Is Football Manager really a Role-Playing Game (RPG)? You are probably reading this question and wondering if I have lost my mind. Football Manager is clearly a Football management simulator, and of course, you are right.
But please bear with me and allow me to make my case. During the rest of this post, I’m going to realise that I have indeed lost my mind, or I will prove to myself at least that from a certain perspective, I can argue that Football Manager is really a Role-Playing Game.
What is a Role Playing Game?
Before I go any further, we need to agree on what we mean by “Role-Playing Game.”
According to the Cambridge English dictionary, A Role Playing Game is a computer game in which a player controls the action of characters in an imaginary world.
Popular Role-Playing games include Starfield, the Witcher series, and, of course, the Elder Scrolls series.
In all of those games, you play a character in an imaginary world, completing quests and exploring the game world around you.
Now it’s time to look at what type of game the Football Manager series is.
What type of game is Football Manager?
I think we can agree that Football Manager can be defined as a simulation game.
It simulates the world of football from the perspective of being a football manager as closely as it is practical in a computer game, including the simulation of the actual games.
But a great simulator draws you into the game world it creates, and as a football manager, your career could go on for multiple seasons. It has to simulate the arrival of new players. Players unique to that save are players you can help develop into world-class players. This element in itself could be classed as an RPG element.
As a player, you also manage all aspects of the team, including the buying and selling of players.
This is one of the best things about Football Manager once you have been playing for several seasons. It’s never as good an experience if you don’t get that deep into a single save.
Conclusion
In Football Manager, you play a character in a world based on the real world. Still, over time, it becomes an imaginary world as players move between clubs and new players are generated by the game, making it an increasingly imagined world.
A world where your character is a football manager allows you to act on how the club you manage is run.
From the player’s perspective, when you are engrossed in a game, it feels like you are playing an RPG.
So, no, it’s not a true Role-Playing Game, but when I’m really caught up in a save, it has the same level of immersion as the best Role-Playing Games because I control my character in an imaginary world created by the football manager simulation.
For future reading, I would recommend Football Manager 2021 save Saying Goodbye, as I think it adds some context to the argument I have looked to make in this post.