The general manager over at Beautiful Game Studios has admitted that since the original dev team left the game franchise has suffered.
The problem? ”No vision, no direction” - the game has no identity beyond its name in the genre and that needs fixing says Meredith. Quality hasn’t been strong enough.
”In terms of the quality of the franchise, the quality of the products we’ve put out - yeah, I know, it’s pretty poor,” conceded Meredith in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
”So that’s why I was brought in last year and told to do this, because on one hand you have a very valuable brand, but at some point it’s going to be worth zero because of the quality of the product.”
He’s charged with breathing fresh life into the brand but because they’ve fell into the trap of chasing their rival, Football Manager, the game has suffered and lost its own heading.
”I think for too long we’ve been a me-too product,” he said. ”There’s no question that Football Manager is a really strong, very good game, that knows its place in the market.”
”For too long we’ve not had a vision that explains what Championship Manager is. No vision, no direction - where are we within that genre? We want to create a strong alternative, a competitor to Football Manager - irrespective of what they do, we need to be clear on what ChampMan is all about, and identify where we need to be.”
”What we need to do is give consumers a reason to believe the franchise again. They know the fundamentals, the basics of the game, and they need to know the quality of the game is strong, because for too long it hasn’t been,” he continued.
Click here to read the full interview between Roy Meredith and GamesIndustry.biz.