'real world' management works. The other option is to 'go your own way' which is also a popular managerial route.
Being a 'positivistic' guru is unsettling for me as I inhabit the criticial theorist camp in my research methodology. I am one of those people who upset the positivists by saying 'yes, but...' at everything they throw into the management theory ring. However, that for me is what management is really all about. There are no positive answers, no absolute certainites, just ambivalence, ambiguity, uncertainty. Learning to manage is as much a process of trial and error as it is one of reading managerial literature. In fact, it is more so. And that is how FM (if it is trying to fall into the management simulation camp) should work. Just because something works once does not mean it will continue working, and there is a real likelihood that the rules informing the previously working strategy have to be torn apart and completely rewritten once a new challenge is encountered. In FM, that challenge is the AI adapting to continued success and high-level reputation. Once this plateau is reached it becomes near impossible to suceed by doing what you did before. Some say 'unrealistic and unfair/flawed game!' I say 'synonomous with real life management' and the game is better for it.
If aggravation, obfuscation and uncertainty must be in this simulation, then this simulation must also include the other side of this, which is clarity and feedback to deal with all that. Two halves of the simulation. One is there to give you a hard time, the other to help you get past it. As it is now, this simulation only has one half, and that's where most of the grief is coming from.
To a point yes, but much of this clarity must be self-determined. As commonly stated on this forum, there is more than one way to play the game (my multiple tactics, Cleon's scout-related tweaking, Rashidi's reasoned approach, paulsgruff's individual instructions, Asmo's Slider Apathy) and we should appreciate that the game allows this. Despite FIFA, UEFA and the FA's mandatory qualifications (ostensibly implementing a best practice management/coaching strategy which is likely to stifle creativity although is in line with most managerial thinking) I imagine we all recognise different styles in management strategy. If there were too much clarity and feedback, the game would become little more than a 'play by numbers' management game rather than a complex representation of football in which different styles of play and management strategy can equally bring long-term success. If the feedback carified beyond all doubt what was wrong and how to fix it, we wouldn't actually be playing (as playing requires some thought). We would instead be following precise instructions leading to a guaranteed goal. Not my idea of fun.
Drawing attention to little details such as poor passing percentage or failure to win headers would be a good Assistant Manager role. Telling us how to solve it wouldn't. In real life we wouldn't be able to rely on a perfect AI construct to tell us how to best do things. We would be relying on individuals as flawed as ourselves. To receive perfect advice and feedback (and thus reduce the need to perceive it ourselves) would, in my view, detract from the playing experience. One of the major critiques of the game in the forums is that feedback is either non-existent or opaque. Personally, I don't think it is. If your players make constant errors there are two possibility. One, your tactic. Two, your players. The errors are the feedback. You must then decide how to sort it out. It belongs to you, as it would in the real world.
If we're going simulate real life football management, then yes, of course we'll need a healthy dose of bad things(tm) coming our way. But we also need to simulate the good side, the helpful side, and the common sense side. Otherwise you just have Masochism '07.
The problem with common sense is that one man's common sense is another man's idiocy. Take for example my recent disagreement with terrybecker over the use of free roles in Abramovic's AI thread. He believes a player using a free role would exhibit 'common sense' by running towards the ball wherever it may be; even when it is opn the opposite wing. I believe that is reminiscent of 5-year olds playing and is not the kind of common sense I expect a top-class professional footballer to exhibit. My common sense tells me a free role gives the player a great degree of attacking freedom within the constructs of a tactical system, allowing him to drift wide and deep as and when he sees fit. I don't think he will always run towards the ball. Thus, I assign free roles and terrybecker doesn't.
Likewise, some managers show common sense by shouting and yelling; some are quiet and cerebral; some are pantomime showmen; some are jokey and matey; some are aloof and distant. All are 'types of manager' in the real world (football and non-football); all are possible in FM (or becoming more possible) via the man-management modules. As man-management and motivation is the hardest of all things to grasp (just watch The Apprentice!) and possibly the most important of skills, its increasing importance (team talks, media interaction, player interaction, manager interaction) should be encouraged, despite the frustrations they may bring. As in real life, the only way to monitor its success should be performance, morale and bonding. We can't expect our Assistant Manager to go all Phil Neal on us and go 'Great team talk, boss' as it is a personal opinion that means nothing iof all the players thought it sucked. However, we should be aware of avoiding the John Sitton approach and justly punished for going down that route (we use these in our lectures!!).
It's perfectly possible to have a complex and rewarding simulation without having it grief its own players every other day for no apparent reason. If your simulation does that and starts being unfair to its own users, it's time to change it; not to wrap ourselves around that grief and call ourselves 'hardcore'. Most of the time, the only thing we're simulating right now is which player has the biggest grief threshold and or the greatest luck. There's very little football management in it. Or, at least, there's very little football management in it that can relate to real life management.
This is where I have to disagree vehemently. Real life management is, unfortunately if it stresses you, fortunately if you thrive on it, very much like the FM experience. It is full of ambiguity, uncertainty, emotion, messiness, comedy and tragedy. It is not like the manuals say it is, a simple 'follow this 7-step recipe for success'. It is learning to make decisions based on previous knowledge but have the courage and reflexive ability to change them (write off eveything you thought you knew) if things begin to go tits up because of those decisions. FM is the same. As soon as you think you have tamed it it comes back and bites you where it hurts the most. And we can't deal with us. Or most of us can't. Some of us take pleasure in the challenge, happy to retheorise when it is required. Others scream and shout in frustration. That is the same as real life. In that respect, how to simulate the messy complexity of real life management and its related successes and failures, FM succeeds better than any game I have ever played (including MBA and corporate training modules I have been involved in running). That is entirely why I enjoy it so much. I would prefer more complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity, because I play it as a simulation and want it to simulate how the world (from my critical theorist perspective) actually is. I want errors, I want players getting upset for seemingly insignificant reasosn, I want someone to occasionally perform way above or below his suggested level without rhyme or reason, I want the agony of losing and ecstasy of winning.
Please notice that I haven't used the word 'difficulty'. Not even once in all that chunk above. It's not about difficulty at all.
It is, but not quite as you mean it. Managing is difficult. It always has been and always will be. Football management is no different. FM should thus be difficult, but not due to poorly designed modules or match engine. Each should be well-designed, complex and detailed (and I think they are, although imperfection and improvement is inevitable). Simply, FM should be difficult because it is difficult.
Please note: This is just my opinion and I understand I may be of a minority of one in this. However, I do think that an argument has to be made for ambiguity being more like real life management than many managers/non-managers realise. The current trend in the discussion is that 'ambiguity shouldn't be part of the FM experience and is bad design'. I can't agree. Less ambiguity may well make FM easier, less frustrating and more enjoyable for some, but IT DOES NOT make it a more realistic simulation of the management experience. It detracts from it (in my opinion ) and would detract from my personal enjoyment of the game.
Good luck and play well.
From a long-running SIG thread. I thought it may make clearer to some where I'm coming from with regards to Football Manager, and how I hope it develops. I also hope for some interesting discussion. Enjoy the read.
I don't think we should be so happily taking whatever comes our way, just because "it's a simulation". I see a lot of people assuming, consciously or not, that somehow it's okay to put up with obfuscation and aggravation because things like that "are supposed to be" in simulations.
The obfuscation of management.... management research and practice is split into two camps, roughly categorised as positivist and critical theorist. The positivists exhibit a truly modern world view, that everything can be reduced into smaller and smaller manageable tasks and by doing this a 'perfect' management system will eventually be created. The problem is, of course, that there are too many 'theoretical perfect worlds' hypothesised by a multitude of experts all contradicting each other. The organization chooses (often pretty much randomly) from one of these experts and implements his/her design. Everything is then supposed to fall into place. This is a little how many want FM to be, with the manual being the expert and prescribing 'how to manage' which equates to 'how to win'. That is how many real-life managers first expect the world to be before (if they are ever to become good managers) coming to terms with its illusory nature. Others FMers use the forum and choose their 'expert' from the dwindling number of gurus positing advanced knowledge of the game, following that specific methodology until success or failure. This is much more synonomous with how 'real world' management works. The other option is to 'go your own way' which is also a popular managerial route.
Being a 'positivistic' guru is unsettling for me as I inhabit the criticial theorist camp in my research methodology. I am one of those people who upset the positivists by saying 'yes, but...' at everything they throw into the management theory ring. However, that for me is what management is really all about. There are no positive answers, no absolute certainites, just ambivalence, ambiguity, uncertainty. Learning to manage is as much a process of trial and error as it is one of reading managerial literature. In fact, it is more so. And that is how FM (if it is trying to fall into the management simulation camp) should work. Just because something works once does not mean it will continue working, and there is a real likelihood that the rules informing the previously working strategy have to be torn apart and completely rewritten once a new challenge is encountered. In FM, that challenge is the AI adapting to continued success and high-level reputation. Once this plateau is reached it becomes near impossible to suceed by doing what you did before. Some say 'unrealistic and unfair/flawed game!' I say 'synonomous with real life management' and the game is better for it.
If aggravation, obfuscation and uncertainty must be in this simulation, then this simulation must also include the other side of this, which is clarity and feedback to deal with all that. Two halves of the simulation. One is there to give you a hard time, the other to help you get past it. As it is now, this simulation only has one half, and that's where most of the grief is coming from.
To a point yes, but much of this clarity must be self-determined. As commonly stated on this forum, there is more than one way to play the game (my multiple tactics, Cleon's scout-related tweaking, Rashidi's reasoned approach, paulsgruff's individual instructions, Asmo's Slider Apathy) and we should appreciate that the game allows this. Despite FIFA, UEFA and the FA's mandatory qualifications (ostensibly implementing a best practice management/coaching strategy which is likely to stifle creativity although is in line with most managerial thinking) I imagine we all recognise different styles in management strategy. If there were too much clarity and feedback, the game would become little more than a 'play by numbers' management game rather than a complex representation of football in which different styles of play and management strategy can equally bring long-term success. If the feedback carified beyond all doubt what was wrong and how to fix it, we wouldn't actually be playing (as playing requires some thought). We would instead be following precise instructions leading to a guaranteed goal. Not my idea of fun.
Drawing attention to little details such as poor passing percentage or failure to win headers would be a good Assistant Manager role. Telling us how to solve it wouldn't. In real life we wouldn't be able to rely on a perfect AI construct to tell us how to best do things. We would be relying on individuals as flawed as ourselves. To receive perfect advice and feedback (and thus reduce the need to perceive it ourselves) would, in my view, detract from the playing experience. One of the major critiques of the game in the forums is that feedback is either non-existent or opaque. Personally, I don't think it is. If your players make constant errors there are two possibility. One, your tactic. Two, your players. The errors are the feedback. You must then decide how to sort it out. It belongs to you, as it would in the real world.
If we're going simulate real life football management, then yes, of course we'll need a healthy dose of bad things(tm) coming our way. But we also need to simulate the good side, the helpful side, and the common sense side. Otherwise you just have Masochism '07.
The problem with common sense is that one man's common sense is another man's idiocy. Take for example my recent disagreement with terrybecker over the use of free roles in Abramovic's AI thread. He believes a player using a free role would exhibit 'common sense' by running towards the ball wherever it may be; even when it is opn the opposite wing. I believe that is reminiscent of 5-year olds playing and is not the kind of common sense I expect a top-class professional footballer to exhibit. My common sense tells me a free role gives the player a great degree of attacking freedom within the constructs of a tactical system, allowing him to drift wide and deep as and when he sees fit. I don't think he will always run towards the ball. Thus, I assign free roles and terrybecker doesn't.
Likewise, some managers show common sense by shouting and yelling; some are quiet and cerebral; some are pantomime showmen; some are jokey and matey; some are aloof and distant. All are 'types of manager' in the real world (football and non-football); all are possible in FM (or becoming more possible) via the man-management modules. As man-management and motivation is the hardest of all things to grasp (just watch The Apprentice!) and possibly the most important of skills, its increasing importance (team talks, media interaction, player interaction, manager interaction) should be encouraged, despite the frustrations they may bring. As in real life, the only way to monitor its success should be performance, morale and bonding. We can't expect our Assistant Manager to go all Phil Neal on us and go 'Great team talk, boss' as it is a personal opinion that means nothing iof all the players thought it sucked. However, we should be aware of avoiding the John Sitton approach and justly punished for going down that route (we use these in our lectures!!).
It's perfectly possible to have a complex and rewarding simulation without having it grief its own players every other day for no apparent reason. If your simulation does that and starts being unfair to its own users, it's time to change it; not to wrap ourselves around that grief and call ourselves 'hardcore'. Most of the time, the only thing we're simulating right now is which player has the biggest grief threshold and or the greatest luck. There's very little football management in it. Or, at least, there's very little football management in it that can relate to real life management.
This is where I have to disagree vehemently. Real life management is, unfortunately if it stresses you, fortunately if you thrive on it, very much like the FM experience. It is full of ambiguity, uncertainty, emotion, messiness, comedy and tragedy. It is not like the manuals say it is, a simple 'follow this 7-step recipe for success'. It is learning to make decisions based on previous knowledge but have the courage and reflexive ability to change them (write off eveything you thought you knew) if things begin to go tits up because of those decisions. FM is the same. As soon as you think you have tamed it it comes back and bites you where it hurts the most. And we can't deal with us. Or most of us can't. Some of us take pleasure in the challenge, happy to retheorise when it is required. Others scream and shout in frustration. That is the same as real life. In that respect, how to simulate the messy complexity of real life management and its related successes and failures, FM succeeds better than any game I have ever played (including MBA and corporate training modules I have been involved in running). That is entirely why I enjoy it so much. I would prefer more complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity, because I play it as a simulation and want it to simulate how the world (from my critical theorist perspective) actually is. I want errors, I want players getting upset for seemingly insignificant reasosn, I want someone to occasionally perform way above or below his suggested level without rhyme or reason, I want the agony of losing and ecstasy of winning.
Please notice that I haven't used the word 'difficulty'. Not even once in all that chunk above. It's not about difficulty at all.
It is, but not quite as you mean it. Managing is difficult. It always has been and always will be. Football management is no different. FM should thus be difficult, but not due to poorly designed modules or match engine. Each should be well-designed, complex and detailed (and I think they are, although imperfection and improvement is inevitable). Simply, FM should be difficult because it is difficult.
Please note: This is just my opinion and I understand I may be of a minority of one in this. However, I do think that an argument has to be made for ambiguity being more like real life management than many managers/non-managers realise. The current trend in the discussion is that 'ambiguity shouldn't be part of the FM experience and is bad design'. I can't agree. Less ambiguity may well make FM easier, less frustrating and more enjoyable for some, but IT DOES NOT make it a more realistic simulation of the management experience. It detracts from it (in my opinion ) and would detract from my personal enjoyment of the game.
Good luck and play well.
