So, You Want to Build a Baseball Sim?

I've talked before about building a baseball simulation game. It's even on my Big List of Baseball Project Ideas.

I recently did some research on the state of baseball simulation, spending way too much time digging through the Internet Archive of the various simulation websites.

I came up with some potential positives and negatives of attempting to build a baseball sim.

Some Positives of Building a Baseball Sim

The basic case for building a baseball sim is this: Building a deep and enduring game often requires a whole team working to craft an immersive experience. However, baseball comes with depth built in, so even a solo developer can make an immersive baseball game.

Let's break that down piece by piece:

Possible as an indie developer

Modern games are the product of big teams who spend years developing them. It's tough to get in as a solo developer. But, look at some of the indie success stories for baseball simulations, which were developed primarily by a single person:

• Pennant Chase is mostly the work of Guy Bacci
• ZenGM is the product of Jeremy Scheff
• BaseHit was primarily developed by Brian DeMarzo
• Even OOTP can largely be credited to Markus Heinsohn
• Baseball Mogul was mostly created by Clay Dresslough
• Diamond Mind is by Tom Tippett

Sports simulations are nice because they eliminate most of the need for 3D physics and handcrafted visual assets, turning the project into something that a single person can build.

Building on an existing sport also gives your game depth, or bigness right out of the box.

Bigness

I started thinking about "bigness" from an article by Derek Yu. Yu speaks of bigness as one game quality among many, but I think several of his factors are really just different ways of expressing ways to make a game world feel big.

Games with a long shelf life are ones that have a bigness to the world. Some games create bigness by creating a massive world filled with side quests, but this typically requires a lot of development resources (and typically a team of developers).

Baseball, however, already has bigness baked in. The baseball timeline spans over a hundred years, with hundreds of unpredictable character arcs within each season. And that has all been created for you already; you only have to import the stats.

Another way to create bigness is through randomness (think: procedurally-generated dungeons). Once again, baseball provides you with a nice amount of randomness already in every plate appearance.

Yet another contributor to bigness is having a variety of ways to play (Yu's "fiddliness"). I think about the various ways I'd approach my own kryptonite (Baseball Mogul, circa 2006-2012):

• I'd sometimes play as a GM, quickly simming seasons and focusing mostly on the off-season team construction.
• I'd sometimes play as the players, choosing every pitch.
• Sometimes I'd bestow abilities onto a certain player, then sim a few decades to watch how their career developed.
• Sometimes I'd turn the simulation knobs like a mad scientist to see what would happen. What happens if teams suddenly have no money? What happens if players constantly get injured?

A baseball sim can have a variety of game modes without a ton of extra work to develop them.

Stickiness

The bigness of baseball simulations leads them to be very sticky games, which people will play for years.

But the stickiness also comes from gamers' emotional investment in the characters. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and everyone loves revisiting the players and teams of their youth.

With that in mind, look at the lifespan of various simulation games:

• ZenGM has been going for 10 years (2013).
• BaseHit (originally CSFBL) has been around for 20 years (2003).
• Pennant Chase started in 2001, so 22 years.
• SimDynasty has been going for 23 years (2000).
• WhatIfSports was (I think) the original online simulation, starting in 1999.
• OOTP is on its 24th version, but I think it's its 26th year (1998).
• Diamond Mind started in 1998.
• Baseball Mogul started a year before OOTP, which gives it 27 years of history.

Then you have the games that started as table-top games:

• Pursue the Pennant started in 1985, eventually leading to the computer version (Dynasty League Baseball) began in 1995 and an online version in 2011.
• Replay Baseball started in 1973 and introduced a PC version in 2009.
• Strat-O-Matic has been going since 1961.
• APBA dates back to at least 1951, with a computer version introduced in 1985.

Just to summarize: Most of the computer/online versions have been going strong for over 20 years.

The boardgame versions have been around for 40, 60, and 70 years and have had digital adaptations since the dawn of the PC era.

Is there some survivorship bias going on? Maybe, but it sure seems like less of a factor than in other industries.

Some physical games (with physical costs) haven't survived: Sports Illustrated's game, MLB Showdown. I can find a few old computer versions that have disappeared as well: Strategic Baseball Simulator (1981-2015) isn't actively produced, but, come on, it had a 34 year run!

Some Negatives of Building a Baseball Sim

Okay, so a sports sim has some definite positives: A single person can create a deep game and attract a fanbase that remains for decades. What are the risks?

Thriving, or surviving?

Even though many games have lasted for a long time, they don't seem to be hugely successful financially. Pennant Chase sounds like it struggles to get ad revenue to match its expenses.

The difficulty of financial success, I think, is part of the tradeoff of creating games in general. You reduce your odds at big financial success compared to other entrepreneurial endeavors, in exchange for getting to do something fun. It's easy to look at (the relatively few) examples of game success and convince yourself that it is realistic, when those are actually bigger outliers compared to other industries.

It's also not clear that the baseball sims have a healthy future ahead.

BaseHit has talked about the challenges of attracting new users. Pennant Chase has been open about their steady decline of active users.

What's the problem? I think there is a bit of a trap for simulation games: Your version 1.0 simulation is simple to pick up, which attracts users and encourages quick adoption. Those users demand more complex features, which deter new people from starting your game.

There is also the elephant of baseball simulations in the room:

Out of the Park

I think OOTP is a big problem for other baseball simulations.

Before OOTP, every simulation has suffered from two major issues:

1. The game looks terrible.
2. The creator is lousy at marketing.

As I've researched every baseball simulation, I have seen those two things plague virtually all of them.

OOTP came along and finally fixed both of those problems. They nailed the UI, and they actually marketed their product.

I think this is why we see several simulations that have existed for 20+ years, but not many recent entrants. Those early games built their player bases before OOTP became the dominant force. Their fanbases are hanging on, but it's hard to pick up new users when they see you side-by-side with OOTP.

Creating a Baseball Sim

Knowing those positives and negatives, if I were creating a baseball sim today, here's the blueprint I would use:

Make it look decent

OOTP has raised the tablestakes on this; a simulation needs to look at least decent. Fortunately, there are good UI frameworks for building on the web that make a polished product doable for any developer.

I also think the state of AI image generation opens up new possibilities for player "photos" without needing cash for licensing.

Make it casual

OOTP has gone for the hardcore, realism-craving market. The truth is, realism isn't always the most fun. (Cases in point: NBA Jam and NFL Blitz)

If I made a baseball sim, I'd be looking for ways to reach a more-casual audience. Let the hardcore minority play OOTP, I want the casual masses! I'd probably be thinking of something more like fantasy baseball, where you don't worry too much about platooning or monitoring every minor league level.

Connect to real teams and players

Many simulations use a completely fictional player universe, but I think they are missing out on the magic of nostalgia that helps make a game sticky.

Sure, this probably means doing some work to handle different eras and the sorts of stats found in each. I think it's worth it. Plus, all the data you need is sitting right there in Retrosheet for you to use for free.

And, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems that you're on safe ground using player names without any sort of licensing.

Connect with baseball cards

This one isn't essential, but I think it's a fruitful path to achieve both of those first two objectives.

The original table-top baseball simulations were built with baseball cards (ugly cards with no player photos, admittedly). The obvious thing to do was to add player photos, which produced MLB Showdown. (MLB Showdown was one of those few physical products that didn't last, but people are still generating cards today: See Clutch Baseball and the Showdown Card Bot)

Baseball cards also inspired trading card games (Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon). Trading card games have since turned into virtual card games (Hearthstone, Marvel Snap). OOTP's Perfect Season brings things around full circle.

Like I said, I think using baseball cards is a great way to hit the first two objectives: It adds some (fairly easy) visuals, especially with AI image generation. And it gets you thinking about what a simplified simulation could be like.

Resources

Let me just close with a few of the resources I found helpful for putting together my thoughts on sports simulations:

• On BaseHit's YouTube channel, Brian DeMarco and Jason "Zubaz" Havey have talked openly about the state and history of the game.
• Jeremy "dumbmatter" Scheff has documented a lot of the history of the ZenGM games.
• Similarly, you can see Guy Bacci's history of Pennant Chase in blog posts.
• Clay Dresslough (Baseball Mogul) did a video interview with SABR's Games and Simulations Committee.
• Mike Cieslinski (Pursue the Pennant, Dynasty League Baseball) was on the SABRcast podcast with Rob Neyer.
• GMGames has the authoratative list of baseball simulation games.