The Recycle Bin

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. It is a time when we look back and reflect on what we are thankful for as far as family, friends, and�games are concerned. As I look back over 2005, these are the things that I thank my lucky stars about (in no particular order):

I�m thankful that a company like Sports Interactive exists. I cannot imagine a cold dark world where there is no Football Manager, Eastside Hockey Manager, or Out of the Park Baseball Manager. Thank you SI Games.

I�m thankful that Markus Heihnson and Shaun Sullivan develop games for people like me. They understand what baseball general manager joy is and spread it through the world with their wonderful products. Thank you Markus and Shaun.

I�m thankful that The Escapist exists and fills my inbox with the best writing about games on the planet. It is so good that I would break my long standing vow of never paying for a print game magazine ever again. But the good news is that it is free! The intelligent and topical writing is very entertaining. Thank you The Escapist.

I�m thankful that Blizzard developed World of Warcraft. Even though it has been a year, I still play it almost every day. To use Bill Abner�s term, World of Warcraft is gaming crack and I just can�t get enough. Thank you Blizzard.

I�m thankful for Microsoft and the Xbox 360 game developers. Thank you for concentrating on pretty pictures and graphics instead of game play in your launch titles. Because you did this, I had zero notions of buying an Xbox 360 at launch and saved myself a lot of money. This was the most unanticipated console launch in my gaming history. The Xbox and PS2 had interesting titles and took my hard earned cash from me. But not this year. Thank you Microsoft.

I�m thankful for EA Sports. You continue to develop crappy game after crappy game. It is fun to watch your lemming like fans buy everything you dish out to them regardless of how good the title is. While I did like Madden�s online playing ability, the rest of the game was pretty poorly done. Just as General Motors is finding out, you can continue to make bad products and eventually the consumers will stop buying. Plus folks that wouldn�t think about text games do so now thanks to your terrible sports offerings. Thank you EA Sports.

Finally, I�m thankful for the online sports gaming community. Most of us have been doing this for many years and nothing beats the fun and challenge of being in an online league. So a big thank you to my OOTP online buddies everywhere!

Markus Heinsohn released the last Out of the Park Baseball 6.5b beta version yesterday. Hopefully we will see the 6.5b final version during my lifetime.

There�s a lot to like about Bowl Bound College Football. Everything is pretty intuitive and there is a nice email system that serves as a tutorial. The game guides you through the various stages that include a training camp, red shirting freshmen, setting depth charts, and even determining how much study hall time your less book smart students will have to keep their eligibility.

There�s still much work to be done. Playing for only 30 minutes revealed some huge bugs in the game. I chose to coach Navy (known as the �Sailers� in the game – please fix this before the game is released since I think Grey Dog meant “Sailors”) and set up a flexbone offense. For those of you not familiar with this formation, there isn�t a lot of passing within this style of offense. Imagine my shock when Navy played SMU and Navy�s QB threw for 377 yards with 33 attempts. A flexbone QB might have 377 yards passing in three or four games. There are some wishbone/flexbone AI issues in the demo.

Here�s a doozy of an error/bug. Read the following game log entry very closely:

�Southern Methodist ball, Q4, 2-2-NAVY2 (10:30) 3-14
Offense: Outside Run, Set: Shotgun, Play: SG-RB-straight-LT (outside run)
Defense: Stop Run, Set: Goal Line, Play: GL-run-Man-B7,8,9 (target run)
RB L. Droughns runs left end for 2 yards ****Touchdown!*****

Southern Methodist ball, Q4, 1-0-NAVY0 (10:02) 9-14
Isaiah Frederickson converts the 21 yard field goal.

Southern Methodist ball, Q4, 1-10-SMU35 (09:44) 12-14�

Notice that after the TD, SMU was awarded 3 points for their extra point. This consistently happened throughout the game. I�d suggest fixing this before the full version is released.

Don�t know if this is a bug or not, but there wasn�t much scoring in the game until late during the 4th quarter when SMU scored 22 points and Navy 14 during a five or six minute span during the game.

The demo shows a game with a lot of potential that doesn�t quite work yet. But to Grey Dog’s credit, at least we’re not paying full price to be beta testers. I’d go ahead and post any bugs you find in their bug report forum.

There’s a 34 MB demo available for Grey Dog Software’s Bowl Bound College Football. Also, some new screen shots for those of you not trying out the demo.

There’s more about tactics on the Football Manager 2006 site.

There are two new clips available that show the attack of the pawns, er, I mean the Championship Manager 2006 3D match engine.

Shaun Sullivan posted a pre-release version 1.1a patch for PureSim Baeball 2005 Gold Edition.

I just noticed that on the Out of the Park Baseball Manager site there is a link at the bottom of the page to CATOBASE 2006. The link doesn’t work, but has OOTPBM finally officially embraced Catobase in some fashion? This is good news for OOTPBM fans if true.

Vanderbilt defeated Tennessee. In a football game.

Strat-O-Matic released patch 5.01E for their Version 5.0 CD-Rom Football game.

Instead of discussing my concerns here on the blog, I decided to go straight to the source. I am very confident that Out of the Park Baseball Manager will be a great game for solo players. I am not so sure how things will work for those of us that run online leagues. It appears we will have more information after January’s OOTPBM blog post. No big deal, I can wait and pay full price.

For those that missed it, there’s a 10% pre-order discount and 20% if you’re an OOTPBM newsletter subscriber.

FInally, Grey Dog Software, please go to the OOTPBM web page to see how you should handle pre-release information for your games.

I still think OOTPBM is just too perfect an abreviation if the game turns out to be, BM, but I digress. All sorts of updates available on the new SI site. I just got back from a meeting, but I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow. Hint – I will not be pre-ordering this game.

Eidos posted an article that discusses player happiness and interactive systems in Championship Manager 2006. This is a pretty detailed explanation of the “talk” system in the game, which includes 30 possible events that players can react to. Looks pretty interesting.

Strat-O-Matic Football Version 5.01C is available for download.

Sports Interactive posted an article with suggestions for better tactics in Football Manager 2006.