Despite gamers being somewhat more mainstream and not as ‘weird’ as in the past few decades, we’ve kind of gone out of focus as the subjects of documentaries exploring the lives of “this strange group of human” who is in some way “other” to the “average person” (notice my sarcastic quotation marks). Unless the documentary maker wants to rehash the age old “video games make you violent” argument.

However, FilmNova have made a docufilm entitled An Alternative Reality: The Football Manager Documentary that will have a limited one-night-only showing at a handful of cinemas across the UK some time next month. So maybe there is still something worth looking at.

According to Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson, “The documentary isn’t our story—it’s the story of the people who escape to the alternative reality of being a football manager, and the effect this has had on their lives. …But it’s not just for people who play—it’s also for people who’ve ever wondered why others spend so much time escaping into this world.”

This could hopefully be a documentary that aims to truthfully portray why people game as they do, using a simulator series that maybe isn’t out there in our faces a lot but has been and continues to be quietly successful under the vast and colourful scene that is the lively gaming community. I’ve even played some Football Manager in the past (the 2003 version), and for myself, my younger brother and my Dad it was a chance to play a game together. We voted on decisions, we rotated players, we purchased improvements for the stadium and we did this for hours. It sounds strange, but it was an activity we enjoyed doing together and the fond memories I have of those times makes me hope that the documentary will be fair to the players.

The docufilm will be shown at these Vue cinemas on the night of Tuesday October 7th. And only that night. So if you want to see it, better get making plans…

• Aberdeen
• Birkenhead
• Birmingham Star City
• Bolton
• Bristol Cribbs
• Bury the Rock
• Cardiff
• Cheshire Oaks
• Doncaster
• Edinburgh Omni
• Fulham
• Gateshead
• Glasgow Fort
• Islington
• Leeds Light
• Manchester Lowry
• Oxford
• Piccadilly
• Plymouth
• Portsmouth
• Reading
• Sheffield
• Swansea
• Watford
• Westfield White City
• Westfield Stratford