As I’ve blogged elsewhere, August has been a rather chaotic month for me. I haven’t abandoned this blog, I just haven’t taken the time out to post anything. However, I have taken some decompression time over the past few days. Last Wednesday was a major holiday in Korea (Aug. 15 — Liberation Day), followed by my birthday on Thursday. With the weekend right after and no pressure to meet any deadlines within the next few days, I dropped everything for five days to relax. I could have picked up one of my game-related projects, but after the weekend I would have had to drop it again anyway for at least another week. Instead, I chose to put on my gamer hat and have some fun.
Ten years ago or so I was rather hooked on a baseball management simulation which was developed by Dynamix (some of whom are now behind GarageGames) and published by Sierra. The game was Front Page Sports: Baseball Pro ‘96, and it was a blast. It couldn’t quite keep me out of the bars every night, but it did keep me riveted to the computer for several hours each week. It was the best computer baseball game I had ever played. Still, it had its weaknesses. The AI had some gaping holes. Two things that I recall are that AI-managed teams would make some really ridiculous trades and that too many players had outrageously unrealistic statistics as a season progressed. Another issue I had with it after some time is that there was no financial aspect to the game. It was the best at the time, but I always wanted something better.
I’ve played a few such sims over the years since, but none really did it for me. Earlier this year, I decided to try Out of the Park Baseball 2007. Like most games I buy, I gave it a cursory look through and then it sat on my hard disk for lack of time to play. So I decided to give it a go this week during my self-imposed free time. My experience can be summed up by saying that this is the baseball management simulation I’ve been wanting to play for years.
The amount of depth and detail that has gone into the development of this game is tremendous. The series has been around for a few years and, from what I gather, this is the best version yet. There are so many options available that you can adjust the game to match your play style. You can create historical leagues or wholly fantasy leagues. You can watch each game pitch by pitch as the manager, run it in a shortened one-pitch mode, or just play the role of GM and let the manager you hired handle the games. You can disallow trades, have salary caps or not, adjust the average salaries for different skill levels, set the size of the active roster… there are way too many aspects of the game that can be tweaked to detail here. Admittedly, when you first fire up the game it can be a little confusing. Fortunately, it comes with a detailed manual that will get you up and running in no time.
I remember thinking how cool it was when I played the Dynamix game that you could play multiple seasons and that players would age and retire, to be replaced by new players created for the draft. That sort of thing is standard fare for baseball management sims now, but OOTP takes it to the limit. For example, you can create high school and college feeder leagues and watch the progress of the players there, looking for future prospects. You can choose to create up to five different levels of minor league teams, allowing you to manage an entire organization. Drafting a young player based on his potential, as evaluated by the scouts you hire, and watching him work his way through the minors before landing on your major league roster to stand out as Rookie of the Year is a great feeling. Conversely, some draftees the scouts go nuts over fail to realize their potential and never make it out of the minors, leaving you disappointed that your future star turned out to be a dud. Then there’s the shock of the rare career-ending injury, the dilemma of trading a star player to whom you’ve grown attached in order to shore up a weakness elsewhere in the lineup, the nostalgia as a veteran of your organization passes his peak, and the pride you feel when your players get awards and honors, or break records. This is a game that draws you in and immerses you, even though it’s primarily a text-based game.
The graphics in the game are largely decorative. But the developers did license a facegen technology that generates faces for each player. This is a really, really nice touch. When you view a player’s profile, or see news about him, his portrait is right there. It’s one of the things that helps immerse you as the manager and helps to form a bond between you and your regular players. Anyone who enjoys baseball management sims should absolutely love this game. I’m not one of the die hard fanatics, so there’s really nothing about the game that irks me. Someone more hardcore might find a nitpick here and there, but from what I’ve seen on the forums this game is a really big hit.
A word of warning, though: if you aren’t careful, it will suck hours of your time away from you. The way I play allows me to go through an entire season within a couple of hours, but three times now what I had intended to be two-hour sessions turned into quite a bit more. As much as I enjoy this game, I’m not sure I trust myself to play very frequently after this weekend. I’m not the type of person who prefers to just sim a whole season and see the results. I like to follow the details, see the progress of my players after each game, trade when needed, make roster adjustments, and so on. It’s quite possible to play that way and only spend a small block of time here and there. But I keep finding myself saying, “Just one more game,” again, and again. Before I know it, four or five hours have passed and I’m halfway through the third season in one session. I think this is a game I’ll reserve for Sundays, when I typically do little programming/work and more goofing around anyway.
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