Gaz, in a fit of previously unheard of productivity, recently wrote an article questioning why various sites were obsessed with the scene and its inherent collapse. It seems as if nobody cares about FM anymore, perhaps because the game has become too complex, perhaps all that could have been written has been written, perhaps down to the general levels of apathy affecting today’s youth. No matter the reason, one thing is for sure, the scene is either dying or dead. Being a curious soul, although not much of a scene botherer, I decided to see just how dead it was.

The site that has most often pronounced the ‘death of the scene’ is Throw In. I don’t want to seem churlish to the site or its members, but what they really seem to be pronouncing is the death of Throw In. In fact, all the sites that generate discussion about the scene have one similarity in common. Size, or rather, lack of it. Scene focused sites seem to average between 300-1000 members. They also seem to reference each other a lot, focusing on the forum banter and the general vibe of each site, rather than the contributions they make to the glue that holds us all together, which is FM itself. They commonly reference a selection of sites they visit, announce ‘great new staff’, sack ‘poor performing staff’ and regularly have members switching allegiance. What they don’t do, as Caleyjag often points out, is make any decent contributions to the major topic of the scene, playing FM.

According to this corner, the FM scene is dead and there is little for them to do outside of bemoaning the lack of activity and interest. The other corner is hardly ever noticed, let alone referenced. Let’s just have a look at it. As of April 4th, the figures below are correct:

FM Formation: 51,560 members*
Susie: 29,991 members
CMFrenzy: 19,477 members
The Dugout: 16,654 members
‘Little’ FM-Britain: 16,125 members

* FM Formation’s membership may be a little skewed in that it reflects all time membership and never deletes inactive users, as their post count suggests, but they still manage to have over 4000 users active over a 24-hour period.

Three of these sites don’t even reference the ‘scene’ and we at FM-B are still unsure as to the benefits of doing so. However, they do belie the suggestion that the scene is dead, or even dying, or for that matter, even in need of a sticking plaster. There is also a vibrant multi-national community with great sites from all over the world (FM-Frenzy (Denmark), FMFans (Russia), Manager United (The Netherlands), Football Manager Serbia, CMrev (Poland), addmanager (Turkey), forum.fmanager (Brazil), FMfans (China), FMSweden, Foro FMsite (Spain I think), cm-fmthai (Thailand) to name but a few). Nearly all of these have membership numbers of five figures. FMfans China has 263,890 members!!

In addition to this amazing collection of international fan sites (apologies to those I’ve missed) we have Rob’s Portal which does its best to make sense of the huge amount of FM-information they generate.

Those pronouncing the ‘death of the scene’ seem to actually be a quite small of group of people who want to generate attention but don’t produce the quality, in content or in forum discussion, to merit it. They have high post count to member ratios but a large number of these posts are of less than a sentence. They have no long-term debates or in-depth discussion about the quality of the engine, whether it ‘cheats’ or not, how to beat it, how to improve it, how to improve FM etc. They just chat and moan about how things aren’t how they used to be.

We British, or perhaps more pertinently, we English, have a tendency for introspection, a belief that the world outside of our culture is not worth bothering with. I feel the ‘scene’ reflects this. We have a number of sites that span nations (FM-B, despite its moniker, has German and semi-Aussie admins, plus an American mod) and a number that don’t. Those that do span the divide produce quality debate and have loyal members who post well-thought through content. Those that don’t have a Little Englander mentality (witness a recent puerile and xenophobic debate on the nature of racism at a not to be mentioned site) and it is the Little England scene that is dying. The greater scene is alive and well, indeed thriving, and looks like continuing in that mode for a long time to come.

I haven’t written this to attack the smaller, scene-obsessed sites. FM-B was one itself in its infancy, and still has a tendency towards scene concerns, as this article proves. What I would like to see is these sites becoming what they could be, and for that they need to stop narrow-minded commentary about how their little bit of paradise has slipped away, and instead work hard to become one of the big guns. It is possible. FM-B has had 12,000 new members join over the last year or so. How have we done it? By focusing on what we are good at (tactics and LLaMas, contradictory may that be) and putting the hours in. We have stopped reflecting on our place in the FM world. We know exactly where we stand and what we have to do to stay there. Confidence, yes, arrogance, maybe, but I hope not, for arrogance comes before a fall. Simply put, stop self-wallowing reflections about how things are not as good as they used to be and deal with reality. The scene is strong. You are a minor part of it. Work to become a bigger part or be happy with your lot. Just stop moaning!