OOTP Staff

GAF Online Baseball League Gives Thanks for OOTP

December 22, 2016 by OOTP Staff

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.)

Overeducated Baseball League Mixes Highbrow and Lowbrow

November 17, 2016 by OOTP Staff

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

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.

Officially licensed by the NHL (click to enlarge)

College Class Uses OOTP, Gets to Ask Us Questions

October 25, 2016 by OOTP Staff

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

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.

OOTP as a Game-Based Learning Project

May 31, 2016 by OOTP Staff

We’re happy to publish guest posts any time someone approaches us with an idea. Here’s the latest one:

Out of the Park Baseball as a Digital Game-Based Learning Project: The 1879 Northwestern League, Frank Bandle and the Omaha Green Stockings

(The full article, with all of the relevant data and screenshots, can be downloaded online.)

By Robert Roy Foresman

In the spring semester of 2015, I was given the opportunity to develop a digital history project at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Since my historical interest mainly involves baseball, and at that time I was researching the 1879 Northwestern Baseball League for a book, I was thinking about what options there might be to create a digital history project that included the 1879 NWBL. At that time, I had recently discovered that the league had only played half of its season when it folded in mid-July. One of the obvious historical questions that had been on my mind was that if a complete ‘championship season’ ran its’ course in 1879, who would have won? Was there a way to simulate the season that might provide this information? I had done this on other gaming platforms with contemporary baseball rosters and seasons.

Then, I realized that Out of the Park Baseball (OOTPB) provided a perfect opportunity to uniquely answer this question. This is how my idea for a digital history project came about. OOTP Baseball allows the user to recreate historical baseball leagues or even develop fictional leagues at the creators’ discretion. For this project, parameters were set to function in 1879, and the league with all the historical data gathered was included. The 36-game season was the framework for this ‘tryout’ that included a championship series occurring at the end of the simulated 1879 season. The simulation model was set for 10 seasons to give an impartial representation of what the actual results might have been if a whole season had been played.

The emergent digital game-based learning (DGBL) concept is attracting educational enthusiasts across the world. This article will follow that global trend and demonstrate how Out of the Park Baseball provides a valuable framework for classroom-based, DGBL projects. The aim of this article is to exhibit the benefits, learning outcomes and potential for DGBL baseball projects in college and high school classrooms. This commentary will also reveal that DGBL can provide learning engagement and motivation for students when given the opportunity to participate in similar DGBL ventures. The editorial will offer a brief explanation of DGBL and provide simulation results, comparative analysis and conceptual modeling for a DGBL baseball project utilizing Out of the Park Baseball. Additionally, the work will provide learning outcomes for the classroom project and includes a suggested reading list that potential instructors may access. The hope is that this article will be referenced as a curriculum development resource in future DGBL projects.

Please feel free to contact me at foresmanrr@lopers.unk.edu with any questions or for the opportunity to collaborate further. The full article is free and open to the public. You may also download this article and others at my academia.edu profile.

2016 Sims See Samardzija, Price, Kazmir Post Big Seasons

April 29, 2016 by OOTP Staff

Every winter brings with it a flurry of free agent signings, and this past baseball offseason was no different from years past. Opening Day 2016 saw many pitchers on the rosters of teams they didn’t end the 2015 season with, including a group of ten starters who are among the best in the game.

The San Francisco Giants were the winners in that sweepstakes, nabbing Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija to shore up their rotation as they hope to win another World Series during an even-numbered year. Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox are hoping to bounce back with the help of free agent David Price, and the Arizona Diamondbacks nabbed Zack Greinke as part of a push to make some noise in the NL West.

We’ve put together a complete list of the top ten starters who switched teams this year, and we simmed the season to see how they might do. Here are the results:

Road to Release #3: The 2016 Season, According to OOTP 17

March 21, 2016 by OOTP Staff

by John Comey

It is the most magical time of year.

The leaves are returning to their homes. The days are getting longer. The NCAA Tournament, at least by the time this has been published, will be in full swing.

And, of course, Spring Training.

Spring Training also means another tradition: the impending release of Out of the Park Baseball. OOTP17 will hit digital shelves soon. It also means I get to write one of my favorite pieces of my year:

The 2016 Season, According to Out of the Park

This year’s version of Out of the Park Baseball has several additions and changes. One of those, of course, is the game’s artificial intelligence. This is always a yearly battle, to find balance and please casual gamers with the hardcores, the fictional, and the historical cranks.

OOTP Presents 16 in ’16: Baseball’s Tournament of Champions

March 8, 2016 by OOTP Staff

Out of the Park Developments, an official licensee of MLB.com, MiLB.com, and the MLBPA, today announced “16 in ’16: Baseball’s Tournament of Champions.” This unique competition will determine which Major League Baseball team truly is the greatest of all time, thanks to the new Out of the Park Baseball 17 Historical Series feature and the game’s powerful simulation engine that has delighted baseball fans for the past seventeen seasons.

Road to Release #1: A Cornucopia of Goodies

March 7, 2016 by OOTP Staff

Out of the Park Baseball 17, an MLB.com licensee, offers a stadium full of exciting new features, starting with a Major League Baseball Players Association license that allows us to include Facegen images for all MLB players. You’ll also find 2016 Opening Day rosters, logos for all teams and leagues in MLB and Minor League Baseball, authentic minor league systems with a database of 100,000+ players, and much more.

Don’t forget that you can pre-order OOTP 17 now and receive VIP access to the Gold Master beta build of the game on March 18, four days before its official worldwide release, along with a free Steam key that will be available on March 22.

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