Where's The GM Game?

Why don't we have the American Football equivalent of Football Manager?

Where's The GM Game?

If you don’t know by now, I’m hopelessly addicted to the UK game Football Manager. In fact, I’ve even got a separate blog devoted to it:

I’ve wondered for years why we don’t have an equivalent game for American football.

It doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult concept, actually. You could make a game that encompasses high school, college, and professional football — one in which you are a coach, have offensive and defensive coordinators, decide on a playing style, coach your players, and so on.

It would be different than the play-by-play sims that we are used to, for sure. The truth, though, is that the modern market for management sim games is focused on long term and immersive gameplay — games like Victoria III by Paradox Plaza, not traditional board games that span a limited period of time.

Now, there are a few GM based games out there. But they’re not satisfactory.

Football GM, for example, is a web based game that is a start. Still, it doesn’t have the same depth and addictive gameplay as even the early Championship Manager games had.

Draft Day Sports is pretty well known, but seems both underwhelming and buggy to me. Front Office Football 9, which was scrapped after a deal with OOTP Developments fell through, finally came out in 2023 — but to very little fanfare.

What we need is a game that goes a bit further than these. We need a game that is like an RPG for football simulation fans. And I hope we get one soon.

Until then, I’ll be playing Football Manager.