Let’s talk about newgen faces in Football Manager.
It seems like with every passing FM, there’s a fierce debate about the 3D faces that are assigned to youth intake players. Some people in the FM community hate them; others just tolerate them.
Having played this series for over 20 years, I consider myself an FM historian who loves to look back and see how the game has progressed over the years. I’ve gone through every version from Football Manager 2015 up until the newly-released Football Manager 2022, tracking the evolution of FM’s newgen faces. I’ve also provided some thoughts on how (and where) these faces could be improved for future games…
BACKGROUND
Firstly, I’m sure you know this already, but generated players ARE NOT called regens. That’s an old term from Championship Manager, where an old player would retire and then be ‘regenerated’ as a younger version of himself, with the same position and characteristics but a different name.
Since Football Manager 2007, we have instead had newgens – newly-generated players who are completely unrelated to any other player in the database. So when Lionel Messi retires, it doesn’t mean the game will replace him with another diminutive left-footed Argentinian forward with elite potential. That teenage wonderkid you’ve found at Boca Juniors who looks like the next Messi? Probably just a coincidence.
I hope that’s cleared that up. Anyway, since Football Manager 2008, newgens have been given their own generated faces. These were originally made in 2D, before Sports Interactive moved on to using 3D graphics a decade later.
I no longer have my original copy of FM08, so I can’t show you any newgen faces from that game. But those original versions stayed largely unchanged from game to game, right up until FM15, which is where we pick up the story…
FM 2015: THE LAST ORIGINALS
Like I’ve just said, the newgen faces you see on FM15 are almost identical to those you would’ve found on FM08. Honestly, it’s quite easy tell these were the products of mid-2000s technology; they were looking very dated by 2014.
In fairness, the faces themselves weren’t terrible. There was a decent variety of Caucasian, African, Asian and Hispanic facial structures and skin tones, though some of the cheekbones were perhaps a bit too prominent. There were quite a few ‘babyfaces’, put it that way.
The facial expressions would change depending on their morale. A player with Superb morale would often be smiling broadly, while someone at the Abysmal end of the scale would greet you with a scowl.
The biggest complaints were more about the hair. Some fitted nicely enough, others less so (you can clearly see a white outline around the top of the Asian newgen’s hair in the top-centre). Also, facial hair was almost non-existent, so no beards or moustaches, apart from the odd splattering of stubble.
Thankfully, modders such as Emil Debski and O’Leary’s Trainee addressed this with their own hairpack add-ons. These added hundreds of new hairstyles (including some with facial hair) to give newgens more character and uniqueness. Here are a few examples from my long-term FM13 save.
FM 2016: THE BEST YET?
After years of stagnation, faces were finally modernised on FM16. These newgen faces are regarded as the ‘best’ in the series’ history by many players, including myself. But after reinstalling FM16 to do my research for this article… I’m not quite so sure.
For starters, some of the old hair files didn’t quite fit properly on the slightly narrower, taller faces. A few of the new haircuts also seemed blurred out, like the one on the top-left. The smiles and frowns were gone too, with every player now having the same emotionless poker face.
And that Uzbekistani guy in the top-centre? His passport might claim he’s 19, but with that hairline, I have serious questions about the ‘education’ he received at Tashkent High School.
Don’t get me wrong, these still look pretty good, even in 2021. They’re certainly more adult-looking compared to the array of babyfaces you’d find on previous FMs. There was also plenty of diversity, even just in those six examples I picked at random.
However, those unseemly large foreheads were quite noticeable, as are those elf ears. These were ominous signs for the abominations FM17 were about to unleash on us…
FM 2017: THE LIZARD-MEN
YIKES! When David Icke claimed that shape-shifting reptiles had taken over the world, he might have actually had a point!
These faces are almost beyond description, and it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint their worst feature. Is it the HUGE foreheads? Those wide lips? The dead eyes? The gaunt facial structures that made many of these young athletes look like middle-aged drug addicts?
Frankly, even adding Debski’s hairpack to these newgens was like putting lipstick on a pig. It didn’t help that the haircuts would often change at seemingly random intervals (my theory is that it was related to their morale). So a player might have a full head of hair one week, and then suddenly turn into Alan Cork the next.
In short, they were an absolute unmitigated disaster. NEXT!
FM 2018: FROM 2D TO 3D
Unsurprisingly, SI got rid of 2D faces after the visual disaster that was FM17. Newgen faces were completely redesigned to be based on their 3D models in the match engine.
The first versions of these 3D faces were… pretty awful, to be blunt. With very few haircuts available, there was a disproportionate number of mohawks (like it was peak Beckham-mania). To make matters worse, Debski had retired from modding, citing his frustration at how SI had made it impossible to edit the 3D models, rendering his 2D hairpacks useless.
Face-wise, many players had this goofy, gormless look that only their mothers would love. Just imagine if the darts champion Michael van Gerwen had a secret lovechild with Shrek. [Shudder]
There was also a major bug where several newgens would suddenly change their skin tone (only reverting to their original look on reloading the game). But while Michael Jackson’s changing appearance could be explained by a skin condition, FM18 players didn’t have any excuses for theirs.
FM 2019: THE MELTED WAXWORKS
Thankfully, FM19’s newgens actually looked vaguely human. The 3D faces were more refined, and there were several new hairstyles, plus a few rudimentary attempts at facial hair. Newgens were also given shirts, so that they didn’t look so much like disembodied heads.
That said, the results were still a little disappointing compared to what we’d seen on FM16. Many faces had this melted look, as if someone at Madame Tussauds had accidentally left the heating a few degrees too high overnight.
I also noticed a big issue with certain ethnicities – specifically, that East Asian newgens were almost indistinguishable from Hispanic ones. How would you react if I told you that the Saint-Étienne player on the bottom-left is supposed to be Japanese?
FM 2020: HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
SI cleaned up the newgens for the next iteration, so they didn’t look quite as ‘melted’. However, while the eyes on FM19’s generated players were at least acceptable, they’re hardly noticeable on FM20. Indeed, some look like they’re missing their eyes completely!
The hair was… I wouldn’t say ‘improved’, but it certainly looked slicker, perhaps a little too slick. At least players could now grow facial hair properly – some from a very early age. It wasn’t unusual to see a 15-year-old schoolboy in your youth team who was as hirsute as Andrea Pirlo.
Hair was also at the centre of a regular bug on FM20. In a similar but different way to FM18’s chameleons, many of your newgens would suddenly go bald at the same time (like Romania at the 1998 World Cup, if they’d used razors instead of blond hair dye). Of course, their hair would grow back once you restarted the game, but it was still annoying.
FM 2021: MORE IMPROVEMENTS
In my opinion, FM21 has the best newgen faces of the 3D era… albeit in the same sense that “Back To Bedlam” was James Blunt’s best album. The bar hasn’t exactly been set very high, to put it another way.
For one thing, they were actually pretty pleasant to look at. The eyes were much-improved, there were more head shapes, and other facial features looked a bit more varied. Their looks were also more age-appropriate… well, apart from the odd teenager who wanted to cosplay as Father Christmas.
That said, ethnicities were still a bit messed up. While facial features were at least more accurate, newgens only had a few different skin tones available to them, so you’d end up with players from Central or East Asia who had unusually dark skin. I’ve brought this issue up with SI quite often over the last few years, and I’ve sadly never had any kind of response from them.
FM 2022: BAD HAIR DAYS
And so we come to the latest game, which – in terms of newgen faces – sadly feels like a step backwards from FM21. The faces themselves hadn’t changed drastically, but once again, it all falls down when you look at the hair.
Firstly, we HAVE to mention the eyebrows. They’re often far too bold and bushy, making them stand out much more than on previous games. Monobrows are also very prevalent, giving you a load of newgens who could be mistaken for Baby Gerald from “The Simpsons”.
The facial hair has an ugly pipe-cleaner look to it, and while it’s cool to see more hairstyles in the game, some of them are just ridiculous. It’s particularly awkward to see a load of white newgens with huge frizzy afros that make them resemble Carlos Valderrama.
In a more positive move, female staff members now have their own generated faces. The few examples I’ve seen so far look… okay, I guess, but the hair definitely needs to be improved when women’s leagues are added to FM. At the very least, we shouldn’t have to see a disproportionate number of mohawks (like it’s peak Rapinoe-mania).
ALTERNATIVES & FUTURE SUGGESTIONS
If you don’t like the default newgen faces on FM, there are alternatives. Perhaps the most popular option is Zealand’s NewGAN Facepack, which includes over 100,000 computer-generated face files. You can also install a program that – once you learn how to set it up – can automatically assign faces to newgens within seconds. This was what I used on my FM21 journeyman series.
Chilled Moose‘s facepacks have also become hugely popular over recent years. Indeed, a lot of people rate her self-created renders so highly that they’ve suggested SI should give her a job (incidentally, she joined SI’s art team earlier this year).
But as Chilled Moose herself says, “the process of creating renders vs what FM handles is incredibly different” and cannot be compared. At any rate, until the tech improves, a human creator can always make better, more diverse faces more consistently than artificial intelligence. Hiring a few humans to create thousands of different faces isn’t too practical when software can generate them more efficiently (albeit at a perhaps lesser quality).
But maybe I’m just typing out of my backside. There are other sports games (e.g. Out Of The Park Baseball) that seemingly do a better job of rendering faces for generated players.
There is certainly a lot of room for improvement when it comes to Football Manager’s newgen faces. So to finish this article, I’ve pointed out three specific areas where I’d like to see SI make changes:
More skin tones
Unless I’m sorely mistaken, it seems that newgens only come in six distinct skin tones. This seems quite narrow, seeing how many different shades of light, olive and dark skin there are.
According to the FM pre-game editor, there are 20 different skin tones in the game, all of which should be available to newgens. This isn’t quite as inclusive as something like The Sims, which has an almost endless array of skin colours, but it should still adequately cover a large percentage of the population.
More accurate hairstyles
Having more hairstyles is all well and good, but there are some haircuts that are – how can I put this as carefully as possible? – much more prevalent in certain cultures than others. It would add to the realism if FM reflected this better.
I’d also like some newgens to switch between different hairstyles. I don’t want to see a skinhead suddenly grow shoulder-length hippy hair within a week, but seeing certain players change their look occasionally would give them a bit more personality.
More realistic aging
This wasn’t so much the case on FM21, but the issue of schoolboy newgens looking old beyond their years has reared its head again on FM22. How many 15-year-old boys do you see in real-life with receding hairlines and/or full beards?
It’s as if every newgen has this face of a 20-something that hardly ever ages. A newgen would look almost exactly the same 26 as they would at 16, and they’ll still look the same at 36, just with a few wrinkles. Things don’t get much better in ultra long-term saves, where you see newgen staff in their 50s, 60s and even 70s who must have endless supplies of hair dye and anti-aging cream.
I’m not sure if SI have the technology to pull this off, but I’d love it if newgens age more realistically. It would be great if your fresh-faced wonderkid eventually evolved into a rugged, battle-hardened veteran. Of course, there should still be the odd babyface who stays young forever, like that Norwegian fella at Manchester Uni… oh.
So, what do you think about Football Manager’s newgens? Feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below, or by tweeting me @Fuller_FM.
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