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Out of the Park Baseball Draft

July 26th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Baseball

Yesterday, we had our opening draft for the OOTP 10 Baseball league I am in. These things take forever in person. I only sat through three rounds, and that took three hours. Apparently they went for six more rounds and six more hours. So my roster is nowhere near complete, though I thank Bill Abner for not sticking me with crappy pitchers.

Given how popular online leagues are, it’s a little disappointing that OOTP doesn’t have a real online draft system that works without everyone compiling a draft list of 500 players or so. If our league had any confidence in the computer draft system, we could have done that.

As it stands now, I like my rotation and I have a stud middle reliever who only needs one more average pitch to become a starter – he has a 10 fastball, a 10 splitter and a 10 stamina. But he’ll need a third pitch to become effective as a SP. Good news – he’s 22 and has time to do that. Bad news – he may never develop that third pitch. He’ll probably pitch in close to 70 games for me as a reliever with that kind of stamina.

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EndWar Sequel

July 23rd, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Consoles, RTS, Ubisoft

Videogamer.com is reporting that Ubisoft Shanghai has been tapped to do a sequel to last year’s best console RTS, EndWar.

The emphasis will be on the single player story experience and adding some depth to a game that some people found too shallow. Still no hint on when we can expect it, or even what it will be called.

Lead designer Michael de Plater also reveals a little info on just how well EndWar did in the sales department:

Compared to strategy games it’s really successful. We beat C&C on our first go out. We were up there and not far off Halo Wars, which is obviously a big license. We beat just about everything – everything except Halo – for the last three years that’s come out. For a strategy game that’s a huge success. For a console game that’s not such a big success.

So either strategy gamers aren’t migrating to consoles or console gamers aren’t figuring out that there are strategy games they can play. I wouldn’t have expected EndWar to beat Halo Wars, but you never want to read “not such a big success” from a game designer.

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 22 – Blood Bowl and Sports Sims

July 21st, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Baseball, Podcast, Three Moves Ahead

ThreeMovesAhead

After a month of absences, Bruce Geryk more than makes up for it in a tour de force conversation with special guest Bill Abner as they relive the fun of 1970s baseball simulation games. We open with a discussion of Blood Bowl, which Julian finds too difficult and Troy finds too easy. Then Tom, Julian and Troy sort of fade into the background for an hour. Until Troy learns that someone else has heard of Sher-Co Baseball Simulation.

Listen to learn what kind of person replays historical seasons, why Blood Bowl is really a wargame, and whether sports simulations can ever measure up to the beauty of classic Championship Manager.

Also an update on our Dominions 3 game, a promise to eventually get Bruce’s side of the story, a quiz game from Tom Chick and a hip hop conclusion.

Listen here.
RSS here.
Subscribe on iTunes.

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Halo Wars Big Hit?

July 20th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Consoles, Ensemble

Gamasutra’s Matt Matthews is reporting that Halo Wars, Ensemble’s Swan Song title, is one of the top 5 Xbox 360 games of 2009 so far.

The estimate is between 500k and 700k units sold – a good sized total, but I was under the impression that a title needed to sell over a million to make a list like this. Yeah, we are only halfway through 2009.

So I guess congratulations are in order for the success of Halo Wars. Always nice to go out with a hit. Wish I liked it more.

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You Have to Be Kidding Me

July 20th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Media

Sometimes you just want to give up on games journalism.

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Social Gaming Feature

July 20th, 2009 by Troy Goodfellow · Crispy Gamer, Design, Industry

My latest feature for Crispy Gamer is up. Remarkably few edits this time, which either means I’m getting the hang of this or Ryan Kuo has just given up on me.

I write about social gaming – Facebook games mostly. I also talk to a rep from OMGPOP, an arcade game site that targets high school/college kids and is all about developing new networks of friends instead of just leeching connections from your active Friend List. Mr. Forman told me a lot of stuff I didn’t even use. Like how Nexon in Korea pioneered this business model. How traditional game development is just as imitative and unoriginal as social game design.

Likewise, Brian Reynolds and Steve Meretzky gave me more than I could find a space for. Three hours of interviews. Maybe I’ll be able to work some of that stuff into a future article or post.

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