The Gamer’s Quagmire: 18th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

The start of April is an event I look forward to every year. It’s true that the heavy snow is once again 6 months away as opposed to over my head but the main reason is that it is baseball season once again. Baseball’s popularity in America is nowhere near where it used to be and it has definitely been surpassed by football as America’s sport. Being the stubborn person that I am baseball will always be my favorite spectator’s sport. I live and die with my favorite team each year. I feel myself become nervous deep into regular season games. And when the Mets made the World Series in 2000 I fell off the couch crying tears of joy. And, naturally, when they kept losing gut-wrenching games in the World Series I nearly destroyed multiple city blocks. Even though I have favorite teams in other sports the same emotion doesn’t match my emotion for baseball.

If you can imagine a grown man crying about sports it may be a sad picture but I will gladly own up to it. Baseball is more than a game for some, and when you are a big fan you feel the pain of every loss, every injury, and every trade that involves one of “your players.” Some people learn to deal with it and nothing else. Other people love playing the what-if game, and I’m one of them. Video games allow your creative side to thrive as you are allowed to create players, obtain players you’d otherwise kill to have on your team, and see your team hoist the championship trophy at the end of the year.

Incidentally, if you’re a Yankees bandwagon fan (I think 64% of all Yankees fans are bandwagon) can you honestly tell me you’re happy when you win each time? Isn’t winning now just something you expect? Aren’t you simply relieved that the most expensive team ever put together didn’t lose? I can’t take it when you win and I can’t stand it when the Mets lose (and despite what it sounds like I’m not looking for sympathy). All of you are killing me. This especially holds true for the Mets’ bullpen.

At the beginning of every baseball season I find a cheap and recent baseball game that includes a team franchise mode and I play it. The Mets will always become the best run team in the majors with a stellar pitching staff, awesome defense, and young hitters that always includes a phenomenal left-handed rookie first baseman. Baseball fans that enjoy video games on any level can gain a lot of happiness seeing their teams win even if it is a video game because on some level it restores hope that it is possible for your team to succeed in the playoffs.

Just don’t hold your breath for the day that the top franchise mode player for a sport becomes a real life GM. Then again if a reality show comes to fruition with that premise I would not be remotely surprised. Heck, there are teams could not possibly run worse as a result- just ask the 3 Tampa Bay Devil Rays fans. It may bother me if people are taking hints from my columns to start TV shows, but given royalties everything will be fine.

What I find extremely troubling is that football and basketball games are at the point where a lot of the action that you would see in real life you will see in the game. It’s true that you will never be able to truly replicate all of the magic that players like Michael Jordan or Barry Sanders had but the animations, gameplay, and presentation are all great or borderline exceptional for those games. Baseball has somehow been left in the dust. For example, last night after tooling around with NBA2K6 (the best basketball game I have ever seen, bar none) I loaded a game to be played by the CPU and just watched it while I was getting ready for bed. For the most part the game was close to watching a real NBA game. The changing camera angles were good, the court looked real, a decent percentage of the player movements were believable and fluid, the commentary wasn’t horrid (which is an honest upgrade over normal telecasts), and even the final score and stats were passable.

For whatever reason baseball simulations cannot seem to get it right. The pitching animations are almost always clumsy, the AI for baserunning almost always seems flawed (there are always situations where runners never advance when they should without holding up a flashing neon sign and slamming a turbo controller button), and the outfielders almost never field the ball the way I want them to. Either fielders will just run to where a ball will eventually roll to instead of trying to catch it or they will wait for the ball to come to them rather than charge the weakly hit single. There are other fundamental flaws that bear mentioning.

Hitting mechanics have slowly been getting better, but there is still some work to do. There are three modes players get in when at the plate. Obviously there is a default mentality players have when they’re at the plate in non-pressure situations. When video games finally allowed a power swing button that covered a power hitters’ tendency to swing for the fences we got coverage for a second swing mode. The third type of swing I have yet to see anywhere- the defensive swing. Anyone who has seen their pitcher suffer through a 14 pitch at-bat trying to get some annoying batter out on a 3-2 count where the hitter is fouling off every conceivable pitch known to man and looks like he’s swinging an oar should wonder why there is no way to do this in a baseball video game. If video games are going to allow a power swing there should also be a defensive swing.

Another problem I see is that when players slide into bases it is always the same animation. Some players slide head first and some slide feet first. Aside from this not being in a game I’ve seen yet with any consistency (this is never an option for creating a player and it should be) there are other slide situations which need to be handled. Occasionally you will find a game that gives you the chance to barrel over a catcher at the plate trying to tag you out. All games from now on need to have this along with a player trying to slide to one side of the plate. When a throw is offline to the plate the catcher moves to get it (not that many games have inaccurate throws to the plate other than at the plate or way over the catcher’s head) and the player adapts his slide to compensate. Hey, sometimes players decide to try and leap over the catcher when they hunker down to block the plate. The other missing slide animation is players taking out fielders on a double play attempt. I have yet to see this work. Maybe I haven’t tried the right game yet, but it would be nice to see an aggressive slider take out a fielder just because he can- or am I the only Ty Cobb fan still around?

Field conditions should also have an effect, although this usually boils down to nothing more than boning over the Colorado Rockies. It should be more than being able to hit home runs in Coors Field with a soup ladle. Sliders should look like pathetic fastballs, curveballs should hang, and sinkers should arrive at the plate with engraved home run invitations. Oh yeah, and the pitchers throwing them should develop serious control problems, flawed throwing mechanics, and debilitating arm injuries by trying to counter these conditions. This isn’t just because it makes the games trickier and even more believable but because if there are pitchers whose careers I want to ruin I want to be allowed to do a sign-and-trade with them purely out of spite. Every baseball fan has at least one pitcher that is loathed to the point of wanting them to join the Broken Arms Retirement Home (whose most prominent residents include Pedro Astacio and Denny Neagle).

After several years of trying to figure out a way to brush hitters back off the plate, a common tactic for every good power pitcher, we need to see players actually be brushed back. I want to see dirt on their clothing. I want to see them stare down a pitcher after diving out of the way of a tight heater. I even would love to see players charge the mound and start a bench-clearing brawl. Much to my chagrin an inside heater has yet to affect any hitter’s mentality for what pitch is coming let alone where they stand at the plate. If the Rocket or Pedro just gave a hitter some chin music it is going to have an effect on the rest of the at-bat. The heater to the chest followed by a splitter making a hitter’s knees buckle simply doesn’t work at anything other than randomly at an easy difficulty level. There are certain things a higher difficulty level shouldn’t eliminate, and this is one of them.

Player development is another major weakness in baseball games. There should be ways to upgrade your play on the field through training. Locker and weight rooms should be upgradeable. Viewing and analyzing film should have some effect. A luxury team plane worthy of Soul Plane should be available for team travel. Even questionable and possibly illegal modes of training should be allowed. If I want to run the risk of players receiving suspensions that’s my choice. I’m not looking to create Jose Canseco 2.0 but I am looking for some freedoms in improving my roster. I’d also like graduates of the Dusty Baker school of managing to have their pitchers’ arms blow out after three years of being ridden like a championship steed.

(And Cubs fans, despite not being one of you, I highly sympathize).

Finally we have the complex idea of the farming system- another form of player development. No other sport has three different levels of minor league sports. Honestly it would be a major pain to manage players on four different levels of play but that’s what running a baseball franchise includes. This should be an option for fans of franchise mode who revel in having control over as much over their franchise as humanly possible. If I want to demote a player to AA from the bigs because his last 3 pitching performance reminds me of the first 20 minutes of a Bad News Bears film then let me do it. If a hitter’s swing starts to bear a striking resemblance to a rusty gate then off to minors they go. General Managers of a baseball need this level of control over a franchise, and when you can’t scout, develop, and train players the way you would like to a franchise mode becomes a source of frustration and not enjoyment. If I can specify promotional events and define different levels of parking costs and tickets in a gaming football franchise then why not in a gaming baseball franchise?

What I do like is that the commentary has been getting better in these games. Random camera shots of fans, the dugout and bullpen are all well and good. Still, for some reason watching a baseball video game still doesn’t emulate a good baseball experience. Even playing through a baseball franchise doesn’t feel like I’m running a franchise in as much as it feels like managing a fantasy team. In the era of replicated stadiums, facial texture mapping, and ESPN we need to have a good baseball video game experience. It’s time.

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