Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Contest Winners Find Themselves in OOTP 18

April 30, 2017 by OOTP Staff Leave a Comment

What if you had a chance to see if a virtual representation of yourself could crack the big leagues, or even end up with a career that lands you in the Hall of Fame? Sure, you could do that in Out of the Park Baseball 18 by creating a fictional player with your name and tweaking his ratings to your heart’s content, but what if your virtual self ended up in every copy of OOTP 18 sold?

That’s what happened this year when five lucky winners in the OOTP 18 pre-order contest found themselves in the game as virtual prospects with a chance at baseball immortality. They were able to dictate the basics of their in-game player, including position, handedness, and age, height, and weight. We chatted with three of them to find out what they thought of the experience.

OOTP and Yankees AA affiliate, Trenton Thunder, announce partnership

April 14, 2017 by OOTP Staff Leave a Comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, contact:

Tips For Success With FHM 3’s Achievements

February 14, 2017 by OOTP Staff Leave a Comment

Officially licensed by the NHL (click to enlarge)

Everybody loves Achievements! They add interesting wrinkles to many games, and their presence in Franchise Hockey Manager 3 is no exception. Available when you choose Path to Glory mode, achievements in FHM 3 allow you to tout your ability to do many things, from winning a minor league championship to emerging victorious in the Stanley Cup® Playoffs.

There are too many achievements in FHM 3 to list here, but we’ll cover the highlights, starting with the toughest ones – and some tips for achieving success.

GAF Online Baseball League Gives Thanks for OOTP

December 22, 2016 by OOTP Staff Leave a Comment

A portrait of the commissioner as a young man.

Brent Long, commissioner of the GAF Online Baseball League that came together on the NeoGAF forum, discovered Out of the Park Baseball with last year’s version 16, but once he did, he was hooked. “When I play any game that tries to simulate a sport, I’m always most interested in the long-term development of my team,” he says. “You get to see what would happen if you were in control and, right now, OOTP probably does that the best out of any game that I’ve played.”

He joined the GOBL not long after its inception and soon became the commissioner. “GOBL brings me into the game every single day,” Long observes. “There’s a lot more intrigue when you know you’re competing against other people and not just the CPU.” (The league has a few openings, so anyone who’s interested in joining should see the thread on the NeoGAF forum and contact Long (he’s “brentech”) for more information.)

International Glory Beckons in Franchise Hockey Manager 3

December 22, 2016 by Andreas Raht Leave a Comment

International competition has provided some of hockey’s most memorable moments. From the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit Series and the American Miracle on Ice in 1980 to the Czech upset win in Nagano in 1998 and the US-Canada showdown in Vancouver in 2010, the intense battles between national teams have showcased hockey at its highest level, both in terms of the quality of play and the drama produced.

It’s not surprising, then, that one of the most frequently requested features for Franchise Hockey Manager has always been the addition of international play. We listened to the fans and this year, for the first time, FHM3 added international tournaments to the game. When you start a game in the 2016-17 season, the 2016 World Cup of Hockey is on the schedule. Other major championship events have been included too.

The fun isn’t just limited to the hockey superpowers, though. FHM3 includes 46 national teams taking part in 11 different competitions and qualifying tournaments. At the very lowest rung of competition, non-traditional hockey countries like South Africa, Bosnia, and the United Arab Emirates can try to climb their way up the national team rankings.

Overeducated Baseball League Mixes Highbrow and Lowbrow

November 17, 2016 by OOTP Staff 1 Comment

Some consider baseball the most cerebral of the pro sports, so it’s not a surprise that an enterprising Out of the Park Baseball player would capitalize on the idea with the Overeducated Baseball League. Consisting of fictional athletes playing in the Platonic and Socratic Leagues, with Kant and Hobbes Divisions in the former and Hegel and Calvin Divisions in the latter, the OEL has been going strong for ten years. There have been 20 simmed seasons completed.

“Yes, we’ve made all the ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ jokes,” OEL co-founder Nate Wooley says without being asked the obvious question. While that comic strip’s main character was fond of a game called Calvinball that involved rules created on the fly, Wooley is a stock broker and his fellow co-founder Mack is an attorney, so they’re sticklers for rules. [Read more…] about Overeducated Baseball League Mixes Highbrow and Lowbrow

Franchise Hockey Manager 3: Top new features for armchair GMs

November 9, 2016 by OOTP Staff 1 Comment

Franchise Hockey Manager 3 is now available worldwide, so we thought we’d take it for a spin and highlight the major features that armchair hockey GMs have been anticipating the most. Like OOTP Developments’ other games, FHM 3 offers a deep, authentic experience that you can explore any way you want, from a day-to-day, nuts-and-bolts GM view to a “sim a season in minutes and watch a world unfold” commissioner perspective.

Here’s what you can look forward to. There’s much more than this, of course, so please visit the official Franchise Hockey Manager 3 page to learn more and get your copy today.

College Class Uses OOTP, Gets to Ask Us Questions

October 25, 2016 by OOTP Staff Leave a Comment

Want to use OOTP in your class or after-school club, or know a teacher who would like to use it? We’re happy to provide free copies of OOTP for use in K-12 and higher education settings. Please get in touch via the OOTP Developments contact page.

Out of the Park Developments Chief Marketing Officer Rich Grisham recently spent some time in a Skype chat with students at Georgia Southern University. They’re using Out of the Park Baseball in a class taught by assistant professor Solomon K. Smith, who’s a member of the History department at the school.

Smith said that his students are in charge of five teams in their OOTP league, and they will be simming one week of their virtual baseball world each day. At the end, students will have to present the strategy they used in running their teams and why they used it. “They won’t need to win their league to get an ‘A,’ but they will have to be able to defend their strategy,” Smith explained to us.

Hall of Very Good Determines the Best of the Very Good

September 28, 2016 by OOTP Staff 1 Comment

Baseball fans love to discuss who would make their roster if they had the pick of players throughout history, and of course many Hall of Famers typically make the cut. However, what about the guys who were pretty good but didn’t quite have enough oomph in their stats to survive past one or two Hall of Fame ballots?

That’s what Shawn Anderson’s Hall of Very Good (HOVG) website is all about: It’s a celebration of the also-rans who were pretty good players and who are often the favorites of a few baseball fans. Anderson has been inducting players into his Hall since 2012, and the current roster includes Jim Kaat, Lee Smith, Luis Tiant, Dale Murphy, and Tommy John, among others. Out of the Park Baseball has been a proud sponsor of the annual HOVG induction awards, as well as the site’s podcast.

5 Ways to Play OOTP 17

September 5, 2016 by T.J. Lauerman Leave a Comment

OOTP 17 is the ultimate sandbox game for baseball fans – and it’s so big, we sometimes receive suggestions from new fans as well as longtime players about new and interesting ways to jump in and play. With that in mind, here are five really cool “hardball sandcastles” you can build, in no particular order.

And don’t forget that you can mix and match just about any options you want to create a unique experience that few baseball fans have ever seen!

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