We were so impressed with footy management sim LMA Manager on PlayStation that we thought we'd talk tactics with the man behind the game, Simon Prytherch.

LMA Manager is Codemasters' first football management game. Did you pluck any team members who had already worked on a footy management game or did you simply make it up as you went along?
The original design and specs for the game were written by John Atkinson and I. John was my lead programmer on LMA Manager and previously worked on football management games for nearly 10 years, including Premier Manager on the Amiga and Mega Drive. I have strong views on user interface design and wanted to create the console footy management game. The two of us shaped LMA Manager as you see it today. The rest of the team were all new to football management and most of them were new to computer game development. One of the most satisfying things about LMA Manager was taking a raw graduate team and turning them into developers of a hit game.

Why did you decide to develop for the PlayStation and not the PC, where
football management games often do very well?
We're good at spotting niche markets. When the game was in design, there was no console management game that had the gameplay and visual feedback that we thought console owners deserved. PC management games, on the other hand, were quite sophisticated and there was lots of competition. The console market made more commercial sense but we also thought it was time we introduced some excitement and vigour into a tired and boring genre.

Any plans for a PC conversion?
No. This game was designed as a console management game.

How do you decide what stats a player should get?
We have two full-time researchers and an army of fans from all over Europe who continually update the squads and ratings in the game. The current system of rating the players was arrived at after a lot of thought and input from the League Managers' Association (LMA).