When the first match engine was added, I was vehemently against it. Now quite like watching it play out.
Having not played full version for a good while, got FM24 on PS5 two-hour trial. YOU BLOODY PRICKS. Finally deleted it about 200 hours in. 
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It's hard to imagine the yoof of today buying into a text-only match depiction, but I suppose you never know what quirky things people get into.
Actually, even back then, Domark put us under a bit of pressure early on to (in their words) "bolt some graphics" onto the game, but in their defence they had a fella there who totally "got" the game and helped us resist! Previous Message
I think I'm out of step with much of the fanbase and this is what's wanted/needed these days.
Seeing that trailer that was only images of the match engine was, to an avowed Excel Manager 01/02 (etcetc) advocate, was mental.
Back in the day seeing the text ticker flash up in injury time knowing I was about to be screwed just had something to it... Previous Message
…the text phrases being verbose enough to stimulate the imagination but concise enough to be readable quickly.
I’d say it’d be more like a concise summary of the radio commentary.
Interesting concept, and would work very well on bandwidth-constrained environments. Previous Message
rather than wanting my computer games to more closely resemble televised football, I'm starting to wonder if it should be the other way around
I've found myself recently listening to a few of our games on the radio, but I find it incredibly stressful because you don't always know who is attacking and who is defending.
I also find it really frustrating to watch live games on TV now, because so much of the action is missed (either due to non playing camera shots or replays) and because you don't know if a VAR check is going to prevent you from celebrating a goal. A TV feed gives the impression of giving you full information about what's happening, but it doesn't actually deliver that. It is MUCH further from being at the game then people tend to think. It's much closer to listening on a radio than actual attendance.
Perhaps the best way to find a balance between building tension and delivering information was the match engine from Championship Manager 2. Perhaps this one:
There was something about how it led you from "nothing is happening" to "danger" to "goal" that respected your emotional readiness. Whereas radio can go straight from "nothing" to goal" and TV can give the impression of "nothing is happening" even if danger is building. A few games last season I just watched the BBC live feed, but that didn't update enough to hold attention.
So here me out for a business idea:
- Provide a feed for an Everton live match
- Using the CM2 match engine
- On a slight delay so that VAR checks get flagged before displaying a goal
- Keep it text based, deliberately retro, like a cross between a Teletext page and a video game
Surely AI can create that based on the output coming from existing news sources?? Just route the BBC live text into a CM2 match engine and display.
I honestly think that I would prefer that to live TV or a radio. Previous Message
With Proton, obviously. Unity games usually run pretty well and game to me appears like there's nothing that should cause issues.
Funny how the match engine demo video includes a team in blue with Stake as their sponsor...
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on September 5, 2025, 7:06 pm, in reply to "