Skip to main content

Ajaxpost Plays 2,500 Subscriber Giveaway!

To celebrate hitting the incredible milestone of 2,500 subscribers I have chosen a selection of top games that I've picked up from Humble Choice over the last couple of years, added in some choice new titles that I've really enjoyed playing on the channel and bundled them all into one big giveaway! I will draw FIVE lucky winners who can each choose one of these twenty five great games to take away and keep. All the games that aren't picked by the winners in this giveaway will be rolled forward into future giveaways on the channel. So, even if you don't win today, keep an eye on Ajaxpost Plays FIVE for further chances to grab an awesome game! See below for the full list of games in this draw. Terms and Conditions General The Ajaxpost Plays 2,500 Subscriber Giveaway ( the Giveaway ) is a lottery run exclusively by the Ajaxpost Plays YouTube Channel ( Ajaxpost Plays ) All the terms described here are in addition to the standard terms and conditions applied

Football (Manager) and Me

I have never seriously followed football or, indeed, any sport. My parents were not participants and at best infrequent watchers.
Sure, we would indulge in the Saturday afternoon TV ritual of World of Sport for some horse racing or wrestling - that's the proper British style of wrestling combat, not the American show-business nonsense. Rounded off, of course with the run-down of the football results, mainly to see if we had won anything on the pools!

Through my teens I became a little more aware of football, though in three quite specific ways. Firstly there was that good feeling when someone from your own area became successful, I was always rather pleased to hear when a local team had some success which, to be honest, didn't happen very often as Berkshire was not home to many world class teams!

Secondly, footballers were starting to become celebrities. Certainly a world away from the mega-stardom that they would come to be afforded some years later but back then they would sometimes appear outside the sports pages and the more 'attractive' (or notorious) ones would feature in picture posts and, fit young men that they were, some of them looked really good!

Thirdly, and perhaps most relevant to today's story, I was becoming something of a numbers geek and the tables and figures that were a feature of the game fascinated me. A club's progress could be plotted, you could chart their success (or not), probabilities could be calculated. I had hours of fun simply tracking my favourite teams.

The years passed, I go to university, enter the world of work, and all these 'childish' pastimes have been left behind (except, of course, I still kept an eye out for any particularly good looking players in the papers and magazines 😉).

Them, sometime in the early 90s a work colleague hands me an illicit copy of a PC game called Championship Manager - probably Championship Manager 93 but it could have been the first one or maybe Championship Manager 2 but I think I started with one of the two earliest releases.

It all came flooding back! Those first games were a wonder of numbers and statistics, you could compare and contrast, you could mix and match to create an optimal combination of attributes to counter the skills of the opposition. I was hooked!

Having succumbed to the 'free trial' I then purchased pretty much every new release of Championship Manager from then on. When the developers Sports Interactive split with publishers EIDOS although I did buy Championship Manager 5 I, like most players, soon switched to stay with the development team and what became Football Manager.

Although the game developed with each version to become a more accurate and intimate representation of 'the beautiful game' I still have very little idea if what I was doing in the game made any sense at all in real terms but juggling those numbers and seeing them somehow turn into positive results continued to fascinate.

As the game grew in popularity it also became more open and user generated assets such as 'face packs', more realistic kits, ground photos, etc., made it even more the completely immersive experience.

The last version I played for any real length of time before my game playing became almost entirely dominated by Sim and Tycoon style simulations was Football Manager 2010.

Although my Steam library shows that I also have Football Manager 2012 and Football Manager 2017 I actually spent very little time with either of them. I just wasn't in the right frame of mind or ready to commit the amount of time that they required to relearn the core mechanics.


Then, at the end of June, I picked up the Humble Racial Justice Bundle which included Football Manager 2020. A few days ago I started playing it, discovered that I could leave most of the decision making to my assistants until such time as I decide (if I decide!) to get into it properly and become more familiar with the vast array of numbers and options that are now available.

I am hooked again!

Although I love being able to share my enjoyment of PC games, as I have practically no understanding of football itself, am rather late to the game, and the fact that this game probably doesn't particularly appeal to most of the subscribers and viewers of my YouTube channel I decided not to create a full blown Lets Play series for it.

However, since the game does allow me to record the highlights of the matches I play in the game I have created a playlist of video highlights for anyone who wants to see how a complete novice fares when put in charge of a professional football team. I am only promoting this series through this Blog and my Twitter and Instagram accounts and the videos will, for now at least, remain 'unlisted' on my YouTube channel.

Though, if you are interested, you can still check out the videos uploaded so far on this playlist:

Let me know if you enjoy these videos and if you think I should make them public by publishing them on YouTube.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ajaxpost Plays 2,500 Subscriber Giveaway!

To celebrate hitting the incredible milestone of 2,500 subscribers I have chosen a selection of top games that I've picked up from Humble Choice over the last couple of years, added in some choice new titles that I've really enjoyed playing on the channel and bundled them all into one big giveaway! I will draw FIVE lucky winners who can each choose one of these twenty five great games to take away and keep. All the games that aren't picked by the winners in this giveaway will be rolled forward into future giveaways on the channel. So, even if you don't win today, keep an eye on Ajaxpost Plays FIVE for further chances to grab an awesome game! See below for the full list of games in this draw. Terms and Conditions General The Ajaxpost Plays 2,500 Subscriber Giveaway ( the Giveaway ) is a lottery run exclusively by the Ajaxpost Plays YouTube Channel ( Ajaxpost Plays ) All the terms described here are in addition to the standard terms and conditions applied

Am I A 'YouTuber' Now?

So, this was a post I wrote back in October 2020 but, for some reason never quite finished or published it...🤔 The situation has escalated somewhat since then, in August 2023 my little hobby channel had acquired an astonishing 2,500 subscribers!  I wonder if my musings of three years ago are still valid (I have made some minor edits to the original draft for spelling and grammar) ... Well, it was just a little hobby, to share the fun I was having with my Sims 3 stories and now I've reached the first big 'proper YouTuber' milestone ... 1,000 subscribers!! In December 2015 I uploaded my first ever gameplay video, "Slade Dynasty Chronicles Intro : Sims 3 Lets Play" As ropey as it was, I think I was actually using just the microphone on my cheap-as-chips headset, I actually enjoyed the process of creating videos and the very kind Sims 3 community were encouraging in their support. I experimented with other games and types of video, trying to work out what I most

Car Mechanic Simulator 2021: Audi TT Mk1 Rebuild

  Barn Find I've suspended my CMS21 series for the time being, it may return for occasional one-off specials or if enough viewers demand it! So, while I'm still playing and enjoying the game I thought I would continue to share some of my favourite jobs with you, at least in pictorial form. Thus first one is an Audi TT Mk1 that I found in a barn. The vehicle is a mod created by Bostonawy and includes some wonderful livery choices, as you'll see at the end of this post. So, this is the car I brought back to my Numpty The Car Fixer garage:   As you can see it's in pretty good condition, well, apart from the mechanicals!  For such a quality brand, and at less than £14,000, I was happy to take away this sporty little number as a restoration project. Apart from the accumulated dirt and dust, the body was generally in good shape. For this job, I didn't go overboard on performance, just some tweaking of the ignition and fuel systems but I made sure that some key compone