GM Games

FHM 5 delivers new community-requested features including dramatically improved tactics, an all-new interface, player and staff personalities, new team chemistry, accurate 2018-19 season rosters, online leagues and more. The release date is October 5, 2018. [Contents of this story are pieces from the OOTP Developments Announcement] Here’s what you’ll get in FHM 5: Up-to-Date 2018-19 NHL® Rosters Every NHL® team features accurate rosters full of freshly rated players, along with the real clubs, awards, and trophies associated with the greatest hockey league in the world. Up-to-date rosters are also available for the dozens of global leagues, competitions, and tournaments in FHM 5. Improved Tactics New, deep tactics that allow unprecedented control over how your entire team performs, down to each line and individual player. New User Interface We redesigned the user interface to make it easier and faster to do what you want to do while you’re managing your team. New Chemistry Dynamics Mix and match players to find the right team chemistry that will maximize performance on the ice. New Player and Staff Personalities Set your team up for long-term success by hiring staff members with the right personalities and paying attention to how players’ personalities mesh with each other. Online Leagues Compete against friends around the world and decide who has the best hockey strategy. And More! FHM 5 allows you to build your hockey franchise into a perennial Stanley Cup® winner YOUR way, in the current 2018-19 season or back through the entire history of the sport – all the way back to the very beginning! Different eras demand different tactics, and it’s up to you to put together the best club possible for every era. The post The scoop! Franchise Hockey Manager FHM5 features for this 2019 season appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games. View the full article

As some of you know, I decided to put a pause on the redesign that I mentioned in my prior blog post so that I could focus on some key feature improvements. My goal is to clean up some of the problematic areas of the site before moving on to a full-blown redesign. I’ve been wanting to make a stronger marketing push for Pennant Chase to see if we can drive more users in, but I really think some issues need to be corrected before that happens. As you have noticed, the "Auto Draft" was renamed "Quick Draft". Historically, I used "Auto Draft" because it was the only draft method available for Auto Leagues. But now that we have the Daily Draft, the term Auto Draft makes no sense. Also, I am rolling out a new Quick Draft that mixes positional players and offers stronger players in general. This new draft will apply *only* to leagues that are re-drafting, and *not* leagues that have already started drafting and are waiting for more owners. In other words, nobody is going to get screwed if they already drafted their team. Leagues that end starting on 9/21 will get this new Quick Draft. As with any new change, it’s going to be a work in progress – some will hate it, some will love it, and there will be plenty of feedback. In my few tests, I think it will have the same impact of generally balanced teams, but the overall talent will be stronger on each team, especially pitching. People generally disliked that a lot of great players were never offered, and that a lot of crappy players were offered, especially pitchers. We all know the last teams to draft tend to be given a slightly worse pool to choose from – we’ll see how this goes. If it's a total disaster, I can easily roll back to the old draft. But hopefully it works out for the better.The next step will be to fix the free agency frenzy issue that happens in Quick Draft leagues after day 6, possibly changing to a waiver system for the first few days of the season. Also, since we are having a hard time getting Auto Leagues to fill up, I am going to look into the possibility of better CPU managers and also exposing more Auto Leagues on the Join League page at one time.More to come! View the full article

Strategy is key in DDS: Pro Football 2019 and Pro Basketball 2019It’s September and that means the 2019 versions of our world class sports simulations are right around the corner and we’re bringing you a first look today at Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2019 and Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2019! There are a host of new features and improvements coming to both games and today we’re going to focus on a key component of both games. STRATEGY! Sports simulation games are all about strategy and both of our pro games this year have upped the ante in bringing you brand new strategic options. Let’s start on the gridiron. One huge new change you will find in DDS: Pro Football 2019 is that in career mode you’ll be putting yourself in the game. If you’re familiar with DDS: Pro Basketball you’ll feel right at home with the global and local play options letting you control everything or just the job of general manager with the option of hiring yourself as head coach. If you really want to up the challenge turn on the mode that will allow yourself to be fired – then these new strategy options will really count! The first thing you’ll notice in our screenshots is that the UI has been totally revamped and rebuilt from the ground up to give you better access to the game information. Everything you need is just one click away with our expanded new side game menu. We’ve got a brand new depth chart here offering you different packages you can save and switch between. You’ll be able to assign use of those packages for each formation ensuring you have the optimal lineup on the field at all times. For the utmost in control, create your own custom playbook. Each play is laid out in detail now and you’ll be able to quickly and easily put together a playbook that best suits your team. What would all these strategy options be if you only had the final score to rely on? Take a look at the play analysis and see how every play you have run has stacked up against every defense your opponent has thrown at you. Don’t forget to check the flip side too to see how your defenses are holding up. Use this info along with the custom playbook option to build precisely the right strategy to lead your team to victory! Strategy doesn’t stop with the on field play. You can’t forget about managing the team itself and the strategy of managing your cap. Players will give you some informational feedback such as they hoping to change teams and you have the ability to make that happen with a smart offer! You can promise a role to a potential free agent as well as offer him a smattering of contract bonuses and use different distribution strategies to make the contract as cap friendly as possible. That’s just a small sample of what to look forward to with DDS: Pro Football 2019 but let’s take a look at what’s coming to the hardwood in this year’s edition of DDS: Pro Basketball. We talked about new game modes for DDS:PF – DDS: Pro Basketball 2019 has them too. You’ll be able to play in challenge mode where you’ll be at the mercy of ownership trying to meet their desires or play in the new sandbox mode where you won’t be fired for poor performance and will be able to change to any team you want in the offseason. Challenge mode introduces some new concepts into the game from ownership. You’ll have a clear budget on what to spend on players and the coaching staff. You’re the one writing the checks so you can exceed those budgets but do so at your own peril – even winning big will only lessen ownership’s unhappiness with you not sticking to the budget. You owner will give you a clear expectation of what he expects you to achieve on the court as well and will also now comment on your roster. If he wants a superstar you better find out a way to get him one! The team staff budget was mentioned above as a new feature but there’s more to it than just coaching salaries. There is a new training staff budget allocation. The more you allocate to the staff the better off your team will be. Better funded staffs can both help players to avoid injury as well as recover faster from them. We’ve all seen the importance of a good training staff in the real world so keep that in mind when deciding just how much you want to spend on that new head coach! Game strategy has been totally revamped in DDS: Pro Basketball 2019. On the offensive side you’ll have a number of strategies to choose from. Each strategy will impact the style of play in a different fashion and you’ll be able to see what it does to pace, floor usage and play actions. For example the Seven Seconds offense shown above will make your team play as fast as possible on the offensive end relying heavily on attacking with the basketball and leading to many drives and three point attempts. If you’ve got a big man you want getting the ball in the post (remember those guys?) then this won’t be the strategy for you! We didn’t just change things up on the offensive end though – the defensive side of the ball gets a whole new look in DDS: Pro Basketball 2019 too! You’re given four man to man strategies to choose from (you also can use zone and press options like you previously could with your coaching philosophies). Each M2M strategy has its pros and cons and you can change them to suit your opponent. Playing a team that loves the three? Use the attack strategy and run those guys off the three point line. Hopefully you have a good shot blocking big man if you’re doing so otherwise you might be running them right into a layup line. General defensive strategies we’re enough though. You can assign up to five players individual defensive instructions. You can assign them to guard the best perimeter, best post or just the best player period and they’ll be matched up accordingly. If you really want to get down to a fine level of detail you can even assign specific matchups for the next game giving you the ultimate in control! We hope you’ve enjoyed this first look at our pro lineup for 2019. Stay tuned as we will be announcing more information including release date and special pre-order discounts for both games! We look forward to hearing from you about these new games – hit us up in our forums, on Facebook and on Twitter. The post Your first look at the 2019 lineup! appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

The OOTP Developments Twitch channel continues to feature game streams from Out of the Park Baseball community managers T.J. Lauerman and Kris Jardine, as well as from Adam, community manager for Franchise Hockey Manager. When we last checked in with them, Lauerman and Jardine were running modern days sims of the Los Angeles Angels and […] View the full article

Those of you who were around back in 2014 might remember the not-so-successful redesign that launched at the start of the year, and quickly had to be modified due to all sorts of issues. If you don’t remember it, all the better. I remember it all too well, but that’s a good thing. (If you want to re-live some history, just look back on the blog feed.)Most people, at least the vocal ones, were not in favor of any kind of redesign. I took that as a compliment, but I also knew the site had to evolve or die. I can’t fathom how Pennant Chase would be around today if I hadn’t forged ahead back in 2014. Could you imagine a website that doesn’t work on mobile phones or doesn’t allow for the creation of a mobile app? Over 50% of new users find this site thanks to the app. We would have been dead in the water without that redesign. As painful as it was at the time, it was the right strategic decision. We’re coming dangerously close to being in that position once again. We’re fast approaching five years since any kind of redesign, which is a millenia in technology years. Our lack of a modern design prevents me from quickly and easily leveraging many features that people consider standard nowadays, like tooltips, or confirmation screens, or suggestive search boxes, or any number of other features that could make the site experience on par with current expectations.Furthermore, a new design would allow the site to more easily transition to future advancements in both front end and server-side code. I won’t get into the techie talk here, but a lot of the code the site runs on is in many ways obsolete.So here’s the big news - I’ve been working on a redesign for over a year in what little time I have available. I know what some of you are going to say: “The site is fine, why waste your time on that when there are so many other valuable improvements that could be made?” First off, I’ve continued to make fixes and improvements despite the ongoing work on the redesign. Second, the redesign is going to lead to the opportunity to make more changes across the site. As I re-imagine and re-work basically every page, it lends the opportunity to make things better.This time around, you are all going to be able to give it a spin and provide feedback before the design is “final”. In fact, it could take another year or more for this design to reach all pages of the site. During that time, the current design will still be available. I’m starting with non-league functions such as the message boards, and once that stuff is all ready, I’ll move onto actual league pages. But this is going to be a long process. The cool thing is, it’s a chance for me to work in new features, and have you all chime in on the features you want to see.I know some people will hate the redesign, at least at first. When you’re on a website as much as we are all on Pennant Chase, you learn to love it the way it is. But I hope most everyone will come to appreciate the changes and embrace them. Much like back in 2014, we have to keep moving forward.For example, one of the new areas you’ll see today is the boards and personal inbox. There are a ton of changes, so many that I’m not even going to list them, I’m just going to let you experience it and let me know what you think.So here’s the link to start checking out: The New PC! In terms of non-league pages, I’ve gotten to everything but the Join Leagues and My League List areas. You can start using the new design pages as you wish, but please note this is considered “Beta” so you may find bugs or issues - if you do, please let me know! View the full article

Yes, that’s former Los Angeles Dodgers catcher and current LA Angels manager Mike Scioscia between two smiling kids. That photo was snapped in 1990, and the kid on the left is Scott Andes, who went on to become such a respected blogger that he was able to earn press credentials and meet and interview many […] View the full article

Three members of the OOTP Developments team — creator and lead developer Markus Heinsohn, co-developer Matt Arnold, and Chief Marketing Officer Rich Grisham — attended this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game and All-Star Home Run Derby in Washington, DC. They spent some time letting us know how the trip went. “It was a fantastic […] View the full article

Lots of interesting stuff to cover from yesterday’s survey. One nice thing is that I only had to keep it up for a day because over 400 people responded! There were a few duplicates or bogus submissions, and those were easily removed. By the way, if you didn’t get to take it and want to throw your opinion in, it’s still available:Survey HereHere are some of the really interesting responses:These three results are really interesting… people are clearly lukewarm on introducing CPU teams, which I can appreciate, but they really want to see more types of Auto Leagues. At the same time, they hate the idea of smaller leagues. It shows how challenging this issue is - leagues are not filling fast, so introducing more types of Auto Leagues is only going to cause them to fill even slower. Yet people really want more leagues, yet they don’t want fewer teams. Maybe there’s a happy medium where at most we could have 1 or 2 CPU teams to help move things along. We did this before, but the CPU teams were really bad because it was thrown together pretty quickly. Now some more fascinating stuff:Here’s the thing about all the above results. It’s important for people to understand that a vocal minority of discontents tend to show on the boards, and when I make decisions, I have to consider a much larger, silent constituency. That’s why I do these “annoying” surveys (as some people called them) in the first place.That said, the vocal minority is still very important in calling out issues. While most people thought the sim results were fine, there clearly was an issue with offense developing. Without people alerting me, it would be hard for me to know. But you can see that most people like Rank or don’t care either way. What was also fascinating is that the top reasons people like Rank are for the “better visibility” (52%) and “fairness to new players” (55%) which is not what I was expecting. Rank was first and foremost put in place to provide better leveling of the stats that matter, but only 34% of people cared about that. The other thing people really like is the improved balance in the Auto Draft and better team rankings for Supp Draft (both at 50%). So Rank has a lot of positive impact despite some people hating it.I think Rank has been important for a lot of reasons, but if I could do it all over again I would probably hide it so it wasn’t creating such an outroar or doing things like impacting trades. But you can see that it has quickly become an important thing to a majority of people. Is it always right to appease the majority? No, of course not. But this is one where I think it makes sense to find out what people really want. I’m not up for 60% of the site going crazy because I react and suddenly hide Rank from everyone.Finally, as for limited Slump Buster, it’s not exactly a run-away winner, because almost half of people don’t want it or don’t care. This one is tricky because there are two ways to look at it. Only 28% of people would be unhappy if I changed it, but it’s still only about 50/50 in terms of people who really want it. I’m leaning toward making this change because it makes sense in regards to realistic sim results.As for the verbatims, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, which will take time to read through entirely. One of the last entries was an “ad-free” site for a small monthly fee of $2. That just goes to show how much people don’t understand the reality of running this site. The monthly fee would absolutely have to be more than $2, and thus very few people would participate, which is why monetization is such a challenging issue, and why we all have to deal with ads.As for “themes” - there were a lot of suggestions around more managerial control. This was probably the biggest “group” of suggestions. I can appreciate all those, and I’ll simply do what I can in that arena - it’s an area of endless possibilities and lot of work, so it’s a tough area to make progress, but there are some obvious wins we could have there.There was a lot of feedback about players not playing up to their Real Stats. This is one of the hardest things about running a site like this, people don’t understand the zero-sum reality and that nobody is going to play close to real stats in most of the types of leagues offered. Other trends - a lot of people had issues with the free agency free-for-all in Auto Leagues. A lot of people wanted better replays with graphics - this was a surprise. (But sorry, that one is probably never going to happen unless EA buys the site.)There was a LOT more in the verbatim's - you can imagine, almost 400 unique ideas to make the site better! Now if only I could win the PowerBall, or didn’t need to sleep... View the full article

While David Carducci, owner of new OOTP blog The Yakker, indulges in historical “What if?” scenarios, our own T.J. Lauerman and Kris Jardine are forging their own paths through the 2018 season and beyond at the helms of the Los Angeles Angels and Milwaukee Brewers, respectively. They’re streaming their seasons on our Twitch channel on Mondays […] View the full article

“Exploring the Out of the Park Baseball multiverse,” it says on the homepage of The Yakker, the new blog from sportswriter David Carducci, who has covered multiple World Series and spent six years as a beat writer focused on the Cleveland Browns, among many other media roles. True to its tagline, The Yakker indulges in […] View the full article

We are very excited to announce that Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf will be released here on July 17, 2018! DDS:PG will also be released on Steam as well. If you missed our initial announcement about the game, click here to read it and check out those initial screenshots. Today we want to show off some more screenshots and talk about some more new things for DDS: Pro Golf. DDS:PG is going to ship with two beautiful courses – the Wolverine Golf Club and Florida Bay. Extensive work has gone into building the courses to bring you an incredible visual experience. See for yourself! The Wolverine Golf Club Florida Bay Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf will come with a built-in course design tool which will allow you to create quick and easy courses to play around on too – they won’t have the detail of the stock courses (unless someone gets really, really creative with custom textures) but you’ll be able to knock out courses very quickly just to fill out your schedule if you want some more variety. Don’t worry though we’re going to make additional courses as quickly as possible and they’ll be available for sale in our webstore for a small cost – we’ll even have course bundles. More on that later on. In addition to the courses looking better and the overall gameplay screen getting a huge upgrade from the Total Pro Golf series we’ve added more on course control in putting. When you’re on the green you will be able to read both the break and the speed. Your readouts will be influenced by your skills and those of your caddy and you’ll be asked to enter a number from 0-10 for both the break and the speed of your putt. If you think the green is slow then you enter a low number for speed. If you think it has a huge break then you enter a high number for break. Your success on the putt will be influenced by how close or far away you were from the way the hole is playing that day. It’s another neat little feature that really steps up the challenge in DDS:PG. A new challenge looms for putting We hope you’re as excited for DDS:PG as we are getting golf back in our lineup here at Wolverine Studios. Don’t forget to too and we’ll see you in mid-July to tee off with Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf.The post Tee Off On July 17th With Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

PC user BuddlyHartley recently put together a guide for advancing a Real-Life "Rewind" league that he was handing off to another commissioner. It's a guide that others who want to run this type of league might find helpful, and Buddy was willing to share it with the community. A "Rewind" league is where you are building the exact teams from baseball's past, and advancing those teams to the their next real-life season, while not wanting to lose a player's compiled stats from season to season. It's tough to run this type of league because there's a lot of clean-up to do and new players to add each season. But it's rewarding work if you're willing to put in the effort!Here is Buddy's guide:This is a Guide that I prepared to help the new commissioner of a Real Progression league called "Classic Rewind", but it can be applied to any Real Progression league. It is not the only way to run such a league, and other commissioners will use different approaches, but it does cover all of the basic steps in a systematic way that a brand-new commissioner to such a league might find helpful. When a season is running, any league is easy, but it is those “End-of-season tasks” that make this league a lot more time consuming. First off, I've usually got about 9 pages open on my computer when I am doing the year end stuff. 1. The League Home Page, just to keep everyone up to date.2-3. Two pages of the Current Roster for the team I am working on. You’ll see why later. 4. The Holding Team Roster5. Commissioner Tools open to Apply Player Progression6. Commissioner Tools open to Import Historic Player or Team7. Free Agent List open to Retired Players8. baseball-reference open to the new season for the team that I will be progressing.9. baseball-reference open for individual player look-ups.Tasks:I am assuming that you have already worked through all the easy stuff after the World Series that are on the Post-Season Wizard list, such as-- Award Championship Trophy-- Award Owner a Ring-- Clear Compiled Stats-- Clear Game Results – NOTE: Don’t hurry on this one. You might want to leave the World Series results up for a day or two, so that people have a chance to see the boxscores, or some will complain. Also, on that Clear Game Results page, here is how you deal with that page … Uncheck “Clear Transaction Log”, because in Classic Rewind we keep a record of our transactions from year to year. Keep the next box “Set Each Team’s Trades Back to Zero” checked -- and don’t forget to Pick a World Series MVP, if you haven’t already. We do NOT do Step #10 on the Wizard list called “Clear Team Rosters.Now you are at the big step …. “Age Players” …. This is where you do the “Real Progression”, and this is where I will spend my time explaining what I do, as this is where you will spend several hours every off-season. Here is the order in which I do things, but you can adapt this any way you want, as they aren’t really written in stone. I just find that going in this order saves me time, and also helps me not miss anything. 1. Sort out the Holding Team and write down all the players who will be returning in the new season on a piece of paper, and what team they will be coming back to. Keep that list handy.2. Starting with Free Agents, and then moving on to the first team (usually Atlanta, since I do them in alphabetical order), hit the "Apply Player Progression" button, making sure that it is set for "Real Life (Rarely Used)". 3. After you hit the button, a bunch of players will be then listed at the top of the page as "Retired". Guy’s Note – I am removing this part of Buddy’s guide because I recently made a change to how retirement is handled in real-life progression. When you progress players, it un-retires every player and then tries to advance them if they are active in the season you are advancing to. If they are not, you will see “re-retired” on the list after you progress. Players that come out of retirement will now be free agents. You will have to assign these free agents to the right team if you are doing a “rewind” league like Buddy is describing. 4. Once you’ve dealt with any Retired players who aren’t really retired, you can then go to the two current rosters (pages 2&3) and refresh just page 3. You can then, if you wish, compare the previous year’s team (page 2) with the new season’s team after progression (page 3), and see what players had big improvements or big drops. As Commish, I sort of like to stay on top of this stuff for every team, just so I have the big picture. Once I’m done with last year’s squad, I delete page 2 (for now, as I’ll replace it when I start on the next team). 5. Now you need to import the new rookie players to the team. Go the baseball-reference page for that team for the new season, and basically work your way down the list through EVERY player. Remember to even look guys up who had 2 AB or 5 IP, because some players played for 2 (or more) teams in their rookie seasons. 6. After all Rookie Imports are done, then you need to move over any players from the Holding Team that are ready to return to that team. (With the new changes you may no longer need a holding team. Just move free agents who are not retired to their real teams.) This is usually a very small number of players, if any. 7. So that’s it … you’ve now done one team. Congratulations!!! Only 23 more to go!! LOL It is quite the process, and it can take hours to work through every team, but I have actually found it quite interesting and fun to do. Just don’t hurry. Take your time and enjoy the process. The league is not going anywhere. If someone quits because you took a day or two longer then they thought was necessary, wave them goodbye, as they are jerks anyway. Anyone who has done the commissioner duties in a real progression league, and knows how much work it is to do, is just happy it gets done and that someone is willing to do it, whether it takes a week or two or even three to finish. It’s a BIG job!8. We can skip the next item on the Wizard, since we don’t “Retire Players” in this league. That is done automatically when we do the real progressions. 9. “Create New Schedule”. As I mentioned before, you don’t really want to do this … EVER. It is one of the worst tasks that a Commissioner can do, and totally thankless. So I leave everything in the first 3 Options alone, and jump down to Option #4 “Swap Teams on Schedule”. This is just done for variety, but I think is worth doing. But … when you swap teams, you can ONLY swap teams within the same Division, or it will throw the entire schedule out of whack. Remember, this is an original schedule, so games are already weighted to teams in your own division first, then out of your division. Also, I do this randomly, and don’t write down my choices from year to year, so that there is no pattern to it. You can do it differently if you wish, but I didn’t want it to become predictable. So once you’ve swapped all the teams, go to the Schedule page, then go to “Switch to all Upcoming Games”, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the schedule. All teams should have 81 Home Games, and 81 Away Games. Hopefully no problems there, as the schedule has been fine for the past 3 seasons. Just always remember that it is a 176 Day Schedule, not a 162 Day schedule, and you’ll be fine. Thanks again Buddy for sharing! View the full article

When Out of the Park Baseball 15 debuted the ability to play out games in 3D stadiums, Mike Silva found his calling and began creating historical 3D stadiums and sharing them with others. (You can find the complete list on our forum.) “I had always had a love for baseball stadiums and their unique appearances, […] View the full article

During the OOTP crew’s trip to PAX East for an indie game marketing panel, they held a meet-and-greet for fans at Boston Beerworks, which is across the street from Fenway Park. The event saw 25 people show up, including longtime OOTP players, members of the games media, and several OOTP marketing team members. Over the […] View the full article

Growing up in the 1950s, we did not have PlayStations, Nintendos, or Xboxes—no video games at all. We did not have 150 channels on cable or satellite TV or VHS movies or DVDs. We had no surround sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, and no Internet. But we did have our imaginations, and we made up games. One game I played was dice baseball. In college in 1970, I programmed a baseball computer game based on my dice baseball game that has been accepted in the Baseball Hall of Fame as the oldest baseball game computer code. How did this journey happen? When I was about ten years old, my cousin George introduced me to a game that involved rolling two dice; their combinations when tossed equated to hits, doubles, homers, or outs. I will always remember the dice combinations: two is a home run, three a double, four an out, and so on through twelve. The probabilities of the dice combinations with hits were comparable to a typical player’s season batting average. In my junior high school days, I played this game hundreds of times and began keeping cumulative statistics for batter and team records. I played a full thirty-two-game season with all the National League teams, and I even played an All-Star game after each team had played sixteen games by selecting the batters and pitchers with the best individual records. I am convinced that the skills I learned from adding up batter’s records and calculating batting averages from my simple game prepared me for a business career that involves measures and metrics. It led to my authoring books and presenting seminars in over thirty international cities annually on how organizations can improve their performance. As a manager of performance management solutions at SAS, a world leader in business intelligence and analytics software, I observe incredible computer applications, ranging from biotech industry drug testing analysis to retailers forecasting line-item inventory for tens of thousands of shelf-items in hundreds, sometimes thousands, of stores. From child’s play to game theory During my junior year at Cornell University, I took a game theory course taught by Henry David Block, a famous professor who wrote computer chess games that played against computerized chess games written by Russian professors. I majored in industrial engineering and operations research, which was a demanding curriculum on top of being a varsity football letterman. Professor Block, with his classic white Santa Claus beard, was an inspiration to me. His course, titled Bionics and Robots, was fun and less stressful than other engineering courses. For my term project in this course, I wrote a computer program using a programming language that was a blend of COBOL and FORTRAN—two “ancient” programming languages. The computer code applied a random number generator (in place of the two dice) for one hundred possible outcomes of batter hits that simulated every batter’s at-bat for the 1969 National League season. I still have the original hard-copy print-out on that big paper with the paper-feed holes—a true relic of the past. It was programmed on IBM punch cards that you had to walk to the data center to submit your card deck. This program’s deck of punch cards was a foot thick. My classmate, Pete Watzka (who, coincidently, led the 1971 Ivy League baseball conference in batting average), calibrated each player to his 1969 batting average. Our computer program also differentiated batting power between single and home-run hitters, and for each game we adjusted the players “down or up” based on the quality of the opposing pitcher’s 1969 record. Our computer program simulated all of the games played for each National League team. Pete and I enjoyed changing the input variables of players and pitchers and seeing how the outcomes changed each time we processed a computer run. On May 13, 1970, Pete and I submitted the “final” computer run for the course paper. The fun outcome of that run was that the team’s win-loss percentage records were very similar to their actual season records. The New York Mets won the league title. Rico Carty of the Atlanta Braves had a .340 batting average (compared to Carty’s actual .342 average), beating Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds for the batting title. Phil Niekro of the Atlanta Braves ranked as best pitcher with a 32-5 win-loss record. Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates led in home runs with forty-four and edged out Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants for the Most Valuable Player award— the final equation in the computer program. Professor Block gave us an A, but the real pleasure was programming the code for the game. The evolution of baseball computer games Computer games have clearly become a big industry, and not just for kids— adults play them too. Over the years, computer baseball games have become increasingly sophisticated. For example, Sim Dynasty Baseball allows one to draft a fictitious franchise, set the rotation and lineup, groom prospects in the farm system, and make blockbuster trades. Three times a day, its custom designed Artificial Baseball Engine (affectionately named Abe) simulates the games and compiles complete box scores, play-by-play, and year-to-date statistics. Another game, Baseball Mogul, puts the player in complete control of any professional baseball team. One can begin in any year you choose, from 1901 to 2008, with the full rosterof your favorite team—or an entirely fictional team of your own creation. You can negotiate trades and sign free agents to build a dynasty. At the core of any computer sport game is the “spin of the dial” or “dice roll” that determines the next outcome. In the game that Pete and I created, a few lines of comport code brought the next batter to the plate and processed the random number generator that was cross-referenced to that at-bat outcome. Arguably, today’s baseball computer games evolved from that little kernel of computer code. You can imagine the thrill of now knowing what we did not realize at the time, that Pete and I were pioneers by developing that first computer code. Our accomplishment is obviously not on the same scale as the Wright brothers, but it is a great feeling. The journey to the baseball hall of fame I have been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research for over twenty-five years. A few years ago, after seeing so many computerized sports games in the marketplace, I posted a question on the SABR Web site asking whether anyone knew about the history of computerized baseball. I received a reply to contact the Baseball Hall of Fame. MLB employees introduced me to James L. Gates Jr., the Library Director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. He was invaluable in guiding me through the process of submitting the computer code and course paper Pete and I wrote to be judged whether it qualified as an artifact. It was accepted, and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum mailed me the official Deed of Gift that officially recognizes the computer code for baseball gaming purposes. Pete Watzka and I are honored to have been early pioneers in creating computer code for baseball gaming. Little did I know as a youngster that dice baseball games would evolveinto an industry of computerized sports games, or that developing a computer program replicating my childhood pastime would influence my career in the application of automated information processing. I am now approaching sixty years old. Occasionally, I ask myself what legacy I want to be known for after I have passed on. Several of my options involve my business career. But having an accomplishment of mine archived in the Baseball Hall of Fame brings a smile to my face. The post Realizing a Kid’s Dream of Computerized Baseball appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games. View the full article

Growing up in the 1950s, we did not have PlayStations, Nintendos, or Xboxes—no video games at all. We did not have 150 channels on cable or satellite TV or VHS movies or DVDs. We had no surround sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, and no Internet. But we did have our imaginations, and we made up games. One game I played was dice baseball. In college in 1970, I programmed a baseball computer game based on my dice baseball game that has been accepted in the Baseball Hall of Fame as the oldest baseball game computer code. How did this journey happen? When I was about ten years old, my cousin George introduced me to a game that involved rolling two dice; their combinations when tossed equated to hits, doubles, homers, or outs. I will always remember the dice combinations: two is a home run, three a double, four an out, and so on through twelve. The probabilities of the dice combinations with hits were comparable to a typical player’s season batting average. In my junior high school days, I played this game hundreds of times and began keeping cumulative statistics for batter and team records. I played a full thirty-two-game season with all the National League teams, and I even played an All-Star game after each team had played sixteen games by selecting the batters and pitchers with the best individual records. I am convinced that the skills I learned from adding up batter’s records and calculating batting averages from my simple game prepared me for a business career that involves measures and metrics. It led to my authoring books and presenting seminars in over thirty international cities annually on how organizations can improve their performance. As a manager of performance management solutions at SAS, a world leader in business intelligence and analytics software, I observe incredible computer applications, ranging from biotech industry drug testing analysis to retailers forecasting line-item inventory for tens of thousands of shelf-items in hundreds, sometimes thousands, of stores. From child’s play to game theoryDuring my junior year at Cornell University, I took a game theory course taught by Henry David Block, a famous professor who wrote computer chess games that played against computerized chess games written by Russian professors. I majored in industrial engineering and operations research, which was a demanding curriculum on top of being a varsity football letterman. Professor Block, with his classic white Santa Claus beard, was an inspiration to me. His course, titled Bionics and Robots, was fun and less stressful than other engineering courses. For my term project in this course, I wrote a computer program using a programming language that was a blend of COBOL and FORTRAN—two “ancient” programming languages. The computer code applied a random number generator (in place of the two dice) for one hundred possible outcomes of batter hits that simulated every batter’s at-bat for the 1969 National League season. I still have the original hard-copy print-out on that big paper with the paper-feed holes—a true relic of the past. It was programmed on IBM punch cards that you had to walk to the data center to submit your card deck. This program’s deck of punch cards was a foot thick. My classmate, Pete Watzka (who, coincidently, led the 1971 Ivy League baseball conference in batting average), calibrated each player to his 1969 batting average. Our computer program also differentiated batting power between single and home-run hitters, and for each game we adjusted the players “down or up” based on the quality of the opposing pitcher’s 1969 record. Our computer program simulated all of the games played for each National League team. Pete and I enjoyed changing the input variables of players and pitchers and seeing how the outcomes changed each time we processed a computer run. On May 13, 1970, Pete and I submitted the “final” computer run for the course paper. The fun outcome of that run was that the team’s win-loss percentage records were very similar to their actual season records. The New York Mets won the league title. Rico Carty of the Atlanta Braves had a .340 batting average (compared to Carty’s actual .342 average), beating Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds for the batting title. Phil Niekro of the Atlanta Braves ranked as best pitcher with a 32-5 win-loss record. Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates led in home runs with forty-four and edged out Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants for the Most Valuable Player award— the final equation in the computer program. Professor Block gave us an A, but the real pleasure was programming the code for the game. The evolution of baseball computer gamesComputer games have clearly become a big industry, and not just for kids— adults play them too. Over the years, computer baseball games have become increasingly sophisticated. For example, Sim Dynasty Baseball allows one to draft a fictitious franchise, set the rotation and lineup, groom prospects in the farm system, and make blockbuster trades. Three times a day, its custom designed Artificial Baseball Engine (affectionately named Abe) simulates the games and compiles complete box scores, play-by-play, and year-to-date statistics. Another game, Baseball Mogul, puts the player in complete control of any professional baseball team. One can begin in any year you choose, from 1901 to 2008, with the full roster of your favorite team—or an entirely fictional team of your own creation. You can negotiate trades and sign free agents to build a dynasty. At the core of any computer sport game is the “spin of the dial” or “dice roll” that determines the next outcome. In the game that Pete and I created, a few lines of comport code brought the next batter to the plate and processed the random number generator that was cross-referenced to that at-bat outcome. Arguably, today’s baseball computer games evolved from that little kernel of computer code. You can imagine the thrill of now knowing what we did not realize at the time, that Pete and I were pioneers by developing that first computer code. Our accomplishment is obviously not on the same scale as the Wright brothers, but it is a great feeling. The journey to the baseball hall of fameI have been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research for over twenty-five years. A few years ago, after seeing so many computerized sports games in the marketplace, I posted a question on the SABR Web site asking whether anyone knew about the history of computerized baseball. I received a reply to contact the Baseball Hall of Fame. MLB employees introduced me to James L. Gates Jr., the Library Director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. He was invaluable in guiding me through the process of submitting the computer code and course paper Pete and I wrote to be judged whether it qualified as an artifact. It was accepted, and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum mailed me the official Deed of Gift that officially recognizes the computer code for baseball gaming purposes. Pete Watzka and I are honored to have been early pioneers in creating computer code for baseball gaming. Little did I know as a youngster that dice baseball games would evolve into an industry of computerized sports games, or that developing a computer program replicating my childhood pastime would influence my career in the application of automated information processing. I am now approaching sixty years old. Occasionally, I ask myself what legacy I want to be known for after I have passed on. Several of my options involve my business career. But having an accomplishment of mine archived in the Baseball Hall of Fame brings a smile to my face. The post Realizing a Kid’s Dream of Computerized Baseball appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games. View the full article

The month of May brought about a big announcement from Wolverine Studios – the return of our pro golf game! It has been about six years since we released Total Pro Golf 3 and we decided it was time to not only reboot the franchise but give it a new everything including a new name, Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf. Right off the bat you’ll notice a BIG change in the game’s look and feel. In fact a brand new UI was designed from the ground up to debut with DDS: Pro Golf and will make its way into the rest of the Draft Day Sports line for the 2019 versions. Take a look at the game’s main menu screen. We’ve added some functionality to the main menu as well with the “continue game” option allowing you one click access to picking up where you left off in your most recent game played. We have also built a simple course designer right into the game with this version. You will be able to place stock textures to make quick and easy courses or design your own textures to do something more complex. The new look doesn’t stop at the main menu though. Here’s a look at the golfer’s profile screen in the game. As with our other games we’re making use of the expanded real estate when possible – this is shown at a 1920×1080 resolution allowing the player guide window and the notification center windows to be shown. All of the items you can look up in the game are displayed on the left side so that your access to anything in the game is just one click away instead of a few clicks. Speaking of new things – you see the “coins available” section of the screen. If you are a veteran of the TPG series you’ll remember the last version had you doing a bunch of things like setting a diet or buying cars and houses…we decided there was a much better way for some interactive and useful fun in the game so all that is scrapped. Instead in Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf you set a training budget and can train as many days as you like (provided you have cash). Training earns in game coins (most times) which you can either exchange for cash if your golfer is running low on funds or which you can use to upgrade your golfer’s skill ratings. This way you have total control over how your golfer is improving and in what areas instead of just getting random improvements. Want to hit the ball a mile? Put all your efforts into your power rating. Is “putt for dough” your mantra? Then beef up the putting skill. It’s all up to you in Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf. The six playable tours remain – one junior, one pro and one senior circuit for both America and Europe and you can create a golfer who can start on any of them. Of course if you want a true challenge you’ll start on the junior tour and try and claw your way to the pros but we won’t think any less of you if you want to start off as a contender on the pro tour. What has changed here is that each tour has updated parameters for either staying on tour or moving to the next one. The tour rules page in the game will keep you informed of the rules and setup of each tour. Most tours have some kind of playoff format and both pro tours have their own unique season long chase for the tour championship. We’re very excited to be bringing back golf to Wolverine Studios this summer and we will be back in the blog before too long with another look at what is coming with Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf! If you want to be informed of the latest news on the game including an subscriber only exclusive pre-launch discount – follow this link and sign up for the DDS:PG mailing list and don’t forget to visit the forums and discuss the game with your friends! We look forward to seeing you on the course this summer. The post Golf Returns This Summer At Wolverine Studios – Get Your Tee Time! appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

The month of May brought about a big announcement from Wolverine Studios – the return of our pro golf game! It has been about six years since we released Total Pro Golf 3 and we decided it was time to not only reboot the franchise but give it a new everything including a new name, Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf. Right off the bat you’ll notice a BIG change in the game’s look and feel. In fact a brand new UI was designed from the ground up to debut with DDS: Pro Golf and will make its way into the rest of the Draft Day Sports line for the 2019 versions. Take a look at the game’s main menu screen. We’ve added some functionality to the main menu as well with the “continue game” option allowing you one click access to picking up where you left off in your most recent game played. We have also built a simple course designer right into the game with this version. You will be able to place stock textures to make quick and easy courses or design your own textures to do something more complex. The new look doesn’t stop at the main menu though. Here’s a look at the golfer’s profile screen in the game. As with our other games we’re making use of the expanded real estate when possible – this is shown at a 1920×1080 resolution allowing the player guide window and the notification center windows to be shown. All of the items you can look up in the game are displayed on the left side so that your access to anything in the game is just one click away instead of a few clicks. Speaking of new things – you see the “coins available” section of the screen. If you are a veteran of the TPG series you’ll remember the last version had you doing a bunch of things like setting a diet or buying cars and houses…we decided there was a much better way for some interactive and useful fun in the game so all that is scrapped. Instead in Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf you set a training budget and can train as many days as you like (provided you have cash). Training earns in game coins (most times) which you can either exchange for cash if your golfer is running low on funds or which you can use to upgrade your golfer’s skill ratings. This way you have total control over how your golfer is improving and in what areas instead of just getting random improvements. Want to hit the ball a mile? Put all your efforts into your power rating. Is “putt for dough” your mantra? Then beef up the putting skill. It’s all up to you in Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf. The six playable tours remain – one junior, one pro and one senior circuit for both America and Europe and you can create a golfer who can start on any of them. Of course if you want a true challenge you’ll start on the junior tour and try and claw your way to the pros but we won’t think any less of you if you want to start off as a contender on the pro tour. What has changed here is that each tour has updated parameters for either staying on tour or moving to the next one. The tour rules page in the game will keep you informed of the rules and setup of each tour. Most tours have some kind of playoff format and both pro tours have their own unique season long chase for the tour championship. We’re very excited to be bringing back golf to Wolverine Studios this summer and we will be back in the blog before too long with another look at what is coming with Draft Day Sports: Pro Golf! If you want to be informed of the latest news on the game including an subscriber only exclusive pre-launch discount – follow this link and sign up for the DDS:PG mailing list and don’t forget to visit the forums and discuss the game with your friends! We look forward to seeing you on the course this summer. The post Golf Returns This Summer At Wolverine Studios – Get Your Tee Time! appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

Users have been reporting they are missing the "Manage My Team" links on their team pages. We have discovered Ad Blockers are impacting some areas of the website, and in some cases like Google Chrome, ad blocking is turned on without you even knowing it. In Firefox this should be easy to turn off. Locate the symbol in the upper right and disable the blocker for this website.For Google Chrome it can be more complex. Here is how you can turn this off for Pennant Chase on Google Chrome:1. In the upper left, you should see the word "Secure" to the left of the website address. 2. If you click that, then click on "Site Settings", you will see a list of options.3. Scroll down to "Ads" and select "Allow".4.Return to your team page and see if your "Manage My Team" links are back. View the full article

Have you heard about Gamers Outreach and their Project Go-Kart? Gamers Outreach builds portable, medical grade video game kiosks that allow hospital staff to provide bedside recreation for children who are unable to leave their hospital rooms. When we found out about this amazing organization we couldn’t wait to get involved with them and set out to raise the $4,000 necessary to build and deliver one of their GO Karts. By donating a portion of sales in 2017 we were able to raise the funds and this past February we were able to join members of the Gamers Outreach team and J.J. Bouchard, the patient technology coordinator at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan to deliver the GO Kart! As a graduate of the University of Michigan, choosing C.S. Mott was a no-brainer as the hospital to receive the GO Kart. About ten patients per day are able to use the GO Kart – the children are able to play with their family or the staff while waiting for procedures or surgery or even as a distraction while waiting for a shot. Playing with the GO Karts during these situations has reduced patient anxiety and makes an unpleasant experience at least a little more bearable. As gamers we know how playing a game can allow us to sometimes escape from the problems of the real world and if anyone needs that escape it is these brave kids battling in these children’s hospitals. We thank you so much for the games you purchased from us that allowed us to raise the funds to do this but there are still many more GO Karts that need building. In fact we’re so thrilled we want to give you a chance to win a free copy of our Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2018 as a thank you! This coming weekend Gamers Outreach is hosting its biggest event of the year – their annual Gamers for Giving event. Gamers for Giving is a competitive gaming tournament, streaming marathon, and LAN party held at Eastern Michigan University. If you can, we definitely invite you to check it out and if you can’t be sure to stop by the Gamers Outreach website and see what you can do to donate to this awesome cause! The post Wolverine Studios teams up with Gamers Outreach appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

Have you heard about Gamers Outreach and their Project Go-Kart? Gamers Outreach builds portable, medical grade video game kiosks that allow hospital staff to provide bedside recreation for children who are unable to leave their hospital rooms. When we found out about this amazing organization we couldn’t wait to get involved with them and set out to raise the $4,000 necessary to build and deliver one of their GO Karts. By donating a portion of sales in 2017 we were able to raise the funds and this past February we were able to join members of the Gamers Outreach team and J.J. Bouchard, the patient technology coordinator at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan to deliver the GO Kart! As a graduate of the University of Michigan, choosing C.S. Mott was a no-brainer as the hospital to receive the GO Kart. About ten patients per day are able to use the GO Kart – the children are able to play with their family or the staff while waiting for procedures or surgery or even as a distraction while waiting for a shot. Playing with the GO Karts during these situations has reduced patient anxiety and makes an unpleasant experience at least a little more bearable. As gamers we know how playing a game can allow us to sometimes escape from the problems of the real world and if anyone needs that escape it is these brave kids battling in these children’s hospitals. We thank you so much for the games you purchased from us that allowed us to raise the funds to do this but there are still many more GO Karts that need building. In fact we’re so thrilled we want to give you a chance to win a free copy of our Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2018 as a thank you! This coming weekend Gamers Outreach is hosting its biggest event of the year – their annual Gamers for Giving event. Gamers for Giving is a competitive gaming tournament, streaming marathon, and LAN party held at Eastern Michigan University. If you can, we definitely invite you to check it out and if you can’t be sure to stop by the Gamers Outreach website and see what you can do to donate to this awesome cause! The post Wolverine Studios teams up with Gamers Outreach appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

With nearly 20 years of game marketing under its belt, the Out of the Park Developments team has learned a few tricks along the way. Rich Grisham, OOTP Dev’s CMO, shared them in the “So You Want to Market an Indie Game” panel during the recent PAX East video game expo in Boston. Also participating […] View the full article

While I do think the recent changes have us on a path in a better direction, it has been harder than expected to get the levels to a satisfactory point. So I wanted to create a blog post that I could reference and update rather than keep trying to find messages on the message board.Here is how the "old" PC played out across Auto Leagues over a long sample size (one full month of games - we sim over 2700 Auto League games per day, so even a single day is a large sample...)Runs/Game: 8.77 AVG OBP WHIP:.244 .305 1.26Break down by player rank in the old world:90: .277 .348 0.9880: .260 .323 1.1170: .244 .306 1.2060: .236 .296 1.2750: .229 .284 1.3440: .217 .272 1.4130: .211 .264 1.5020: .199 .237 1.70The distribution there is pretty clean, and I'd like to be somewhere close to these numbers. What I'm seeing so far is that, while there have been spikes in offense that I've corrected, overall Runs/Game went down but OBP and WHIP went up, which means walks are more accounted for - which is good, this was always a slight sim flaw IMO.As of this morning, 3/21, I'm seeing runs/game up a little too high. I will post back here once I feel we have the right levels and I don't have to tweak - I think we're getting close, and I'm monitoring it twice a day so we can quickly get where I think we need to be. View the full article

Out of the Park Developments, an official licensee of MLB.com, the MLBPA, and MiLB, announced a partnership with Electronic Arts. The partnership includes the sale of and subscription access to the award-winning baseball strategy game Out of the Park Baseball 19 for all Origin users. [This press release is made available courtesy of OOTP Developments with slight modifications.] “We are delighted and honored to partner with Electronic Arts to distribute our baseball game directly to EA’s biggest fans,” said OOTP Developments CEO and lead developer Markus Heinsohn. “EA’s long history of sports excellence makes Origin a tremendous platform. A whole new audience will now experience the delights and agonies of running a baseball franchise across the majors and minors, from today or throughout the entire history of the sport.” OOTP 19 unveils a new 3D in-game engine that, for the first time, has players pitching, hitting, fielding, and running the bases in Out of the Park Baseball. Out of the Park Baseball 19 includes:New 3D stadiums and player models with improved on-field movements, including running, sliding, jumping, and throwing.New in-game screen design for an optimized virtual dugout.2018 roster sets with all Opening Day MLB rosters, as well as the complete minor league system from Triple-A to rookie leagues as well as the Arizona Fall League. All major league (and over a thousand minor league) player ratings will be based on the popular ZiPS player projection system. The 8 international leagues, as well as independent minor leagues in the US, also return this year with accurate rosters.Rewritten scouting reports that give a more detailed and realistic look at players.New tournament modes! Create a standalone tournament bracket and draw any teams in history into it. The possibilities are endless!Ultra-realistic AI roster management and in-game decisions.A reworked ratings module.User voting for end-of-season awards Many more improvements, including:Redesigned interface, with the ability to choose between 6 different fonts800 custom team logos for fictional leaguesImproved Manager Home screen, with a more customizable layout and new widget optionsA new stat — RA9-WAR (WAR based on runs allowed) — for pitchersDelayed substitutions for injured players The post OOTP 19 partners with EA and will include brand new 3D engine appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games. View the full article

It is time to get ready to cut down the nets and DDS: College Basketball 2018 is bringing you the biggest and best version ever to let you fulfill your dreams of taking your favorite school to the top. So get ready to hop on the recruiting trail, coach – here’s a look at ten of the newest additions to the number one college basketball franchise on the market. This press release is written and courtesy of the Wolverine Studios development company with slight modifications: 1) 2017 League Conversions Right out of the gate we’ve got some big news – those dynasties you’ve been building with CB:2017….well keep on building them! For the first time ever you’ll be able to upgrade your league files to the new version! 2) Coach Rating Tracking and Improved Increases We’ve put work into making the increase in ratings over time better distributed for the coaches with this version and have added a new feature to the coach card that will let you track the improvements in the ratings of a coach over time. 3) Rating Progression Tracking for Players We didn’t just leave the progression tracking for the coaches either – the player card will have the same progression tracking for player ratings to see how your fabulous freshmen turn out over their careers. 4) Coach Lineage Information Lineage is back but in a new and improved way. Now you will be able to track every coach that worked for every team and find out what happened to them over their careers. You wil be able to sort by team or by active head coach to see which legend of your association has the best coaching tree! 5) Improvements to AI in Recruiting and Tutoring Recruiting is the key to any great college game and our recruiting AI has been honed over many years but each year we make it better and better. This year is no exception as we have worked with the AI to do an even better job of managing their resources and targeting players to up the challenge for you. The AI also does a better job of keeping poor students eligible and if you turn on the option for the AI to manage your operations it will handle tutoring of players as well. 6) UI Improvements and New Information One of our goals is always to add new and useful information to the game. We’ve added an Assn. Info screen that will give you info about each conference and team so that you can see more information at a glance without having to hunt. The search option also remains if you have something in particular you know you’re looking for. We’ve also added a small drop box to the left window news tab to sort different news types and a few other touches here and there to make navigation easier and the screens to look even better than before! 7) Improvements to Walk-On and Recruit Generation One additional area of improvement this season is in the generation of new recruits and walk-ons. With the recruiting improvements teams are doing a better job of filling their scholarships so the overall number of walk-ons has decreased and those that are generated are done so with a better stature for the kind of player they should be. We’ve also tweaked the recruit generation code to improve stats for players especially at smaller schools and to see that there are fewer outlier players. 8) New Asst. Coach Poaching and Job Offer Improvements The coaching job search page now gives you more information about all of the jobs available including showing you if a team is on probation for unethical behavior. An even bigger new addition to the coaching feature is the ability to hire assistant coaches from other programs while they are employed – and it can happen to you as well! Assistant coaches who are entering their final contract year can now be lured away in the offseason for a better position. That’s great news if you like to play as the high powered schools…and you better keep some resumes handy if you’re coaching at a lower level school now. 9) Improvements in Relationship Feature We’ve made a couple of changes here to make this feature even more interesting. The first is that your response options to the players are now changed a bit when you make a phone call to discuss their actions and secondly you’re going to get a response in the phone call to tell you how your relationship was impacted by the actions you took and the impacts vary based on the player themselves so you can never be quite sure what the reaction will be. The other change here is that we have built in some very rare incidents that you might experience to add a little bit more variety to what you deal with as coach. 10) New End Game Improvements The last of our new items we are highlighting here has to do with end-game scenarios. We have made players try to react quicker as you can see from the screenshot above – down five with only 11 seconds left the player raced down the floor and launched a quick three. We have also worked to see that players have the ability to attempt a long range heave if possible so you never know what the closing seconds of the game will bring and nothing will be more exciting than watching your player drain one from half court to win at the buzzer! So coach, what are you waiting for? Your destiny awaits at the top of that ladder. Take your school to the top of the basketball world, cut down the nets and build your dynasty with Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2018! The post It’s Tournament Time! DDS: College Basketball 2018 is now available appeared first on GM Games - Sports General Manager Video Games. View the full article