Football Manager 2009 Preview

Football (or Soccer to some) is big business. So are football games. Millions worldwide play football games, or (more my taste) football management games. The new season has just started, so it's time for a new release as well.

One of my favorite games to play is the si-games "Football Manager" and september 3rd they gave away some details on the 2009 edition. One of the biggest changes is they've added some 3D gameplay, of which I'm not sure is a good thing. The Fifa Manager (by EA Games) already has this, but I'm not sure how it would work in the FM. What I've noticed is that EA has a whole different architecture which makes Fifa Manager a lot faster than the FM which has one big player database. Perhaps (and hopefully), database improvements are implemented as well in the 2009 edition, as this was my biggest problem with the 2007 and 2008 versions.

Announcement Video 1

Announcement Video 2

So why should you choose Sega / Sports Interactive's Football Manager over EA Games' Fifa Manager?

Fifa has a few plusses: It's faster, it's more graphical, you can do more with your stadium, create a personal life as a coach, but it has one big issue: It's interface is sloppy. What I mean is this: In Fifa I have a hard time finding all player stats, finding suitable new players, compare them etcetera, all the things that are the very essence of a football management game. So, even though Football Manager is less graphical, it's interaction design is a lot better.

Looking forward to the release on November 14th!

Telecom Italia brings San Siro

I just picked up a notice on the Dutch Second Life site on Telecom Italia Mobile. Telecom Italia subsidiary, Alice, comes to Second Life with a 4 sim strong build making it about the 12th telecom and broadband provider to immerse.

The venue is brought to Second Life by ISN (Image Solutions Network) which have their office next to the TIM-sims. As we speak there's a lot of activity going on over there, so probably a launch party. Due to my limited knowledge of Italian i thought it best to steer clear of that gig.

The TIM-sims are build around a central venue, the Alice office which is crown-shaped and lies at the intersection of the four sims. Throughout the sims several other office buildings appear.

Telecom Italia is showing that there are several ways of translating its business to the Metaspace. Throughout the sims you will find futuristic phonebooths to communicatie with Real Life and from their Alice broadband division they are bringing Italy's most popular sports; Soccer and Formula 1 racing.

According to the SLNN Alice plans on not only streaming soccermatches from the San Siro stadium (AC Milan and Inter Milan) but also play virtual matches, with a special Heads Up Display (HUD) being developed:

"While some soccer stadiums, most notably KPN's Ajax Arena, and Inter of Milano have featured broadcasts of soccer games, Telecom Italia's sim promises the first full game soccer animation, using a script and a heads up display (HUD) so that users can actually play.

We will organize real tournaments, both for soccer and for car and moto racing,” Mattia Crespi, ISN's CEO said. Alice offers online service selling videos on demand. Videos will be available at the Alice island for free, along with many videos taken from Dailymotion, an Alice video-sharing service similar to Youtube, Crespi says."

For this video on demand venue Alice worked out a fly-in movietheatre (pic right)

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Telecom%20Italia%202/101/120/22

Rectification on Cofidis

My previous post, titled Have a little Cofidis, needs rectification.

It's the time of the Tour de France, one of the great sports events. The past week has seen allegations made against Rasmussen -who came through clean on 15 consecutive anti-doping tests and the climax yesterday with the positive results on the Vinikourov tests and the withdrawal of the complete Astana team.

Despite the allegations, Rasmussen kept his head cool and the Rabobank mountain-goat declassified Discovery's Leipheimer and Contador in the last mile to the finish.

This morning, before today's monstrous mountain stage I blogged on the island of Cofidis, dubbed the blog have a little cofidis, meaning confidence. I'm not sure if this was a bad omen, as today it turned out that a Cofidis member returned positive on the doping tests.

Yesterday Eric Boyer, the Cofidis manager spoke disgrace of Vinikourov, calling him a dirty ****-something and demanded the whole Astana team would withdraw from the competition. Well, it's pretty obvious which course of action should be taken now with Cofidis.

Will they draw back their Pro Tour cycling team oriented island in Second Life as well?

[Pictures by AP press]

Have a little Cofides

Et maintenant? (and now what?)

Yesterday didn't see a spectaculair stage in the Tour de France, but a media circus and extremely volatile situation with Rabobanks' Rasmussen under attack and Astana's Vinokourov being tested positive on doping.

Hardly a time to take a Tour de SL, but I jumped in at Cofidis island.

Here's the Wiki knowledge about Cofidis:

"Cofidis is a French company, one of the Otto Group's financial services providers.
Founded in 1982 by 3 Suisses International in cooperation with Cetelem, Cofidis specializes in the consumer credit business of the 3 Suisses Group.

Its business concept of offering customized consumer loans either by phone or over the Internet has been exported to other countries - Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Czech Republic and Greece. In 2003, Cofidis combined with Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe to found a new joint venture, Créfidis. And in 2004, Cofidis acquired a 66 % equity stake in C2C, the financial services provider of the French Camif Group."

Again it is a Financial Institute coming to Second Life, but focussing on their Pro Tour cycling team

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cofidis/130/133/27

Baseball hits SL

It's baseball time, big time as Major League Baseball finds it's hometurf in Second Life. Near the Electric Sheep Island you will find the sim inspirationally called 'Baseball' and is the virtual home to the Yankee Stadium. The NY Yankee's are the main course of this sim, but there's promo room for the Boston Socks and a few others.

Sport is something people can look forward to, enjoy. Everyone's got its favorite team or player, whichever sport you may like. Sports generate gazillions in merchandise. Sport is big business, and no wonder the focus on the Baseball sim lies on merchandise, T-shirts, trainingpants, tops, caps, hats 'n bats and gloves, as well as the hip bling bling medallions.

The stadium itself has a few chairs less than it real life counterpart to keep within server limits.

Leave base, touch air

I can't really see much added value for baseball to come to Second Life except for merchandise. Fans would like to wear their teams' colors even in virtual life. Why not take the game to another level, chance bats to broomsticks and organise a true Quidditch game.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series are immensely popular and its final episode, the Deathly Hallows just broke every thinkable sales record, so I won't get into explaining what Quidditch is, but Second Life is the platform in which you can break away from gravity and really can script broomsticks.

I know this would probably mean a huge copyright row(ling) if you'd just started building a Hogwarts courtyard with a Quidditch field, but it would surely look better than our gravity-bound real life attempts, such as this one by Reuters.

Get your Divers licence in SL

Whilst trying to get some new Dutch sims in front of my camera I stumbled into Diveworld, close to Dutch content creators DNB Media. Suspecting a tie in I went in, and immersed in front of a PADI office. And guess what, my wife's work is just next to a PADI diving center.

However, PADI isn't Dutch, it's everywhere, it's the Professional Association of Diving Instructors is the world's largest recreational diving membership and diver training organization founded in 1966 by John Cronin and Ralph Erikson.

It's HQ is based in California and all over the world you will find Diving Centers using the PADI method. PADI is the way the world learns to dive.

Their main venue - at least, the place where you immerse - is a 2-storied infocenter with instruction movies on diving, telling you what the gear is all about and links to the e-learning pages on the PADI website.

But off course, diving isn't about instruction, especially not in Second Life where you can dive without using all that cumbersome equipment. It's time to get out to the beach!

This is what diving is about:

It's not the real thing, but it looks good.

The sim isn't completely finished yet, and this beautiful reef is just a few yards wide yet. I'm curious to see how PADI is going to use this virtual venue in educational and promotional ways.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dive%20World/120/112/60