5. Last But Not Least: Let Us Invest Our Dollar
There is no doubt that Football Manager is the best game of its type about, people like myself spend hours, days and months playing through their career, winning MOM's, Leagues, Trophies and Hall of Fame status but what do you really have to show for it apart from one line in your profile that says "Total Career Earnings". Give us something to spend our hard earned cash on, at the moment I don't 'chase' pennies, when my contract is up for renewal I change my clubs offer from £100k a week to the lowest I can get it, usually around £20k, after all it comes out of my own budgets and I don't need it. There is a plethora of things that you could invest in on the game, buy stakes in players, clubs, shares, stadiums or to build your own team. Even a nice shiny car, bigger house and a fancy watch are not out of the question, some snooker related console games do this quite well.
For me the opportunity to work my life as a manager at the top of the Premier league for 10 seasons and earn as much as possible to then invest in my local Northampton Town, become a chairman and manager, then lead the mighty Cobblers all the way to the heights of Europe would be a great way of extending the shelf life of the game. That, I reckon is a minimum. I wouldn't like to see cars and houses on the agenda but something should be available, it makes no sense to earn money and not be able to spend it on anything, even if I could 'inject' it in to my current club so they can afford to buy an extra player or two in hard times, that would be enough as a first step. Of course there is also the opportunity to tie something else in here, although I wouldn't participate in it i'm sure thousands would, the potential to supplement game add-ons, merchandise or extras with money earned in game. Lots of poker sites do this with frequent player points, build them up, buy prizes with them or put them towards a bigger purchase as a discount, just a thought.
Just One Final Point...
One thing that didn't make the list is the Real Time Editors of this World, though my opinion of them may solely be my own, I think they detract value from the game. I'm sure that if there were some form of correlation between those people that use RTE's consistently and actual time spent on individual games the difference would be astounding, there are loads of ways to 'cheat' the system on FM without the need for editors, all of which make me feel cheap and dirty and have no in-game longevity. If I were SI, I would make the game RTE-proof.