Three Cheers for Chris

Thanks to Chris for keeping the action fresh around here. Of late I have been doing everything except gaming and posting. I am not going to go into tons of personal details, but my dad is pretty sick, as is my geriatric cat.

I have been reading “Game of Shadows” a fairly interesting read, but you have to wonder about the credibility of an ex mistress. I don’t doubt for a minute that a ton of folks were on something, including Bonds, so it is not as if everyone should be surprised.

Remus “Ming Fu” (my Shih Tzu) likes beer. Not sure why that is important to write about right now, but it is pretty funny. He accidentally knocked over a beer bottle one night, and enjoyed lapping in the mess. Now he intentionally knocks over my beer at every opportunity. So he is trying for a beer right now while I am watching Team USA’s lackluster performance vs. Jamaica (1-1 at the half).

I keep thinking I am going to have some gaming time at some point soon, but there is always another something in the way. I have tons of stuff to play and write about when I get around to finding the time.

Not sure what the last post (Chris’ previous Just to be Clear) is about, but I remember the days when publishers/reviewers asked if I would give their game a “favorable” score if I was provided with a review copy, interview, or other such collateral. Chris can probably go into more details than I can, but the game review industry can be rather disenchanting. My game reviewing days are long behind me.

Chris, thanks again keeping things up and running.

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Just To Be Clear

If you’re a developer reading this blog, I (1) do not accept free/press copies of games as I am in no way, shape, or form a member of any press and I can afford to purchase the games I want to purchase; (2) do not review games; (3) do feel free to mention good and bad aspects of the games that I do purchase; (4) will mention developers by name for praise and for criticism; and (5) do not discuss anything with PR people from any game company…

…unless you’re the artist formally known as “mad as hell” Marc Duffy, because, well, I like most things from Sports Interactive. Even their PR folks.

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Text-Sim Tiers

Bill Harris took ten or so paragraphs to say “don’t release games before they are finished” and “don’t bad mouth your customers” but was an interesting read anyhow. I would not put Out of the Park Baseball or Eastside Hockey Manager on the same tier as PureSim. I think both SI products are a bit more refined and have much longer shelf lives than PureSim. Shaun Sullivan’s game is more in line with some of Grey Dog Software’s basketball products – good games that get better with each new iteration, but with much smaller fan bases. I imagine (with no numbers to back this up) that OOTPB and EHM do much larger sales numbers than either PureSim or Total Pro Basketball.

And to be honest, there is no other text-sim at Football Manager/Championship level, so tier-one is very much an exception and an exclusive club. Maybe if we throw Total Club Football in the mix, but they’ve had their own patch-related issues this year. And I imagine there are quite a few copies of TCF sold around the world.

I also think that while Mr. Harris describes a linear relationship in the ranking and I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. A game like Baseball Mogul has been around for a long time, but I would put it solidly in the third tier, or if we create a PueSim/TCB third tier, Baseball Mogul is in the fourth. You can be a long established text-sim and crank out broken game after broken game, or one that doesn’t evolve with the times. And as far as I can tell, Baseball Mogul fans are so loyal, that they purchase the game in enough numbers to keep the franchise going for all of these years.

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Doggie News

Lot’s of stuff posted at Grey Dog Software. Important news is that a new patch was released for Bowl Bound College Football and there will be a Wrestling Spirit 2 developed by the company. I do love how developers can make lemonade out of lemons. Bragging about 3 and 3.5 star (out of 5) reviews on your front page seems a bit bold, in my honest opinion.

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OOTPB Release Date

In case you’ve been living under a rock, mad as hell Marc Duffy posted the release date for Out of the Park Baseball 2006. May 31st seems like a long time to wait, but since we still don’t know how the online portion of the game works (or if it is even coded yet), I’m happy to see that this isn’t be rushed out of the door. I’m just hoping some brave soul converts their current online league to OOTPB 2006 on June 1st so that we can all learn from his or her pain…

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New OOTP History

For those that missed it, it seems that Markus has stepped into the void left by “mad as hell” Marc Duffy. He posted some very nice screenshots of the new league history that will come standard with OOTP 2006. One the one hand, I’m very happy that the old almanac is gone and a real statistical database will be included. On the other hand, what am I supposed to do with the 13 season history that I maintain for my league?

So many questions….

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