Good afternoon me mateys and welcome to my first blog. It’s been nearly 2 weeks now since the SEGA revolving doors flung me head first into my new position of “Community Officer” for Football Manager so it was, I thought, high time I introduced myself.

After a 2 year period of nomadic wandering since finishing University, which took me from an 18 month stint ‘working’ for the Home Office in Sheffield to 6 months getting well acquainted with my backpack, I arrived at SEGA a relieved man.

Touching back down in Blighty, I was not relishing the prospect of months of fruitless job searching. Yet, I barely had time to put a brew on and load up a new game of FM when I found myself in London Town being interviewed by some lovely chaps at the good ship SEGA.

And so it was that 2 weeks ago, knapsack stuffed with a few bare essentials, I arrived to be blinded by the bright lights of Watford, my temporary digs (big thanks go out to Sports Dave for his hospitality!).

It won’t be earth shattering news to any of you to hear that I am a HUGE fan of all things football and all things Football Manager. Somewhat of a recovering FM addict, I guess me getting this job is something akin to a recovering alcoholic getting a job in a pub. After missing out on most of FM08 due to travel and girlfriend commitments, I am positively brimming with excitement about the imminent arrival of FM09. The 3D match view has finally arrived and, I think, will only enhance the games playability.

Elsewhere, I am looking forward to using the new improved transfer system and to playing mind games with those pesky hacks with the enhanced media interaction features. With my managerial tendencies to err on the side of controversy, I could find myself in hot water with just about everyone!

I suppose I should tell you a little more about what I’m doing here. I can refute claims from my friends that I sit on my over-sized rear each day playing FM as being completely unfounded. Sometimes, I make the tea too!

Seriously though, I am based in our Brentford office where I officially belong to the Online Marketing team. But, what exactly do I do as Community Officer you maybe or maybe not, asking? Well, I will have a stab at explaining my main responsibilities.

Firstly, as my job title would suggest I’m here to ensure that our ever thriving FM community is taken good care of. Hopefully, you can expect a re-vamped FM affiliate scheme, a dedicated forum for webmasters and a generous helping of FM copies and merchandise. Ultimately, I’ll be aiming to work with Football Manager websites to both help and grow the community. So if you want to voice any issues or concerns or are in need of some advice then feel free to fire away at me.

Secondly, I’ll be trying to ensure that www.footballmanager.com is regularly updated with interesting content. I can guarantee the content side of things; I’d like to think you will also find it interesting! I love football and I love to write about football but sometimes the ‘creative juices’ can dry up so I’m always open to any suggestions. In fact, I can confirm that I will be inviting fan sites to submit interesting article ideas for the website. I’ll also be making sure the new Football Manager 2009 Facebook page is updated with all the interesting links!

On top of this, I shall also be working with other football sites and forums to make sure that FM09 gets all the recognition it deserves! Again, expect more competitions and more prizes, so if you regularly trawl through football sites to relieve yourself from boredom at work then don’t be surprised to see more FM competitions and prize give-aways up for grabs.

Right, I think that’s more than enough of my ramblings for now. My tea is getting cold and I need to finish it quick sharp if I’m to make it home in time for an evening in front of the box enjoying some UEFA Cup action.

It’s been a while since I’ve shared my tee for tea exploits, but everyone in my general vicinity has become somewhat addicted to a particular flash game with an incredibly simple premise. Check it out here. I know there’s a lot of Stick Cricket purists out there, but I’ve begun to think this simply hits it for six. The reason for this is, to put it quite simply, it’s the most addictive flash game I’ve ever played - and that’s a lot of flash games! Anyone remember Smack the Penguin or the Green Helicopter? Well I’m convinced this will turn your world into a black hole. I once played it so much that I couldn’t sleep at night. All I could think of was the haunting wavering batsman at the stumps, flailing at the build up of balls as they bounce down the wicket.

Since then I’ve seen brighter times, and I’ve weened myself off it a little (apart from the odd lunch play). Recently I smashed the record, posting a whopping 522. However, Dave, as per usual, had other ideas. Instead of going home, he stayed in the office until late yesterday in an effort to defeat the high score. Well, he absolutely smashed it, posting a whopping 805 in the process. That’s nearly a full two minutes at the crease! This afternoon I achieved the dizzy heights of 755, so it was a little gutting to see the regular Howzat! just short of Dave’s triumph. I reckon I’ll beat it soon though. Watch this space!

Unbeatable?

You might have seen my last post about tea making… Basically it’s a flash game competition with the person who does the worst having to get up and make the delicious tea. We play many games, but one of my personal favourites is the helicopter game. All you have to do is click to make the chopper go up, and let go to make it go down. Superbly simple, it may well spend the end of your working day if you’re not careful. I think at Uni I managed to get somewhere around the 2000 mark, but I can’t remember the exact score. Nowadays my best is 1488, but the office record is something like 2200, set by Dave, who has quite a penchant for all these mini games. If you can beat that, then I’d like to know, you might even get a present in the post! You must supply evidence of course - just print screen and to record your PB. And no Photoshopping!

At every company I’ve worked at so far (that’s 3), there have been issues about making the tea. In my world, it’s every man for himself, so I’m happy to get my own. However, when people start offering me stuff, I’m naturally inclined to say yes. But I’m not always the best at making the tea for other people, and sometimes I totally forget to return the favour, which has led to frequent banter around the workplace. On the other hand, when I’m feeling particularly generous, and dish out the tea rounds almost every hour, I find that few people realise my actions and likewise don’t return the favour. Thus I find myself in tea making infinity.

Well, at SEGA, I have always been impressed on the quite ingenious methods presented in order to decide who will make the tea. At Old Street there’s enough space in the Community Team’s office to have a miniature putting course. When a tea round was declared, whoever wanted a cuppa would have to tee off, and the person with the lowest score (in golfing terms this means the person who takes the most shots) would go and make the tea. For the full rules on Tee for Tea, check out our Facebook group.

Now at Brentford we’ve got a problem of space. So, when I moved here I was at a loss as how tea rounds would be decided again (fearing the return to mutual tea making). Then Dave turned up a couple of weeks ago and insisted that we have now have a flash game competition to determine who would make the tea.

The search for the perfect flash Tee for Tea took us far and wide on the Internet, but while using Stumbleupon, I managed to come across a veritable gold mine of flash sports games that we began to use for the competition. It’s called Allonga.com, and if you like your flash games, then I advise you to check it out. We’ve found a few others too, such as the mysterious green helicopter game and the classic smack the penguin. Basically, whoever gets the lowest score at certain games within a time limit (this is to prevent refreshing and cheating) has to make the tea. If you’ve read this far, take a look through Allonga and tell us what you think your best tea making game would be - because we’re still not sure we’ve perfected the virtual Tee for Tea. At the moment we’re regular players of Island Cruising, and Mini Golf, but we haven’t been able to check them all out yet. I’ll be posting our personal bests for Tea for Tee as and when, and I’d like to know if anyone beats our records!

So another week goes by here at SEGA, and another fun activity seemed to come along. Having been here a mere six weeks, and managing to be treated to a two day conference within that time, I thought I was somewhat fortunate of my arrival date. Then, this week, one of our nice little agencies treated us to an evening of Go Karting in Esher.

We got an hour off work for the event (always a pleasure) and then headed over to Esher where the track of destiny was laid out.

Now before we get started properly, I need to tell you that Dave has recently moved to the Brentford office, bringing his tradition of competition to see who makes the tea round (this entails a mini golf competition ‘Tee for Tea’ in Old Street. I’ll tell you more about the complex methods as to how it is decided in another post, but let’s just say I didn’t have a great start to the week, and I was becoming worryingly good at making coffee after so much practice. With this in mind, I was out for revenge on the track, so after jumping into my overalls, gloves, hair net (er?) and helmet, I was delighted to see that I would be competing against my newly found nemesis.

Fifteen karts would be racing around the 800 metre track at the same time and they could reach about 60 km/ph on the straight. When you’re so low down, that seems dangerously fast, so it was sure to be a high octane race. I clearly wasn’t too hot on the practice laps, getting passed numerous occasions and landing my team well back in the grid to begin the race. (12th out of 15 I think). Fittingly, Dave’s team was in last. So, with motors at the ready, we revved off.

To say my driving remained questionable even after the practice lap would have been more than accurate. Almost every time I turned a corner when I was under pressure or chasing someone down, I’d spin out. After the first I was way down the field and out of reach of claiming the lead.

Fortunately, it seemed like a lot of other people also had a penchant for spinning out, so even though my driving was simply awful, I struggled back into a more respectable position. However, after skidding around the opening corner of the track four times in a row with a screeching brake, one of the marshals

had enough (and that after numerous occasions of being told to calm down) and I was sent to a sin bin for a thorough telling off. After about thirty seconds of lectures about my poor driving (I sold my car in February, so I insist I’m out of practice) I was back out on track.

Seeing as everyone was wearing a helmet, it wasn’t easy to see exactly who you were up against if you were chasing someone. However, I did notice Dave’s shoes at one point, and began to get on his tail. We must have gone around about four laps of high octane pace, trying to edge each other out, before I decided to risk it all on a seriously steep bend at max speed. Unfortunately, this ended in tears, with me spinning out and watching my adversary shoot off into the distance, while doing my best to prevent other racers passing me by generally getting in their way.

Well, after all the action, we even got a BBQ thrown into the mix, which was pretty amazing. Then we headed home. Living in Brixton, this took a while (sleep by 1am is about three hours passed bed time). So I took advantage of flexi hours in the morning and came in at ten. I’ll explain the tea making rules soon!

*Artist’s Impression

Ok - wasn’t quite expecting the flood of work that was coming my way towards the end of the week, but I got tied up with a secret project that will be coming very soon - stay tuned for that - it’ll be free for everyone to join.

Anyhow I promised a post on the team building exercise that we played out after the ‘exciting’ bit of our merry conference. Kev’s been able to give you some of the low down already in an earlier post on what chaos ensued, but I feel the need to let you know a little more about what fun activities happened at our conference.

Well, after much laughter in the Generation Game part of the speaking, and a quite delicious packed lunch, we headed off to a water park somewhere in the Cotswolds for all sorts of boating shenanigans.

I found myself in team two - the oranges - (there were six teams in all) so shortly after arriving my face was entirely covered with orange makeup; I’m not altogether sure where it came from. It just so happened that most staff from the European offices were all grouped together in the oranges. While they all spoke excellent English, things maybe weren’t altogether on the same wavelength when we capsized our Canadian canoe three times in a minute. We were promptly told to get out of the water and never attempt to set sail again.

So, after firmly losing the first task of rowing, kayaking and Canadian canoeing (shudder) to the purples we went on to battle at some kind of Chinese long boat rowing - (that’s Dragon boating right? Yes, Wikipedia says so.) Well, we got firmly thrashed at that too, and I was relishing the prospect of getting the biggest wooden spoon known to man.

After that we had to endure several trips across the lake to collect stuff to build our raft. Luckily it was scorching hot, so being ridiculously poor at oarmanship (apparently that’s a real word) was compensated by building a pretty sweet tan. Once we’d collected all our stuff we had to build a raft in twenty minutes, but at least seventeen of those were spent by most of the team milling around. In the dying seconds we somehow built a raft that looked completely terrible in comparison to those built by the other five teams. For some reason, I nominated myself as one of the six crew members to row this beast across a small stretch of water and back again. I was pretty certain we were going to sink.

Despite my certainty, we actually didn’t do too bad in this task - I think we came fourth, even beating our old enemies team purple in the process, and we didn’t sink! So, unfortunately, I couldn’t get my hands on the coveted wooden spoon. Oh well… Now for what conferences are really about…

I could go on for hours about shenanigans of the BBQ and beers that commenced at about 8 PM, but I don’t think many people would be too happy about me posting the finer details on the Internet - that’s what Facebook is for! Normally in photographic form of course. Well, there was many a delicious cocktail consumed, plenty of tasty BBQd meat and even a few arcade games dotted around - as well as the chance to shake it up on Samba de Amigo. Probably the highlight was the limbo - which seemed to go on for several hours, and the surf board - here’s a slightly Photoshop enhanced photo of Martin doing his tricks:

Ghoulish hey? Maybe it’s just my drunken skewed vision…

Martin insists that I mention that he stayed on the surf board the longest out of all those who tried. The thing is, I got cocky by whooping and hollering, and the attendent turned the speed up because of this. I still hold that if I hadn’t been cocky then I would have won. Needless to say, I felt terrible in the morning.

And so continues the somewhat epic saga of the conference. So, after yesterday’s incredibly exciting speeches post, the morning took slightly more comic proceedings. This was through the Marketing Dept’s presentation for some of our upcoming top titles for the year; namely Sonic Unleashed, Madworld, Samba de Amigo and Empire: Total War, all done in the style of the classic game show - The Generation Game.

It turns out that the President of SEGA Europe, Mike Hayes, was on the show in question during the 1980s. Somehow this footage was discovered and then aired at the conference - I suppose you had to be there but I can tell you it was pretty amusing. After this, there was a series of Generation Game style challenges relating to the top titles. Members of the audience were ‘invited’ to take the stage and make a plasticine model of Sonic the Hedgehog in celebration of Sonic Unleashed, draw the Jack (the lead in the upcoming Madworld) and then shake the rhythms out on Samba de Amigo.

While Marketing Director Gary Knight was playing the part of Brucie with an uncanny realism, various members of the audience won prizes for their artistic prowess. In the Samba de Amigo competition, meanwhile, two of our most senior directors took to the stage and shook their maracas (donning ponchos and sombreros of course).

For those Brits reading this who remember The Generation Game, you may recall the final conveyor belt round. For this, picture puzzles of some of SEGA’s upcoming titles rolled along a screen, then classic games and a few retro SEGA titles. I must admit that I wasn’t the best at this, but I still managed a few. I was particularly hopeless with the classic games, but I’ve got to say I’m more a fan of the modern stuff. Do I court controversy? Err… Probably… More tomorrow.

*artists impression of Brucie
P.S. I was struggling to cut through all the legal issues of putting up a Bruce Forsyth picture on our blog, so I drew this one in fifteen minutes using paint and a few Photoshop effects. Hope you like it. Martin has informed me he will be drawing a portrait soon as well so maybe we can see who’s best.

P.P.S. if you don’t know what Brucie really looks like then you should check out the link above.

So, as you probably know from our last posts, on Thursday SEGA Europe threw their annual company conference. This, for a relative newcomer, was an absolute pleasure, because if nothing else at least it was two days off work. However, it turned out to be a more welcome break than that, with the speeches helpful, the team building hilarious and the night activities… well, it’s always a pleasure to have a party courtesy of your company.

The coaches took us from our office in Brentford to somewhere in the Cotswolds, and we arrived at about eleven in the morning. I’m not deliberately being vague, I’m just not entirely sure where we were - somewhere near Swindon I think, but the surroundings were particularly picturesque. Upon arrival, we were all given some refreshments and then into the conference hall. Now, I’d normally go into a conference with more than a little trepidation, because of the likelihood of incredibly boring speeches. However, this wasn’t the case with SEGA, and I was pleasantly surprised.

As I’d only been at the company a month, there was plenty of things I hadn’t known that I found out quickly at the conference. The President, Mike Hayes, began with general talk about company and performance; all which was pretty interesting to someone who’s fairly new. One thing I didn’t realise is just how much people loved Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, and how well it’s done over the last year. There was also some talk of our financial projections (which I couldn’t possibly bore you with) and upcoming titles (which are top secret so I can’t tell you). It was great to see how the company was doing, and it’s always nice to know that you’re working in an industry that is showing great likelihood of growth despite the threat of economic downturn. (I hate to gloat).

Anyhow, this might not be the exciting post you were expecting for something like the annual company conference, but there’s so much to write about that we’ve all chosen to post about it all week. The highlight of the morning’s speeches was the Generation Game style shenanigans that the marketing team threw for our upcoming titles, so I’ll let you know about that tomorrow. There’s also the ‘team building’ which entailed getting aboard boats and sinking a lot, and the BBQ bash, where much merriment ensued. Keep reading for an insight into SEGA company life this week from all of us here…

Yup, we’re back from the lakes and I’m pleased to report that no one has been mislayed or lost, though some people were clearly dead this morning judging from their eyes. Seriously.  No severe injuries have been reported either although many of us are suffering from very sore backs, shoulders and several are nursing some bruised egos… and headaches.

A cavalcade of reports from individual teams including some, none or fewer details on titles coming your way from SEGA. That and just what (can be told without getting into severe trouble) went on, as well as a run down on just how everyone did which I will sum up now:

Martin’s Team = Cheating Winners
Swiss Cheese’s Team = Missed Chances…
JimmyC = Wet
Dave = Half-Drowned
My Team = Utter Rubbish, But…

On the plus side I’m now King of the Jet-Ski, but you’ll have to wait for my main blog on this to find out just why…

Just finished a fortnight at SEGA so I thought I’d send my first blog post out to all ye loyal subscribers. To be honest, this is shaping up to be the kind of job I so badly wanted to do after I finished University, which was almost two years ago this month. After working as a copywriter for a couple of years, an old school friend, Kai, a web developer (who now seems to sort out my technical inabilities) recommended me for the Web Editor role here (comments about nepotism can follow later) I was pretty surprised when I got an interview, and then pretty amazed when I got the job!

To start with I was based in our Old Street office, and aside from the odd bout of office golf, I was primarily focused on learning the ropes through getting onto Football Manager Live and ‘borrowing’ the Medieval Total War expansion pack, then fiddling with that for a while - hard work I know, but you always need to further your product knowledge!

Things really got started with the announcement of Stormrise last week, for which I had to update the main SEGA website for. The release date is still some way off, so I didn’t have to do too much - just put a product page live with a news story. There are also some pretty cool screenshots and back stories to fill your imagination. It’s about time for a fully 3D RTS methinks, and at the moment this one looks a little like an apocalyptic Command and Conquer. As a hardened RTS player I do love that series, especially the Red Alert titles, but the lack of decent aerial combat has always annoyed me. It’s been a long time since Total Annihilation, where the sheer number of units available on land, sea and air was really special. I reckon further inroads should be made with Stormrise, especially with the infantry scaling the wrecked skyscrapers. A 3D RTS should really add an extra dimension of action, so I reckon this should make it work on a console (it’s about time there was a decent strategy game on console!)

Thinking of RTS, a big plus of me moving to SEGA is my love of Total War. I’ve got to get out of the SEGA bandwagon and say I’ve been a Civ addict for many years (not strictly an RTS I know), but Total War has been my other favourite in the history kind of game category. I really got into Rome, and spent some years with the Scipii and the Seleucids conquering the Old World, then came Medieval and I did the same with the English Crusaders. I put the video for Empire live on Friday, and frankly, it’s looking damn cool… yes admittedly, there isn’t any game play footage on this particular trailer, but then we got some screenshots from the E3 conference this week - take a look at the Empire: Total War page for all the media. Up until now, there’s just been a few naval battle shots. No doubt this is going to be a great feature of the new title, but I’m probably more excited by the full introduction of cannon and musket on the battlefield… The inaccuracy of rifling back then will mean that unit formation won’t become too complicated; I’ve dreamed of a WWII title coming out for Total War, but I reckon it might be impossible because of the nature of battles after about 1870 - you never know though… gaming is pretty progressive, American Civil War might be interesting too.

So, this week, I’ve been looking harder into planning our releases on the website, so I’ll be the man to contact about screenshots, videos, and basically anything else that gets published online. I’ve moved to the main SEGA Europe office at Brentford now too, so I can be in touch with this better. Anything, just give me a shout, especially if you’ve got a good blog - maybe I’ll drop you a link or two!