Antmeister
08-16-2007, 09:33 AM
MikeVic
How did you decide to do a football game?
How easy/difficult was it to decide to code your own games full-time? Did you start out by still keeping a full-time job?
Back in the early ‘90s, when I was working for IBM and Windows was still that quirky Apple emulation that had to be bypassed whenever you played a game, I sent a letter to Computer Gaming World, frustrated that I had no idea whether the latest baseball offering was worth playing. Their review made no mention of statistical accuracy.
We were still in the Strat-O-Matic days. Testing a game’s accuracy meant dozens of hours of dedicated simulation, even to get a rough idea.
The CGW editor was nice enough to forward my letter to his sports editor, who contacted me right away about reviewing sports games. Within a month, I had a new copy of Tom Landry Strategy Football.
My sports gaming bug, which started with a dice-and-paper baseball game my father and a college friend of his created maybe 60 years ago, grew very quickly on the computer. After a few years of work in the field, I knew I had to create a game of my own.
In 1997, CGW sent me a copy of Baseball Mogul. That was the style of game I always wanted to play. I felt confident that I had enough experience in the field to take on a long-term project.
I would have preferred to start with baseball, since I knew, at that time, so much more about that sport than I knew about any other sport. I’m just not a basketball fan, and I felt I had to stick with one of the four “majors” in America.
I almost chose hockey, because I liked the idea of simulating a continuous motion game. But after agonizing over the decision for weeks, decided on football, because I was much more familiar with the sport, and felt I could make a better business case for football.
How long have you been programming?
My first exposure to programming was a summer course my parents found for me before 7<sup>th</sup> grade. That would have been 1976. It was taught in BASIC on a mainframe maintained by Washtenaw County in Michigan. I took to it immediately, and later, was pleased to find that my middle school also had a connection to this mainframe.
In 10<sup>th</sup> grade, my parents bought me a 16k computer (an Interact, which was sold almost exclusively in Ann Arbor) for my birthday. I began spending an inordinate amount of time writing games. In high school, I sold three of those games back to the company that distributed the Interact, which essentially paid for other games and hardware upgrades.
I’ve been programming for 31 years now, the last 16 as my sole major source of income.
Do you have a degree in Computer Science? If so, from where? If not, do you have a diploma or a degree in another field?
Yes. I have a bachelor’s degree in computer programming from the University of Michigan. I got there in a very roundabout way, though. My father was an English professor at Michigan. I always liked science, and my parents were very encouraging, but I didn’t see that as leading anywhere. I always felt my career would be in the arts.
Computers were an enjoyable hobby. It just never occurred to me that programming didn’t come easily to everyone and that people actually made a living working with computers. Keep in mind that I went to high school in the late ‘70s, graduating a year before Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick saved the world with a game of Global Thermonuclear War.
I started college as an economics major, and enjoyed working on the school newspaper more than anything. I wound up with a double-major of economics and English. Then I went to graduate school, and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Michigan.
I started to grow frustrated with journalism about that time. During graduate school, I took a year to work full time at a paper in western Michigan (The Holland Sentinel) with a circulation of 20-30,000. I was moving up quickly, but I was already starting to feel that I had written every newspaper story imaginable.
I decided to return to school, and finished my master’s in 1988. I hoped the degree would help me land a job at a bigger newspaper. In mid-1989, I had a life-changing experience.
I interviewed for a position as a news writer with The Ann Arbor News. Now I had put myself through college by stringing for The Ann Arbor News. I had moved all the way up to what they called “King Prep,” which meant I was writing a weekly column on high school sports, I was working the maximum of 30 hours almost every week, I was even third man on Michigan football for home games. I felt, with the master’s degree, I had a very good shot at transitioning to the news department. They all knew me there.
The news editor, however, only gave me a courtesy interview. He never even bothered to tell me I didn’t get the job, and it wasn’t like he didn’t see me around almost every day.
That realization changed me. I knew, right then, that I could not remain a journalist the rest of my life.
I remembered having read in the Michigan course guides that you could have as many degrees as you qualified for, as long as you completed all the course requirements. So I went back to the Michigan admissions office, and they told me I could attend any class I wanted as a “non candidate for degree.” Then, if I satisfied course requirements, I could petition for a degree. The only problem was that I had to wait until the regular students registered for courses before I could register.
So, I went back to school. Computer science requires a lot of math, so the first year was mostly math courses. I love math, and there weren’t many prerequisites for math courses, so all my science electives became math courses as well.
The second year was almost all computer programming courses, and I had to take three years’ worth in one year. And most of these courses were long closed before I could register.
That’s where I had to ask my father for a favor – the only favor I ever asked him as a student. I asked him for a blank stack of what they called “Drop-Add” forms. If you had the professor sign one of those forms, you could get into a closed course. I found that on the first day of classes, professors never had those forms around, but if you handed one a form and explained your situation, he would probably sign your form.
So, in 1991, I completed all the requirements for an undergraduate computer science degree, and became an official triple-major – one in humanities, one in social science and one in hard science. I would not be surprised to find that’s unique in Michigan’s annals.
Did you work for regular companies before starting out with coding your own games?
If possible, what companies have you worked for as a coder?
Upon my non-graduation graduation, I had a job lined up at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. After three years there, I moved to Duvall, Washington for a job with a small company called Wall Data. And after three years with Wall Data, I spent a year working for Computer Associates in Bellevue, Washington.
BYU 14
What have been the biggest mistakes you have made since starting your own business?
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to join an established gaming company to put a more modern front end on Front Office Football and try and market the game to a larger audience.
I decided to wait a year, because I wanted to try and develop a baseball game and they had no interest in new development of a baseball product. I wound up going back to FOF, and when I contacted that company again, they were no longer interested in expansion.
How much impact did gaining the support of your Wife have on your decision to start Solecismic?
None of this would be possible without Angela. We have a lot in common. We both have a wide variety of interests, we both love to read, we both are very curious about the world.
When I first talked about creating a sports simulation, she was instantly supportive, even though she knew I wouldn’t be bringing in any money for a while, and we would have to make sacrifices.
What do you do for relaxation?
I like reading. If I have a nice, long block of time and it’s quiet in the house, I look for a good book. I also, believe it or not, collect stamps. When I have time (and it’s been a couple of years now) one long-term project is creating a custom stamp album. Stamps are a great way to learn about history, so I’m trying to research the history behind each stamp issue and write what amounts to a history book.
If you weren't programming Sports games, what do you think your Career would be now?
I would probably be writing business software. I was trying to move my career in that direction around the time I left Wall Data. I think it would be interesting to analyze the financial markets in depth, or possibly the world of politics.
Best College Football rivalry? (Pretty sure I can guess your answer here.)
Adrian/Albion? Well, you’re asking someone whose father taught at Michigan for nearly 40 years, so it has to be Michigan/Ohio State. In fact, that’s probably the biggest rivalry in the history of sports, perhaps even bigger than Romans/Lions.
Celeval
Have you ever, in any sport and for any reason, pulled for Ohio State?
I enjoy boosting my rather fragile sports-related ego by pretending that the Big Ten is the ultimate sports conference. This is vitally important to me, because I honestly don’t care who wins any sporting contest that doesn’t somehow involve the Wolverine football team.
Last season was tough, because the Big Ten was magnificent in early inter-conference play, only to collapse about mid-way through the bowl season. I was rooting for Ohio State against Florida, though after Michigan’s regrettable showing in the Rose Bowl, it really didn’t matter.
If you could pick an '08 presidential campaign trail to be a fly on the wall for, whose would it be?
I’m growing increasingly disgusted with the partisan nature of modern politics. I could listen to Joe Biden talk for hours, because he has the intellectual curiosity necessary to effectively govern. Unfortunately, he has less of a chance than I do at becoming the next president. At least the term “Joe-mentum” has already been used by someone else.
I would probably choose Rudy Giuliani to trail, because he does have a chance of winning, and I admire his no-nonsense approach to difficult issues. I don’t always agree with him, but I respect his experience, especially as the Republican leader of a city where Republicans shouldn’t be able to compete. He’s tough, yet he understands his limits.
What kinds of design documentation do you put together for your games before/during coding? Has this changed since the first games you put out?
In general, how has your programming/design style and strategy changed as you've progressed - both into and out of the relationship with EA?
I rely heavily on three types of documents:
A tree listing every screen within the game, and its relationship to other screens.
A list detailing every internal data structure in the game. This document remains taped to my desk while I’m working.
A checklist of every new feature I’m adding to the game, or would like to add to the game. This is invaluable when making decisions as to how much development time I have remaining.I think my overall style hasn’t changed much in recent years – I had been programming for more than 20 years when I began this project. But I’ve learned much more about programming in the last nine years than in the rest of that time. Mostly in terms of how to maintain a large project, and confidence in my approach to hunting down bugs and designing effective programming structures. What was very difficult at first now comes very quickly. That’s important, as every new product release adds bigger challenges.
terpkristin
What are 3 things about yourself you think are critical to know to have a good picture of who you are?
I enjoy myself most when I’m free to create.
I’m very intense, and try never to do anything half-heartedly.
I’m very loyal. Those I let into my life are there for keeps.
What are your top 5 movies (no need to rank)?
That’s a difficult question, because I haven’t been to a movie theater since 1992, though there’s always HBO.
The Last Picture Show.
All the Right Moves.
A Price Above Rubies.
Network.
School Ties.
Favorite sports team?
Michigan Wolverines football.
CamEdwards
What was your first car, and when did you get it? How long did it last, and why did you get a new one?
After college, as a graduation present, my parents let me purchase their five-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme for half of its value. That was in 1986. After more than 100,000 miles (and those old GM cars weren’t built to last at all), I scrapped it in 1992 due to it needing too much regular maintenance. I bought my first new car in 1992, a Subaru Legacy sedan. I still drive it today.
What was the last book you read for fun?
Intuition, by Allegra Goodman. I thought it was an excellent portrayal of the difficulty in deducing right and wrong even in the very scientific world of academic research.
Is fatherhood everything you expected/hoped it would be? What's your favorite story to tell about being a dad?
It’s been more challenging. I know every child accuses his or her father of entirely forgetting what it’s like to be young. And I can safely say that I have no idea. My son is four, and only beginning to be able to hold a conversation. I’m impatient. I want to share the world of sports with him, and get him started on his intellectual journey.
It’s hard to have a favorite story. Every day is something new. Last month we went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which is one of the largest art festivals in the country. There was a booth where a local television station was interviewing people at random. Naturally, they wanted the cute kid story, so the reporter put Gregory in front of a camera.
Now on the drive down, I had taught him the phrase we, as locals, used to say about the Art Fair: “It’s not art, and it’s not fair.” So, sure enough, when the reporter asked him what he thought of the Art Fair, that’s how he responded. He would have sold it well too, if he hadn’t looked over at me before saying it. But the look on the reporter’s face was priceless.
path12
Name your top 5 games of all time.
Civilization II.
Baseball Mogul
Diamond Mind Baseball
Gabriel Knight II
NFL ’73
MikeVic
I know you're married, but do you have any children? If not, do you plan to?
One son, Gregory, who is 4. He was born hours after Bush declared war in Iraq. We do not plan to have any more children. We don’t need any new wars.
Do you have any pets? If you had pets in the past, what was your first ever pet?
We have a 16-year-old cat, Penelope, who my wife adopted as a kitten a few years before we met. We have always had cats in the family. My first pet was a calico cat my parents got about a year before I was born.
Are there aspects of programming that you enjoy more than others (UI design, database design, etc...)?
I like the research that goes into the games more than anything. I also really enjoy that stage when a product is feature-complete (no new features should be added) and I’m squashing out bugs right and left. There’s something about killing 100 issues in a single week that makes development memorable.
cartman
You've mentioned before that you used to work for CA. Have you been following their financial scandals at all? If so, was it a surprise to you at all having worked there? It seems it all started to occur about the time you left to start Solecismic.
Yes, it did start around then. I was working in a small satellite office about 3,000 miles away from their headquarters. I had no idea, nor is it something I have all that much interest in. I spent a year there, it wasn’t particularly challenging, but I knew some good people and enjoyed the social aspect of the job. I also had plenty of time to think about starting Solecismic the last couple of months I was there.
CA was a strange company. About six months in, all the developers were forced to travel to New Orleans for a sales convention. For some reason, they wanted developers on the showroom floor, even though they had salesmen who would have done a better job. We also had to attend endless company rah-rah meetings.
I had never been to New Orleans, so I wanted to roam the French Quarter. Which some of us did. We heard on the first day that a salesman was fired on the spot for spending the afternoon at his hotel pool instead of a rah-rah meeting. But a few of us decided to chance it anyway because those meetings were simply torture. We weren’t caught.
It was a fascinating conference. I remember the conference itself for three reasons:
Charles Wang, who was then the CEO of CA, traveled around the convention floor in a golf cart, constantly flanked by six security guards on foot. I have no idea what or who he thought would attack him.
They flew in Penn and Teller for a show, exclusively for CA employees and key vendors. That was back in the days when excess was expected in the computer world, and the show was very nice. I look at their show, Bullshit!, on Showtime, and I wonder why they’re wasting their time with such petty propaganda. They are excellent magicians in their specific genre.
A VP from our office drunkenly cornered me after a meeting and vividly explained how he was going to cheat on his wife that night at some house. As someone who is a total nerd about things like cheating, I could only nod and hope he wasn’t going to invite me to share his conquest. Fortunately, he didn’t. What do you have against living below the Mason-Dixon line? From the upper Midwest to the Pacific Northwest to New England and back to the Upper Midwest, I detect a definite cold weather location trend.
Yes, I enjoy cold weather, though it actually gets colder in North Carolina in the dead of winter than it does in the Seattle area.
It’s nothing against the South, it’s just that in the Raleigh area, there’s a lot of local resentment against the vast number of Yankees coming south to staff up the technology companies.
What led you to decide to take an apparent hands-off approach to the moderation of content here at FOFC?
This was Tony Wyss’ baby from the beginning. I felt things would work best if I were only informally associated with the web site. Tony asked me to post, to maintain a presence. And it just took off from there.
My brief forays into moderating didn’t go well. If I’m to do it, I need to be more of a dictator, and that honestly doesn’t suit my personality. I don’t even have moderator’s access to the current forum.
I like that people know FOFC is an independent forum, but that we all have bonded over the game. The best forums have that independent spirit.
gkb
I've noticed a lot of questions already about how you develop games and I'm interested in the same thing. What's the design, code, test process that you go through for each of your games? Have you ever thought of writing a game in Java so that (in theory) it could run on multiple platforms? Have you ever thought of writing a game for a cell phone? If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Above, I’ve outlined the three primary types of design document I like to use. After that, I just shoot for long, uninterrupted, quiet blocks of time. I tend to pick off short new features first, then, when development is going well, I attack the longer ones.
I was very much into Java when it first came out. Microsoft, however, saw its potential and did everything it could to sabotage the concept of multiple-platform development. It simply runs too slowly, or ran too slowly, to consider for any large project. I never trusted the garbage collection. I know there are great uses for Java, but I still think of it as a toy, like perl.
I’m sure it will happen some day, but for now, I don’t see the cell phone as having the UI or the memory capacity necessary for more complex games. I don’t even own a cell phone.
What would I do differently? I would have continued with the baseball game after I finished TCY. Since I turned down a good opportunity elsewhere to move in the baseball direction, I should have continued in that direction.
You seem to really enjoy breaking down American Idol...what do you enjoy so much about the show? Do you watch any other TV show regularly?
It’s something that my wife and I enjoy together. I like the competition aspect, and just have fun with it from there. We try and spend every evening together, and we have our shows. Several of the CBS dramas, and we also enjoyed Gilmore Girls/Veronica Mars. Angela’s favorite show is The Office, and we also watch a lot of the HBO and Showtime original shows, like Weeds, which just started its third season.
I'm a programmer and I'd love to write a text based sim of some sort. What advice would you give me? Would you be willing to take on a mentorship role and answer the occasional (i.e. every five minutes) question?
As my old CGW editor told me when I turned in my last article, write the game that you want to play. I don’t think this is a business that lends itself well to mentorship. You have to have your hands in everything, and there are no right answers. If you have questions, I’d be glad to answer them.
Have you ever been to Israel?
No. I’m torn on that. I’m not religious, so the typical destinations aren’t necessarily all that interesting. And I’m more of a Diaspora supporter in theory. We should all get along. But I think it would be a memorable experience.
What's your IQ?
Take it for what it’s worth, a number on a piece of paper. When it was last measured in high school, somewhere in the 160-170 range. I test well.
Helen of Troy - overrated?
Paris the thought.
flere-imsaho
How goes the house-building? Apologize if you had posted that it was done or something. If it's done, how did it turn out?
We moved at the end of January. The house turned out very well, though we are still working through a lot of quality issues. I honestly hope we never move again.
What do people have against your garage door (I think)?
Hopefully, nothing here. A couple of years ago, a wayward high school girl, late for class, plowed her mother’s minivan into our garage. Which was quite a feat, given that our driveway in New Hampshire was 100 feet long and we lived on a dead end street.
I caught her license plate number as she sped away, but she avoided a ticket by convincing the police that she had intended to come back and leave us a note. Her insurance paid to repair the damage, so no harm done.
Why did you relinquish control of the Ann Arbor Anachronism?
During and after the move, I just didn’t have time for game planning and extensive roster management. I was trying to find the time to fix the main issue with defensive play-calling, and I felt my fellow IHOF participants would resent my continued participation during that time.
What other text sims do you like/admire (not just for football - for any sport) and why?
I’ve always enjoyed Diamond Mind Baseball, because Tom Tippett is so committed to interesting, original research in baseball. I also enjoy Baseball Mogul, because Clay Dreslough has a gift for understanding what to present to an audience, and he’s someone I have a lot in common with.
SkyDog
[City Slickers]What has been the best day of your life? (no fair counting wedding or birth of child)
I haven’t seen the movie, so I’ll try and give this a straight answer. Can I say my first date with Angela? We knew we had something special right off the bat.
I’d also have to consider the day I went to San Francisco to demo FOF1 to the magazines. I had no idea how FOF would be received, and it was such a great feeling to be taken seriously, and to realize that I had a chance, after months of uncertainty, to become a real game developer.
What has been the worst day of your life?[/City Slickers]
Both of my parents died suddenly, nine years apart. They were far too young.
You mentioned recently not being the typical sports fan. What sort of sports fan are you then, and what in particular do you see as being atypical?
Because I was a sports journalist for so long, I’m very used to watching sporting events caring more about the story than who wins or loses. I enjoy watching sports, but unless it’s Michigan football, you won’t hear anything out of me other than an analysis of the game.
An ex-girlfriend’s father once took me to a Michigan basketball game. It was a tremendous game, I think Michigan beat Duke in overtime (yes, looking it up, Michigan 113, Duke 108 in overtime). He was an alum, one of those guys who paid $5,000 for Final Four seats. He yelled at the refs non-stop, really had a good time. After the game, he said to a friend, “who the hell does this guy think he is, growing up in Ann Arbor, going to Michigan, he didn’t cheer once the entire game?”
What were a few of the more satisfying moments you've had since starting Solecismic Software?
Definitely that first demo trip was a highlight. Then there were the initial meetings with Sierra and Electronic Arts over the potential publication of FOF2. A lot happened so quickly, so early on in the company history.
I was also very pleased with the reaction to TCY, given that the college game required so many more design decisions that could have gone in many directions. I’d like to think I wrote the first sports management simulation that included players’ course grades in individual classes, girlfriends, and a database of every high school in America.
What's something unusual or quirky about you that no FOFCer would know?
Once, during the development period for FOF4, I did not leave my house for the entire month of July. Not even to go to the store, or anything. I’m not particularly fond of the hot summer months, and I felt I was far behind on development. I don’t work all the time, but when I do work my way into a dedicated development drive, I can get very single-minded.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]wade moore[/B][/COLOR]
I'm pretty sure that you moved to Michigan because you have roots there - how did you end up in New Hampshire?
When my wife and I were discussing leaving the Seattle area, we felt we had the opportunity to live anywhere. So we made a long list of attributes we were seeking in a location.
Using various almanacs, we made a list of seven or eight areas in the country we felt had significant potential. Then we took a driving vacation, meeting with real estate agents, just getting the feel of each area. The Nashua area won, with Pittsburgh a close second. If neither ended up being acceptable, we had plans to make a second trip that would have included Madison, Wisconsin, West Lafayette, Indiana and southeastern Connecticut.
If you were Nigel/Simon what would you do to improve American Idol?
I would completely change the format of the tryout shows. I’m tired of seeing the same people making fun of bad singers. Funny once, boring after several seasons. We’ve reached a point where we don’t even watch those shows. I would replace them with shows focusing on choosing the semi-finalists. Give people a sense of who’s competing, a chance to bond with the ones who are otherwise at risk of going out early due to a lack of exposure.
I would also never repeat something like Idol Gives Back. At least not as a part of the competition itself. I think they will pay a ratings price for having a non-elimination week when they encouraged voting. That was just far too arrogant for my tastes. Never lie to your audience.
Finally, I would get back to focusing on great voices and less on “the look.” I’m not sure Kelly Clarkson would even make it through the first round if she were trying out today.
What is your favorite Board Game to play of all time?
I enjoy a series of railroad games under the Empire Builder format. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Swaggs[/B][/COLOR]
Aside from your wife, who are the five most beautiful women in the world?
Melissa Theuriau
Anne Hathaway
Keira Knightley
Kate Winslet
Katharine McPheeI could come up with an entirely different list tomorrow, though I think Melissa Theuriau might be a semi-permanent number one.
Which of your favorite sports teams would you most like to see win a championship?
No contest here. Michigan Wolverines football.
If you could attend a concert featuring your three favorite singers or bands, who would they be and in what order?
Vanessa Carlton
Ivy
Sarah McLachlan
Assuming Lloyd retires in the next 2-3 years, who would you like to see as his successor?
I’d like to see someone who is a little less old-fashioned when it comes to playing time. There should be more competition for playing time, less room in the proverbial doghouse. I don’t have anyone in mind, but I like the idea of a long-time coordinator being promoted. Maybe Ron English will grow into the job, though I’d like to see him succeed for a few more years with that defense and learn to handle the more aggressive passing attacks he saw at the end of last season.
What do you think of John Beilein, so far? What does Michigan need to do to re-emerge as a national basketball power?
I like the hiring, in theory. I think college basketball is fighting for respectability, given the best players leave far too soon. A good coach is a good recruiter first, and I have no idea what Beilein can do. Tommy Amaker just wasn’t getting the top recruits.
If you were named commissioner of the Big 10 and given a ten-year contract, what changes would you try to make in that time?
First, I would stop insisting that the Big Ten Network be carried in every cable system’s basic tier. It’s not going to happen, and there will be a lot of negative long-term fallout from this battle. I would then take the network and use it as the centerpiece of a sports news organization – a modern version of The National.
I’d want people to quickly get a handle on everything related to their favorite university, or sport. A quality news organization would cost very little and could provide a lot of original content.
Second, I would work quickly to add a 12<sup>th</sup> school. There’s too much money in conference championship games, and Big Ten schools are hurt by ending their seasons two weeks before every other major school.
Third, I would commission myself to create a Big Ten football simulation, dedicated to the memories of Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes.
Fourth, I would organize a conference-wide football scouting combine a week after the main event in Indianapolis. Same rules, only Olympic quality timing mechanisms. I’d televise it on the network.
Fifth, I would change the basketball rules to mirror the professional game. Same 3-point lines, same everything, except I would limit teams to three time outs per game.
Sixth, I would extend the women’s tennis season by two months. You can never have enough women’s tennis.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Honolulu Blue[/B][/COLOR]
What sport(s) do you feel is/are underrepresented by quality career sims?
Curling. No doubt about it.
Hillary - hottie or nottie?
Nottie.
If you got an offer from a big company that wanted your games and your programming/managerial services, but required you to move to some random big city (like, I don't know - London), would you take it?
No. But if a big company were willing to let me work from my home, I would give it serious consideration. It may be time for some new challenges.
Do you think we will see an NFL team in Los Angeles by 2015? If so, will it be an expansion or some other team moving? And where will they play?
I’m not sure. As long as the NFL continues with its archaic blackout rules, there’s very little incentive for football fans in Los Angeles. I don’t think most people there particularly want an NFL team. And the NFL won’t move there without a sweetheart stadium deal.
Economically, smaller areas can support an NFL team. The Green Bay franchise thrives – there are only eight games to sell out, and a rabid fan base. Green Bay could never support a team with 81 home dates, or even 40.
The NFL is a national product. Baseball is a series of 30 regional products.
The NFL just needs to keep Los Angeles interested in its product, not a particular team. Overall, the league is doing so well that I can’t think of a single franchise that could use a new venue. Tagliabue’s positioning on the Superdome issue, taking leadership in keeping the team there and having the players support that, was brilliant. They took a bad situation and turned it into a positive, and now even New Orleans – a team without a city – is on firm ground.
The 32-team format works very well, and I’d hate to see that change. I think it’s time to build up a decade or two of stability with this format.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Pyser[/B][/COLOR]
did you create fof because football is your favorite sport, or thought it would make for the best sim?
what is your favorite sport?
At the time I created FOF, it was baseball. Now I’m more of a football fan. I thought football was the best market opportunity at the time.
what's your take on hockey?
I enjoy the sport, but I don’t think I know enough about it to create a quality simulation. With football, I was able to come up to speed quickly while doing research because I’ve seen hundreds of games at different levels. That wouldn’t be the case with hockey.
what's one fof feature you've always wanted to include but for whatever reason, havent been able to?
I’m intrigued by the thought of implementing a 2-D graphic expansion of the game engine. It’s not so much an inability to program it as the thought that adding a 2-D component at the expense of any other major new feature would be a poor business decision.
[SIZE=4]
[B]SteveMax58[/B][/SIZE]
Do you find it difficult to "decompress" when you are on a roll, and your wife asks you to go out to dinner, shopping, etc. with her?
Definitely. But we never go out to dinner or shop, regardless. I suppose that’s one of my quirks – I hate sit-down restaurants or being out in a mall.
I think it’s important, however, to spend some time together every evening. I have the afternoon to work, and I have the late night to work (I often work until 5 or 6 in the morning). I think of the evening as our time.
Do you prefer absolute silence...or loud background noise? Does it vary?
I need absolute silence when I’m working. This is one reason I decided it might be a good idea to start my own company. Major programming farms like Computer Associates have no idea how much productivity they lose because they save a few dollars by using cubicles instead of nice, thick walls.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Klinglerware[/B][/COLOR]
Did you know before you named the company that the dictionary definition of solecism was "(1) A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech, (2) A breach of good manners or etiquette, and (3) Any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety"?
If not, would you have still gone with the name if you had known?
The genesis of the company name was back in 1994 when I needed a screen name for AOL Trivia. Being an English major, I thought it would be funny to have a screen name that was an error about a word meaning a grammatical error, solecistic.
Later, when I was coming up with a company name, I was advised to make up a word, to best avoid the potential for copyright confusion. So I used my screen name.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Dark Cloud[/B][/COLOR]
Do you think you'll 'retire' from game-making someday?
I don’t know. My father loved his work, and never retired. On the other hand, there are so many other things I’d like to try. I’m not sure solo game production will even be possible a few years down the road. The market is changing rapidly.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]ISiddiqui[/B][/COLOR]
Do you think we'll ever see, in the US, a sports text sim game become as popular as Championship Manager/Football Manager has become in the UK (and most of Europe, really)? Why or why not and what have been the biggest obstacles to this happening in the US?
I thought we were headed in that direction, but the enormous growth of the console market has greatly limited gaming choices. When I started out, you’d walk into a computer game store and PC games would line the front shelves. Today, PC games are in the back on a rack, fighting for floor space with Dance Revolution floor mats.
Because of the investment necessary to enter the console market, there’s very little current publisher interest in building up a niche product. Whenever you have massive consolidation in an industry, you lose consumer choice.
I hope that trend reverses and we see a revival of PC-based games, but with Microsoft’s aggressive approach to upgrading their operating system, compatibility issues, which were on the way out with the impressive release of Windows ’98, are making life more difficult for gamers.
Historically, there’s always been a shifting balance between the consoles and the PCs in the gaming world. I’m not sure I understand why that’s always in flux, since game play is so different. You sit back on a couch and look up at the Playstation. You sit in a desk chair with your hands on a keyboard and a mouse while you’re using a PC. These are entirely different paradigms and lend themselves to entirely different gaming experiences.
My hope is that this is the low point of PC gaming, and we see a revival soon. But, like the traditional sitcom on television, it’s impossible to tell whether PC gaming is nearing extinction, or ready for an upswing.
So, to answer your question… Right now, no, because a text-based sports simulation is a niche product in today’s market, and there’s no room for niche products on the consoles. Ten years from now? You never know.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Butter_of_69[/B][/COLOR]
Why is Michigan always a major powerhouse in every TCY career I've ever had? ALWAYS.
When writing TCY, I found a way to tap into a little-known Windows interface that actually tracks and understands your most hidden and intense desires.
I believe Bill Gates himself coded the API, as part of a secret NSA project abandoned when Homeland Security took over responsibility for maintaining the integrity of our nation’s USB ports.
If Michigan is always a powerhouse, it’s because you want it to be a powerhouse.
[COLOR=DarkRed]
[B]Passacaglia[/B][/COLOR]
Cottage Inn or Pizza House?
Cottage Inn deep dish with the sesame seed crust, no need to complicate it with anything more than pepperoni.
[COLOR=DarkRed]
[B]Hell Atlantic[/B][/COLOR]
what are your thoughts on Dean Houston? are you impressed with his accomplishments? are you happy the legacy and legend of Dean Houston could come out of something you created?
I love knowing that I created something that will live on in the imaginations of countless people. Our most powerful learning experiences come from triggering the imagination.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” - Albert Einstein
But I’m sorry, I’ve seen the tapes, and Dean clearly slapped that child.
[SIZE=4][B]MIJB#19[/B][/SIZE]
As a fan of alliterations, what are your favorite ones?
Alliteration is a lost art. While by most standards, today’s great writers are better at story-telling, better at turning a phrase, better overall writers with a VORW even Barry Bonds would envy, you can still look at Shakespeare’s work as the pinnacle of alliteration.
“I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness every where!” – Sonnet 97
You just don’t see writing like that anymore. We have a decided dichotomy differentiating poetry and prose in this day and age.
Who was the inspiration of Little Donny from the earlier FOF's emails?
I’ve forgotten Little Donny. I want to say it was a riff on Danny Almonte, but I think it predates the Almonte scandal. Maybe there was a story in the news around that time about the parents of middle-school kids sending tapes to college coaches.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]sabotai[/B][/COLOR]
Elvis or The Beatles?
Neither,
Roger Staubach or Kenny Stabler?
The Snake.
The Godfather or Citizen Kane?
Rosebud.
Coke or Pepsi?
Whichever one is on sale.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Dodgerchick[/B][/COLOR]
Why do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches taste better when cut diagonally?
It maximizes the opportunity for those pure, untainted, full-size bites of sandwich center, making us yearn for the days when our mothers would carefully excoriate any trace of crust.
How old are your kids and is there something they did that brought tears to your eyes?
Our son is 4. No, I can’t say that I’m much of a crier.
What would you like written on your tombstone?
“Sports Simulations for the Remainder of Eternity.”
Who is the person you most trust?
Angela.
If you had a magic button that could make any person explode, who would it be and why?
Tough one. I would say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, because he is clearly insane, and he holds so much power in a country that is positioned to be dominant in the region, and he wants to leverage that power to bring about the end of the world.
Either him, or the old lady who spilled coffee on her lap and sued McDonald’s.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Fonzie[/B][/COLOR]
I seem to recall you saying that your house was being made from an unusual material. What was it, and are you happy with it?
Our exterior walls are made from Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF). From discussions with builders, I get the strong impression this is the future of home building. ICF walls hold up better, and provide a much higher R-factor, which saves a lot in energy costs.
We’re already seeing many of these houses in the south, especially in areas prone to hurricanes or extreme termite infestations. They are largely unknown in the north, though.
So far, I’m very impressed, but we still have some problems related to the fact that our HVAC contractor had never worked with an ICF house before, and we still have extreme hot and cold spots (though part of that is because he forgot to connect the cold-air returns to the duct system in one part of the house).
Oh, and how long did it take you to code the 2-minute comeback and halftime "flipped switch" routines?
I had heard about the infamous comeback code, of course. Hadn’t heard about the flipped switch, though. No, neither of these ideas seems like one I’d think would add anything but annoyance to a gaming experience.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]hoosierdude[/B][/COLOR]
What segment of technology would you rather see regressed to "how it was done years ago" and why?
Telephones. I despise cell phones and refuse to use one myself. I realize it’s out of my control, but I wish people who called me didn’t use them, either.
The reason? The wireless sound technology is still choppy, the microphones are cheap and pick up far too much background noise, and I have to strain to hear ordinary conversation.
Some day, wireless phones will be as good as land lines, but until that day comes, I wish cell phones were only used for emergencies.
[B]Electric or blade razor?[/B]
Electric.
What would you rather do, learn a new talent/skill or enjoy a relaxing hobby?
Learn a new skill. Some day that will change, but I’ve chosen a profession ideally suited for those who need to learn constantly.
Fishing or Hunting?
Neither. I like supermarkets.
[B][COLOR=DarkRed]ardent enthusiast[/COLOR][/B]
Would you buy me a hat?
You just left the armed forces. You already have plenty of darned hats.
What's your favorite offense in TCY? I'll play double wing till I die.
I like the Pro formation, because I enjoy the illusion that my quarterback will be more successful at the next level if he masters the more modern innovations.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Flasch186[/B][/COLOR]
I will make a dinner of your choice for my roomie and wife but I'll need recipes and instructions. so please...
Will you give me your favorite recipe(s) for a dinner (at least 3 courses) and instructions for making it to your fine standards?
Is Jim Lange standing next to you with a stack of index cards? Will I win a trip to Barbados?
Okay, call 904 353-4744. Course 1 – ask for Buffalo Chicken Kickers. Course 2 - ask for a classic hand-tossed with pepperoni and olives. Course 3 – ask for Cinna Stix with extra-sweet icing.
Wait half an hour. When the doorbell rings, it’s done.
[SIZE=4][B]Karlifornia[/B][/SIZE]
How does it feel to have wasted your time answering a question like this?
It was rather nice and quick, because I didn’t have to Google a Domino’s menu or anything.
If Jimmy Carter were alive today, what is one question you'd ask him?
Ooh, politics, and a trick question… can I change one answer above to read “Jimmy Carter” instead of “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?”
I think I’d ask him if he thinks SEC football is better than Big Ten football.
Any scars?
Yes. When I was 8, I received a speedometer for my bicycle, and immediately drove around the neighborhood trying to see how fast I could go. A day or two later, I was headed down a hill and reached 29 mph. There was gravel at the bottom of the hill from construction. I face-planted, and lost some teeth, and needed a few stitches near my nose.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Vinatieri for Prez[/B][/COLOR]
[COLOR=Black]Who's better? Tom Brady or Peyton Manning.[/COLOR]
I’d rather tell people what I really think about Jimmy Carter than get into this debate.
[SIZE=4][COLOR=DarkRed]JAG[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Have you read any of the Scientific Football books from KC Joyner and if so, what is your opinion of him and his work?
I admire his dedication and would love to see him further refine his skills.
Football is an incredibly difficult game to assess from a statistical perspective, and I think he has a great approach, mixing in the game films. However, the metrics he has come up with so far are still too broad-based, and the numbers are still too prone to small sample-size error.
I like his work, and find it more promising than just about anything out there, but it’s still behind the good scout with a gut feeling in terms of accuracy. This kind of work has revolutionized baseball, separating the lousy managers from the good ones. With refinement, I think he could do the same for football coaches and general managers.
Do you have a favorite NFL writer? One that you can't stand?
I enjoy the collection of reports in the Whispers section of Pro Football Weekly. I look forward to reading those every week during the season.
My least favorite football writer is definitely Ron Borges. He has a personal axe to grind with Bill Belichick, and he can’t even write down a grocery list without that grudge affecting his writing. There’s just no way to take anything he writes seriously.
Do you have a favorite NFL announcing team? Least favorite?
Not really. I never watch football with the sound on. The mute button is my friend.
A request for another funny / cute kid story.
Lately, Angela has been introducing Gregory to the world of music, and trying to explain the lyrics, on occasion, to songs by Arcade Fire, which they’ve been listening to a lot lately.
A few days ago, he was playing on a keyboard, and changed the output to “vibes.” He looked up at Angela, and said, “this sounds like apples.” He then made up a rhyming song, “You can eat them every day. They are healthy, hey hey hey.”
So, he’s a little behind Mozart, but he’s making progress.
[B]
[SIZE=4] mtolson[/SIZE][/B]
For those of us who inspire to develop applications, how long did it take for you to develop the skill set you felt required to develop your first FOF game ?
More than 20 years. I feel that my experience as a journalist is a key part of my background. Simply learning how to choose and present information is vital in product development.
How long did you spend writing your first FOF game ?
The actual development phase took five months. Add maybe another three months in planning and research.
Do you get enjoyment out of your games once completed or the R&D cycle wipe out the joy of playing your own products.
I like to take a break from playing the game once a product is released through the first couple of maintenance cycles, but generally I do write the kind of games I like to play.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Dutch[/B][/COLOR]
What is the longest book you ever read?
I’d have to guess Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
What is your favorite event/era in history?
The one when Ross and Rachel got back together.
Hell Atlantic: Overrated, Underrated or Hard To Tell?
Hard to tell. I’m not the type of person who would fit into the whole Vegas trip, midget wrestling scene, so I have no real sense of Hell Atlantic as a person.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Schmidty[/B][/COLOR]
Why did you choose to go to U-M?
I started college at The University of Rochester, as an economics major. I had decided I wanted to go into journalism, and Rochester’s English department was its weakest department at the time. It was a sudden decision made after my sophomore year.
Lacking the time to reapply to any of the other schools to which I had originally been accepted, I took my original acceptance letter to the admissions building at Michigan, and they said I could stay as a full-time student if I enrolled and passed a summer course.
Did you like U-M sports before you went there?
Absolutely. My father took me to Michigan football games starting at about age 4.
What is your favorite moment in MSU sports history?
You probably won’t like this one. October 11, 1985. I was sports editor of the Michigan yearbook, and traveled up to East Lansing for the annual Spartan/Wolverine football contest. I sat up in the press box, where Kirk Gibson (a Michigan State alum) and his wife, I guess, were holding court.
He was bragging that the Spartans were going to destroy Michigan. Everyone else was fairly quiet, because making a lot of noise in a press box is just one of those things you don’t do. Anyone, Kirk’s promises didn’t hold up well, the game was out of reach by the end of the first half. He and his wife were gone after halftime and Michigan won, 31-0.
Not a great favorite moment, I know. I can’t count Magic Johnson’s visits to Crisler Arena because they were usually successful, even though we all knew that he was one of the greats ever to play the college game.
What was the first "video game" that you ever played?
I’d have to say a little BASIC game called NFL ’73. It was text-based, call a play from a short list and wait for a result. There wasn’t any sophistication to it, but I played it endlessly because it was the only computer game I’d ever seen related to sports. I remember something else having to do with Mugwumps from that era, as well as a game based on Star Trek that I wasn’t any good at because I didn’t watch the show.
What is the greatest game you have ever played?
Civilization II.
Do you enjoy the outdoors? What outdoor activities do you enjoy the most?
No, I really don’t. Which is funny because our house directly abuts a large state park. We choose to live in houses with air conditioning for a reason. If I want to see nature, I’ll look out the window from the comfort of my living room.
Are you athletic? What one are you at least decent at?
In high school, I was a year younger than my peers, and I was fairly small (had my growth spurt fairly late). So I was not a very successful athlete. I played constantly, though. Whatever was in season.
I did well at baseball during the summers, though my school did not have a team. I was a decent tennis player. I can also hit the 3-point shots in basketball, but I have no speed.
I would say I’m not athletic, but I have good hand-eye coordination and endless desire to play.
Is it hard not to "let it loose" and be yourself in public, especially in this community? I can imagine that it would be excruciating, but that's only because I'm a spazz.
Yes, I would like to be more active in the political items, and even in the sports items that become polemic. But it’s probably not a good idea, given that most of the people here are my customers. I’ve tried letting it loose here a little, and it doesn’t always go over well.
Did you really hate your time in West Michigan? If so, what parts were the worst? What were the best parts. (Tread lightly, or I will say mean things to you via carrier pigeon)
No, it was a fun time. I was working for The Holland Sentinel, and spent almost all my time with my co-workers. We were fairly close, all just out of college. We just felt we were under siege from a managing editor and a community that had such a unified, conservative viewpoint.
It was definitely a shock having spent almost my entire life in liberal Ann Arbor, moving across the state to a city where neighbors became very angry if you as much as mowed your lawn on a Sunday afternoon.
So we did our best to report the news as evenly as possible, trying to find the other so-called underdogs out there just to tell their stories.
Porterhouse, Tenderloin, or Ribeye? Grilled or panfried?
I like a nice grilled tenderloin on occasion.
Greatest band ever?
Music is so personal, so this is a very difficult question to answer. Based on my own biases, I’d have to say Boston or The Eagles.
Can you play an instrument?
Not very well. I’ve had a few years of piano lessons, but those are long forgotten.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Senator[/B][/COLOR]
You are part of the east coast bias against the greatness of Texas (the state) football, why?
Quite simply, it’s not Big Ten football. Can I recognize the city of Texarkana for putting out the next great college football quarterback?
Did I hear that at one time, you did some newspaper reporting, can you tell me a favorite story from that time, if said time did exist?
When I was a beat reporter covering a small town near Holland, Michigan, I received a tip that a local retirement home owner was about to face charges for skimming money out of his business and using it to illegally build a series of docks for his boats on some waterfront property he owned.
I went out to the property, took a couple of pictures, talked to a supervisor, I guess, who wasn’t terribly friendly. I then called this guy’s office and left a couple of messages.
Nothing much happened at first. I gave my notes to my managing editor and he told me not to pursue the story until charges were actually filed. That happens all the time in journalism. You need a high standard of proof before you can file a story like that. I didn’t have much.
Apparently, the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) was acting, quietly, on the docks charges, though. And the guy knew I had taken pictures. I lived in the same small town, and went to a bar with a date to grab some dinner one night. And that retirement home owner happened to be sitting a couple of tables over with a few people, including that supervisor.
I didn’t say anything to him, but the supervisor recognized me and told him. He then, for the next ten minutes, proceeded to tell his friends, in an extremely loud voice, “what happened to the last reporter who investigated me.” One of them came over and made a rude comment to my date.
I wish the story had some sort of interesting ending, but he then left with his staff, and we left maybe a half-hour later, and I never heard anything about it again, nor did anyone actually file any sort of charges. About a month later, the DNR stopped him from finishing the docks, he refused to comment. I ran a small story about it, but it wasn’t anything serious enough to get him into real trouble.
Reporters are often threatened for one reason or another. It’s happened to me a few times, but that night in the bar was the only time I ever thought something might come of it.
[SIZE=4][B]Crim[/B][/SIZE]
what better statistical accuracy or maximum customizability?
Statistical accuracy.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Marc Vaughan[/B]
[/COLOR]
Do you ever watch soccer - if so which is your favourite team?
Like many of us Yanks, I only watch once every four years. I love that soccer hasn’t yet been ruined by the constant drumming of television commercials. But soccer isn’t in my blood like baseball and football.
Since I was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, while my father was spending his sabbatical teaching at the University of Sheffield, I root for Sheffield United and was pleased to see a few games on the Fox Soccer Channel last fall. However, this is not a good year to be a Blades supporter.
[B][SIZE=4]astrosfan64[/SIZE]
[/B]
Do you hate graphics?
I like a pretty picture as much as anyone, but I hate to waste any precious screen space on unnecessary fluff. This type of game should be played in a windowed format, so you can context switch and keep other applications open. And with the more complex screens in the game, the more data you can display at once, the easier the game is to navigate.
Do you play any console sports games?
No. I haven’t purchased any of the recent consoles.
How did you decide to do a football game?
How easy/difficult was it to decide to code your own games full-time? Did you start out by still keeping a full-time job?
Back in the early ‘90s, when I was working for IBM and Windows was still that quirky Apple emulation that had to be bypassed whenever you played a game, I sent a letter to Computer Gaming World, frustrated that I had no idea whether the latest baseball offering was worth playing. Their review made no mention of statistical accuracy.
We were still in the Strat-O-Matic days. Testing a game’s accuracy meant dozens of hours of dedicated simulation, even to get a rough idea.
The CGW editor was nice enough to forward my letter to his sports editor, who contacted me right away about reviewing sports games. Within a month, I had a new copy of Tom Landry Strategy Football.
My sports gaming bug, which started with a dice-and-paper baseball game my father and a college friend of his created maybe 60 years ago, grew very quickly on the computer. After a few years of work in the field, I knew I had to create a game of my own.
In 1997, CGW sent me a copy of Baseball Mogul. That was the style of game I always wanted to play. I felt confident that I had enough experience in the field to take on a long-term project.
I would have preferred to start with baseball, since I knew, at that time, so much more about that sport than I knew about any other sport. I’m just not a basketball fan, and I felt I had to stick with one of the four “majors” in America.
I almost chose hockey, because I liked the idea of simulating a continuous motion game. But after agonizing over the decision for weeks, decided on football, because I was much more familiar with the sport, and felt I could make a better business case for football.
How long have you been programming?
My first exposure to programming was a summer course my parents found for me before 7<sup>th</sup> grade. That would have been 1976. It was taught in BASIC on a mainframe maintained by Washtenaw County in Michigan. I took to it immediately, and later, was pleased to find that my middle school also had a connection to this mainframe.
In 10<sup>th</sup> grade, my parents bought me a 16k computer (an Interact, which was sold almost exclusively in Ann Arbor) for my birthday. I began spending an inordinate amount of time writing games. In high school, I sold three of those games back to the company that distributed the Interact, which essentially paid for other games and hardware upgrades.
I’ve been programming for 31 years now, the last 16 as my sole major source of income.
Do you have a degree in Computer Science? If so, from where? If not, do you have a diploma or a degree in another field?
Yes. I have a bachelor’s degree in computer programming from the University of Michigan. I got there in a very roundabout way, though. My father was an English professor at Michigan. I always liked science, and my parents were very encouraging, but I didn’t see that as leading anywhere. I always felt my career would be in the arts.
Computers were an enjoyable hobby. It just never occurred to me that programming didn’t come easily to everyone and that people actually made a living working with computers. Keep in mind that I went to high school in the late ‘70s, graduating a year before Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick saved the world with a game of Global Thermonuclear War.
I started college as an economics major, and enjoyed working on the school newspaper more than anything. I wound up with a double-major of economics and English. Then I went to graduate school, and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Michigan.
I started to grow frustrated with journalism about that time. During graduate school, I took a year to work full time at a paper in western Michigan (The Holland Sentinel) with a circulation of 20-30,000. I was moving up quickly, but I was already starting to feel that I had written every newspaper story imaginable.
I decided to return to school, and finished my master’s in 1988. I hoped the degree would help me land a job at a bigger newspaper. In mid-1989, I had a life-changing experience.
I interviewed for a position as a news writer with The Ann Arbor News. Now I had put myself through college by stringing for The Ann Arbor News. I had moved all the way up to what they called “King Prep,” which meant I was writing a weekly column on high school sports, I was working the maximum of 30 hours almost every week, I was even third man on Michigan football for home games. I felt, with the master’s degree, I had a very good shot at transitioning to the news department. They all knew me there.
The news editor, however, only gave me a courtesy interview. He never even bothered to tell me I didn’t get the job, and it wasn’t like he didn’t see me around almost every day.
That realization changed me. I knew, right then, that I could not remain a journalist the rest of my life.
I remembered having read in the Michigan course guides that you could have as many degrees as you qualified for, as long as you completed all the course requirements. So I went back to the Michigan admissions office, and they told me I could attend any class I wanted as a “non candidate for degree.” Then, if I satisfied course requirements, I could petition for a degree. The only problem was that I had to wait until the regular students registered for courses before I could register.
So, I went back to school. Computer science requires a lot of math, so the first year was mostly math courses. I love math, and there weren’t many prerequisites for math courses, so all my science electives became math courses as well.
The second year was almost all computer programming courses, and I had to take three years’ worth in one year. And most of these courses were long closed before I could register.
That’s where I had to ask my father for a favor – the only favor I ever asked him as a student. I asked him for a blank stack of what they called “Drop-Add” forms. If you had the professor sign one of those forms, you could get into a closed course. I found that on the first day of classes, professors never had those forms around, but if you handed one a form and explained your situation, he would probably sign your form.
So, in 1991, I completed all the requirements for an undergraduate computer science degree, and became an official triple-major – one in humanities, one in social science and one in hard science. I would not be surprised to find that’s unique in Michigan’s annals.
Did you work for regular companies before starting out with coding your own games?
If possible, what companies have you worked for as a coder?
Upon my non-graduation graduation, I had a job lined up at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. After three years there, I moved to Duvall, Washington for a job with a small company called Wall Data. And after three years with Wall Data, I spent a year working for Computer Associates in Bellevue, Washington.
BYU 14
What have been the biggest mistakes you have made since starting your own business?
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to join an established gaming company to put a more modern front end on Front Office Football and try and market the game to a larger audience.
I decided to wait a year, because I wanted to try and develop a baseball game and they had no interest in new development of a baseball product. I wound up going back to FOF, and when I contacted that company again, they were no longer interested in expansion.
How much impact did gaining the support of your Wife have on your decision to start Solecismic?
None of this would be possible without Angela. We have a lot in common. We both have a wide variety of interests, we both love to read, we both are very curious about the world.
When I first talked about creating a sports simulation, she was instantly supportive, even though she knew I wouldn’t be bringing in any money for a while, and we would have to make sacrifices.
What do you do for relaxation?
I like reading. If I have a nice, long block of time and it’s quiet in the house, I look for a good book. I also, believe it or not, collect stamps. When I have time (and it’s been a couple of years now) one long-term project is creating a custom stamp album. Stamps are a great way to learn about history, so I’m trying to research the history behind each stamp issue and write what amounts to a history book.
If you weren't programming Sports games, what do you think your Career would be now?
I would probably be writing business software. I was trying to move my career in that direction around the time I left Wall Data. I think it would be interesting to analyze the financial markets in depth, or possibly the world of politics.
Best College Football rivalry? (Pretty sure I can guess your answer here.)
Adrian/Albion? Well, you’re asking someone whose father taught at Michigan for nearly 40 years, so it has to be Michigan/Ohio State. In fact, that’s probably the biggest rivalry in the history of sports, perhaps even bigger than Romans/Lions.
Celeval
Have you ever, in any sport and for any reason, pulled for Ohio State?
I enjoy boosting my rather fragile sports-related ego by pretending that the Big Ten is the ultimate sports conference. This is vitally important to me, because I honestly don’t care who wins any sporting contest that doesn’t somehow involve the Wolverine football team.
Last season was tough, because the Big Ten was magnificent in early inter-conference play, only to collapse about mid-way through the bowl season. I was rooting for Ohio State against Florida, though after Michigan’s regrettable showing in the Rose Bowl, it really didn’t matter.
If you could pick an '08 presidential campaign trail to be a fly on the wall for, whose would it be?
I’m growing increasingly disgusted with the partisan nature of modern politics. I could listen to Joe Biden talk for hours, because he has the intellectual curiosity necessary to effectively govern. Unfortunately, he has less of a chance than I do at becoming the next president. At least the term “Joe-mentum” has already been used by someone else.
I would probably choose Rudy Giuliani to trail, because he does have a chance of winning, and I admire his no-nonsense approach to difficult issues. I don’t always agree with him, but I respect his experience, especially as the Republican leader of a city where Republicans shouldn’t be able to compete. He’s tough, yet he understands his limits.
What kinds of design documentation do you put together for your games before/during coding? Has this changed since the first games you put out?
In general, how has your programming/design style and strategy changed as you've progressed - both into and out of the relationship with EA?
I rely heavily on three types of documents:
A tree listing every screen within the game, and its relationship to other screens.
A list detailing every internal data structure in the game. This document remains taped to my desk while I’m working.
A checklist of every new feature I’m adding to the game, or would like to add to the game. This is invaluable when making decisions as to how much development time I have remaining.I think my overall style hasn’t changed much in recent years – I had been programming for more than 20 years when I began this project. But I’ve learned much more about programming in the last nine years than in the rest of that time. Mostly in terms of how to maintain a large project, and confidence in my approach to hunting down bugs and designing effective programming structures. What was very difficult at first now comes very quickly. That’s important, as every new product release adds bigger challenges.
terpkristin
What are 3 things about yourself you think are critical to know to have a good picture of who you are?
I enjoy myself most when I’m free to create.
I’m very intense, and try never to do anything half-heartedly.
I’m very loyal. Those I let into my life are there for keeps.
What are your top 5 movies (no need to rank)?
That’s a difficult question, because I haven’t been to a movie theater since 1992, though there’s always HBO.
The Last Picture Show.
All the Right Moves.
A Price Above Rubies.
Network.
School Ties.
Favorite sports team?
Michigan Wolverines football.
CamEdwards
What was your first car, and when did you get it? How long did it last, and why did you get a new one?
After college, as a graduation present, my parents let me purchase their five-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme for half of its value. That was in 1986. After more than 100,000 miles (and those old GM cars weren’t built to last at all), I scrapped it in 1992 due to it needing too much regular maintenance. I bought my first new car in 1992, a Subaru Legacy sedan. I still drive it today.
What was the last book you read for fun?
Intuition, by Allegra Goodman. I thought it was an excellent portrayal of the difficulty in deducing right and wrong even in the very scientific world of academic research.
Is fatherhood everything you expected/hoped it would be? What's your favorite story to tell about being a dad?
It’s been more challenging. I know every child accuses his or her father of entirely forgetting what it’s like to be young. And I can safely say that I have no idea. My son is four, and only beginning to be able to hold a conversation. I’m impatient. I want to share the world of sports with him, and get him started on his intellectual journey.
It’s hard to have a favorite story. Every day is something new. Last month we went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which is one of the largest art festivals in the country. There was a booth where a local television station was interviewing people at random. Naturally, they wanted the cute kid story, so the reporter put Gregory in front of a camera.
Now on the drive down, I had taught him the phrase we, as locals, used to say about the Art Fair: “It’s not art, and it’s not fair.” So, sure enough, when the reporter asked him what he thought of the Art Fair, that’s how he responded. He would have sold it well too, if he hadn’t looked over at me before saying it. But the look on the reporter’s face was priceless.
path12
Name your top 5 games of all time.
Civilization II.
Baseball Mogul
Diamond Mind Baseball
Gabriel Knight II
NFL ’73
MikeVic
I know you're married, but do you have any children? If not, do you plan to?
One son, Gregory, who is 4. He was born hours after Bush declared war in Iraq. We do not plan to have any more children. We don’t need any new wars.
Do you have any pets? If you had pets in the past, what was your first ever pet?
We have a 16-year-old cat, Penelope, who my wife adopted as a kitten a few years before we met. We have always had cats in the family. My first pet was a calico cat my parents got about a year before I was born.
Are there aspects of programming that you enjoy more than others (UI design, database design, etc...)?
I like the research that goes into the games more than anything. I also really enjoy that stage when a product is feature-complete (no new features should be added) and I’m squashing out bugs right and left. There’s something about killing 100 issues in a single week that makes development memorable.
cartman
You've mentioned before that you used to work for CA. Have you been following their financial scandals at all? If so, was it a surprise to you at all having worked there? It seems it all started to occur about the time you left to start Solecismic.
Yes, it did start around then. I was working in a small satellite office about 3,000 miles away from their headquarters. I had no idea, nor is it something I have all that much interest in. I spent a year there, it wasn’t particularly challenging, but I knew some good people and enjoyed the social aspect of the job. I also had plenty of time to think about starting Solecismic the last couple of months I was there.
CA was a strange company. About six months in, all the developers were forced to travel to New Orleans for a sales convention. For some reason, they wanted developers on the showroom floor, even though they had salesmen who would have done a better job. We also had to attend endless company rah-rah meetings.
I had never been to New Orleans, so I wanted to roam the French Quarter. Which some of us did. We heard on the first day that a salesman was fired on the spot for spending the afternoon at his hotel pool instead of a rah-rah meeting. But a few of us decided to chance it anyway because those meetings were simply torture. We weren’t caught.
It was a fascinating conference. I remember the conference itself for three reasons:
Charles Wang, who was then the CEO of CA, traveled around the convention floor in a golf cart, constantly flanked by six security guards on foot. I have no idea what or who he thought would attack him.
They flew in Penn and Teller for a show, exclusively for CA employees and key vendors. That was back in the days when excess was expected in the computer world, and the show was very nice. I look at their show, Bullshit!, on Showtime, and I wonder why they’re wasting their time with such petty propaganda. They are excellent magicians in their specific genre.
A VP from our office drunkenly cornered me after a meeting and vividly explained how he was going to cheat on his wife that night at some house. As someone who is a total nerd about things like cheating, I could only nod and hope he wasn’t going to invite me to share his conquest. Fortunately, he didn’t. What do you have against living below the Mason-Dixon line? From the upper Midwest to the Pacific Northwest to New England and back to the Upper Midwest, I detect a definite cold weather location trend.
Yes, I enjoy cold weather, though it actually gets colder in North Carolina in the dead of winter than it does in the Seattle area.
It’s nothing against the South, it’s just that in the Raleigh area, there’s a lot of local resentment against the vast number of Yankees coming south to staff up the technology companies.
What led you to decide to take an apparent hands-off approach to the moderation of content here at FOFC?
This was Tony Wyss’ baby from the beginning. I felt things would work best if I were only informally associated with the web site. Tony asked me to post, to maintain a presence. And it just took off from there.
My brief forays into moderating didn’t go well. If I’m to do it, I need to be more of a dictator, and that honestly doesn’t suit my personality. I don’t even have moderator’s access to the current forum.
I like that people know FOFC is an independent forum, but that we all have bonded over the game. The best forums have that independent spirit.
gkb
I've noticed a lot of questions already about how you develop games and I'm interested in the same thing. What's the design, code, test process that you go through for each of your games? Have you ever thought of writing a game in Java so that (in theory) it could run on multiple platforms? Have you ever thought of writing a game for a cell phone? If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Above, I’ve outlined the three primary types of design document I like to use. After that, I just shoot for long, uninterrupted, quiet blocks of time. I tend to pick off short new features first, then, when development is going well, I attack the longer ones.
I was very much into Java when it first came out. Microsoft, however, saw its potential and did everything it could to sabotage the concept of multiple-platform development. It simply runs too slowly, or ran too slowly, to consider for any large project. I never trusted the garbage collection. I know there are great uses for Java, but I still think of it as a toy, like perl.
I’m sure it will happen some day, but for now, I don’t see the cell phone as having the UI or the memory capacity necessary for more complex games. I don’t even own a cell phone.
What would I do differently? I would have continued with the baseball game after I finished TCY. Since I turned down a good opportunity elsewhere to move in the baseball direction, I should have continued in that direction.
You seem to really enjoy breaking down American Idol...what do you enjoy so much about the show? Do you watch any other TV show regularly?
It’s something that my wife and I enjoy together. I like the competition aspect, and just have fun with it from there. We try and spend every evening together, and we have our shows. Several of the CBS dramas, and we also enjoyed Gilmore Girls/Veronica Mars. Angela’s favorite show is The Office, and we also watch a lot of the HBO and Showtime original shows, like Weeds, which just started its third season.
I'm a programmer and I'd love to write a text based sim of some sort. What advice would you give me? Would you be willing to take on a mentorship role and answer the occasional (i.e. every five minutes) question?
As my old CGW editor told me when I turned in my last article, write the game that you want to play. I don’t think this is a business that lends itself well to mentorship. You have to have your hands in everything, and there are no right answers. If you have questions, I’d be glad to answer them.
Have you ever been to Israel?
No. I’m torn on that. I’m not religious, so the typical destinations aren’t necessarily all that interesting. And I’m more of a Diaspora supporter in theory. We should all get along. But I think it would be a memorable experience.
What's your IQ?
Take it for what it’s worth, a number on a piece of paper. When it was last measured in high school, somewhere in the 160-170 range. I test well.
Helen of Troy - overrated?
Paris the thought.
flere-imsaho
How goes the house-building? Apologize if you had posted that it was done or something. If it's done, how did it turn out?
We moved at the end of January. The house turned out very well, though we are still working through a lot of quality issues. I honestly hope we never move again.
What do people have against your garage door (I think)?
Hopefully, nothing here. A couple of years ago, a wayward high school girl, late for class, plowed her mother’s minivan into our garage. Which was quite a feat, given that our driveway in New Hampshire was 100 feet long and we lived on a dead end street.
I caught her license plate number as she sped away, but she avoided a ticket by convincing the police that she had intended to come back and leave us a note. Her insurance paid to repair the damage, so no harm done.
Why did you relinquish control of the Ann Arbor Anachronism?
During and after the move, I just didn’t have time for game planning and extensive roster management. I was trying to find the time to fix the main issue with defensive play-calling, and I felt my fellow IHOF participants would resent my continued participation during that time.
What other text sims do you like/admire (not just for football - for any sport) and why?
I’ve always enjoyed Diamond Mind Baseball, because Tom Tippett is so committed to interesting, original research in baseball. I also enjoy Baseball Mogul, because Clay Dreslough has a gift for understanding what to present to an audience, and he’s someone I have a lot in common with.
SkyDog
[City Slickers]What has been the best day of your life? (no fair counting wedding or birth of child)
I haven’t seen the movie, so I’ll try and give this a straight answer. Can I say my first date with Angela? We knew we had something special right off the bat.
I’d also have to consider the day I went to San Francisco to demo FOF1 to the magazines. I had no idea how FOF would be received, and it was such a great feeling to be taken seriously, and to realize that I had a chance, after months of uncertainty, to become a real game developer.
What has been the worst day of your life?[/City Slickers]
Both of my parents died suddenly, nine years apart. They were far too young.
You mentioned recently not being the typical sports fan. What sort of sports fan are you then, and what in particular do you see as being atypical?
Because I was a sports journalist for so long, I’m very used to watching sporting events caring more about the story than who wins or loses. I enjoy watching sports, but unless it’s Michigan football, you won’t hear anything out of me other than an analysis of the game.
An ex-girlfriend’s father once took me to a Michigan basketball game. It was a tremendous game, I think Michigan beat Duke in overtime (yes, looking it up, Michigan 113, Duke 108 in overtime). He was an alum, one of those guys who paid $5,000 for Final Four seats. He yelled at the refs non-stop, really had a good time. After the game, he said to a friend, “who the hell does this guy think he is, growing up in Ann Arbor, going to Michigan, he didn’t cheer once the entire game?”
What were a few of the more satisfying moments you've had since starting Solecismic Software?
Definitely that first demo trip was a highlight. Then there were the initial meetings with Sierra and Electronic Arts over the potential publication of FOF2. A lot happened so quickly, so early on in the company history.
I was also very pleased with the reaction to TCY, given that the college game required so many more design decisions that could have gone in many directions. I’d like to think I wrote the first sports management simulation that included players’ course grades in individual classes, girlfriends, and a database of every high school in America.
What's something unusual or quirky about you that no FOFCer would know?
Once, during the development period for FOF4, I did not leave my house for the entire month of July. Not even to go to the store, or anything. I’m not particularly fond of the hot summer months, and I felt I was far behind on development. I don’t work all the time, but when I do work my way into a dedicated development drive, I can get very single-minded.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]wade moore[/B][/COLOR]
I'm pretty sure that you moved to Michigan because you have roots there - how did you end up in New Hampshire?
When my wife and I were discussing leaving the Seattle area, we felt we had the opportunity to live anywhere. So we made a long list of attributes we were seeking in a location.
Using various almanacs, we made a list of seven or eight areas in the country we felt had significant potential. Then we took a driving vacation, meeting with real estate agents, just getting the feel of each area. The Nashua area won, with Pittsburgh a close second. If neither ended up being acceptable, we had plans to make a second trip that would have included Madison, Wisconsin, West Lafayette, Indiana and southeastern Connecticut.
If you were Nigel/Simon what would you do to improve American Idol?
I would completely change the format of the tryout shows. I’m tired of seeing the same people making fun of bad singers. Funny once, boring after several seasons. We’ve reached a point where we don’t even watch those shows. I would replace them with shows focusing on choosing the semi-finalists. Give people a sense of who’s competing, a chance to bond with the ones who are otherwise at risk of going out early due to a lack of exposure.
I would also never repeat something like Idol Gives Back. At least not as a part of the competition itself. I think they will pay a ratings price for having a non-elimination week when they encouraged voting. That was just far too arrogant for my tastes. Never lie to your audience.
Finally, I would get back to focusing on great voices and less on “the look.” I’m not sure Kelly Clarkson would even make it through the first round if she were trying out today.
What is your favorite Board Game to play of all time?
I enjoy a series of railroad games under the Empire Builder format. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Swaggs[/B][/COLOR]
Aside from your wife, who are the five most beautiful women in the world?
Melissa Theuriau
Anne Hathaway
Keira Knightley
Kate Winslet
Katharine McPheeI could come up with an entirely different list tomorrow, though I think Melissa Theuriau might be a semi-permanent number one.
Which of your favorite sports teams would you most like to see win a championship?
No contest here. Michigan Wolverines football.
If you could attend a concert featuring your three favorite singers or bands, who would they be and in what order?
Vanessa Carlton
Ivy
Sarah McLachlan
Assuming Lloyd retires in the next 2-3 years, who would you like to see as his successor?
I’d like to see someone who is a little less old-fashioned when it comes to playing time. There should be more competition for playing time, less room in the proverbial doghouse. I don’t have anyone in mind, but I like the idea of a long-time coordinator being promoted. Maybe Ron English will grow into the job, though I’d like to see him succeed for a few more years with that defense and learn to handle the more aggressive passing attacks he saw at the end of last season.
What do you think of John Beilein, so far? What does Michigan need to do to re-emerge as a national basketball power?
I like the hiring, in theory. I think college basketball is fighting for respectability, given the best players leave far too soon. A good coach is a good recruiter first, and I have no idea what Beilein can do. Tommy Amaker just wasn’t getting the top recruits.
If you were named commissioner of the Big 10 and given a ten-year contract, what changes would you try to make in that time?
First, I would stop insisting that the Big Ten Network be carried in every cable system’s basic tier. It’s not going to happen, and there will be a lot of negative long-term fallout from this battle. I would then take the network and use it as the centerpiece of a sports news organization – a modern version of The National.
I’d want people to quickly get a handle on everything related to their favorite university, or sport. A quality news organization would cost very little and could provide a lot of original content.
Second, I would work quickly to add a 12<sup>th</sup> school. There’s too much money in conference championship games, and Big Ten schools are hurt by ending their seasons two weeks before every other major school.
Third, I would commission myself to create a Big Ten football simulation, dedicated to the memories of Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes.
Fourth, I would organize a conference-wide football scouting combine a week after the main event in Indianapolis. Same rules, only Olympic quality timing mechanisms. I’d televise it on the network.
Fifth, I would change the basketball rules to mirror the professional game. Same 3-point lines, same everything, except I would limit teams to three time outs per game.
Sixth, I would extend the women’s tennis season by two months. You can never have enough women’s tennis.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Honolulu Blue[/B][/COLOR]
What sport(s) do you feel is/are underrepresented by quality career sims?
Curling. No doubt about it.
Hillary - hottie or nottie?
Nottie.
If you got an offer from a big company that wanted your games and your programming/managerial services, but required you to move to some random big city (like, I don't know - London), would you take it?
No. But if a big company were willing to let me work from my home, I would give it serious consideration. It may be time for some new challenges.
Do you think we will see an NFL team in Los Angeles by 2015? If so, will it be an expansion or some other team moving? And where will they play?
I’m not sure. As long as the NFL continues with its archaic blackout rules, there’s very little incentive for football fans in Los Angeles. I don’t think most people there particularly want an NFL team. And the NFL won’t move there without a sweetheart stadium deal.
Economically, smaller areas can support an NFL team. The Green Bay franchise thrives – there are only eight games to sell out, and a rabid fan base. Green Bay could never support a team with 81 home dates, or even 40.
The NFL is a national product. Baseball is a series of 30 regional products.
The NFL just needs to keep Los Angeles interested in its product, not a particular team. Overall, the league is doing so well that I can’t think of a single franchise that could use a new venue. Tagliabue’s positioning on the Superdome issue, taking leadership in keeping the team there and having the players support that, was brilliant. They took a bad situation and turned it into a positive, and now even New Orleans – a team without a city – is on firm ground.
The 32-team format works very well, and I’d hate to see that change. I think it’s time to build up a decade or two of stability with this format.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Pyser[/B][/COLOR]
did you create fof because football is your favorite sport, or thought it would make for the best sim?
what is your favorite sport?
At the time I created FOF, it was baseball. Now I’m more of a football fan. I thought football was the best market opportunity at the time.
what's your take on hockey?
I enjoy the sport, but I don’t think I know enough about it to create a quality simulation. With football, I was able to come up to speed quickly while doing research because I’ve seen hundreds of games at different levels. That wouldn’t be the case with hockey.
what's one fof feature you've always wanted to include but for whatever reason, havent been able to?
I’m intrigued by the thought of implementing a 2-D graphic expansion of the game engine. It’s not so much an inability to program it as the thought that adding a 2-D component at the expense of any other major new feature would be a poor business decision.
[SIZE=4]
[B]SteveMax58[/B][/SIZE]
Do you find it difficult to "decompress" when you are on a roll, and your wife asks you to go out to dinner, shopping, etc. with her?
Definitely. But we never go out to dinner or shop, regardless. I suppose that’s one of my quirks – I hate sit-down restaurants or being out in a mall.
I think it’s important, however, to spend some time together every evening. I have the afternoon to work, and I have the late night to work (I often work until 5 or 6 in the morning). I think of the evening as our time.
Do you prefer absolute silence...or loud background noise? Does it vary?
I need absolute silence when I’m working. This is one reason I decided it might be a good idea to start my own company. Major programming farms like Computer Associates have no idea how much productivity they lose because they save a few dollars by using cubicles instead of nice, thick walls.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Klinglerware[/B][/COLOR]
Did you know before you named the company that the dictionary definition of solecism was "(1) A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech, (2) A breach of good manners or etiquette, and (3) Any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety"?
If not, would you have still gone with the name if you had known?
The genesis of the company name was back in 1994 when I needed a screen name for AOL Trivia. Being an English major, I thought it would be funny to have a screen name that was an error about a word meaning a grammatical error, solecistic.
Later, when I was coming up with a company name, I was advised to make up a word, to best avoid the potential for copyright confusion. So I used my screen name.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Dark Cloud[/B][/COLOR]
Do you think you'll 'retire' from game-making someday?
I don’t know. My father loved his work, and never retired. On the other hand, there are so many other things I’d like to try. I’m not sure solo game production will even be possible a few years down the road. The market is changing rapidly.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]ISiddiqui[/B][/COLOR]
Do you think we'll ever see, in the US, a sports text sim game become as popular as Championship Manager/Football Manager has become in the UK (and most of Europe, really)? Why or why not and what have been the biggest obstacles to this happening in the US?
I thought we were headed in that direction, but the enormous growth of the console market has greatly limited gaming choices. When I started out, you’d walk into a computer game store and PC games would line the front shelves. Today, PC games are in the back on a rack, fighting for floor space with Dance Revolution floor mats.
Because of the investment necessary to enter the console market, there’s very little current publisher interest in building up a niche product. Whenever you have massive consolidation in an industry, you lose consumer choice.
I hope that trend reverses and we see a revival of PC-based games, but with Microsoft’s aggressive approach to upgrading their operating system, compatibility issues, which were on the way out with the impressive release of Windows ’98, are making life more difficult for gamers.
Historically, there’s always been a shifting balance between the consoles and the PCs in the gaming world. I’m not sure I understand why that’s always in flux, since game play is so different. You sit back on a couch and look up at the Playstation. You sit in a desk chair with your hands on a keyboard and a mouse while you’re using a PC. These are entirely different paradigms and lend themselves to entirely different gaming experiences.
My hope is that this is the low point of PC gaming, and we see a revival soon. But, like the traditional sitcom on television, it’s impossible to tell whether PC gaming is nearing extinction, or ready for an upswing.
So, to answer your question… Right now, no, because a text-based sports simulation is a niche product in today’s market, and there’s no room for niche products on the consoles. Ten years from now? You never know.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Butter_of_69[/B][/COLOR]
Why is Michigan always a major powerhouse in every TCY career I've ever had? ALWAYS.
When writing TCY, I found a way to tap into a little-known Windows interface that actually tracks and understands your most hidden and intense desires.
I believe Bill Gates himself coded the API, as part of a secret NSA project abandoned when Homeland Security took over responsibility for maintaining the integrity of our nation’s USB ports.
If Michigan is always a powerhouse, it’s because you want it to be a powerhouse.
[COLOR=DarkRed]
[B]Passacaglia[/B][/COLOR]
Cottage Inn or Pizza House?
Cottage Inn deep dish with the sesame seed crust, no need to complicate it with anything more than pepperoni.
[COLOR=DarkRed]
[B]Hell Atlantic[/B][/COLOR]
what are your thoughts on Dean Houston? are you impressed with his accomplishments? are you happy the legacy and legend of Dean Houston could come out of something you created?
I love knowing that I created something that will live on in the imaginations of countless people. Our most powerful learning experiences come from triggering the imagination.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” - Albert Einstein
But I’m sorry, I’ve seen the tapes, and Dean clearly slapped that child.
[SIZE=4][B]MIJB#19[/B][/SIZE]
As a fan of alliterations, what are your favorite ones?
Alliteration is a lost art. While by most standards, today’s great writers are better at story-telling, better at turning a phrase, better overall writers with a VORW even Barry Bonds would envy, you can still look at Shakespeare’s work as the pinnacle of alliteration.
“I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness every where!” – Sonnet 97
You just don’t see writing like that anymore. We have a decided dichotomy differentiating poetry and prose in this day and age.
Who was the inspiration of Little Donny from the earlier FOF's emails?
I’ve forgotten Little Donny. I want to say it was a riff on Danny Almonte, but I think it predates the Almonte scandal. Maybe there was a story in the news around that time about the parents of middle-school kids sending tapes to college coaches.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]sabotai[/B][/COLOR]
Elvis or The Beatles?
Neither,
Roger Staubach or Kenny Stabler?
The Snake.
The Godfather or Citizen Kane?
Rosebud.
Coke or Pepsi?
Whichever one is on sale.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Dodgerchick[/B][/COLOR]
Why do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches taste better when cut diagonally?
It maximizes the opportunity for those pure, untainted, full-size bites of sandwich center, making us yearn for the days when our mothers would carefully excoriate any trace of crust.
How old are your kids and is there something they did that brought tears to your eyes?
Our son is 4. No, I can’t say that I’m much of a crier.
What would you like written on your tombstone?
“Sports Simulations for the Remainder of Eternity.”
Who is the person you most trust?
Angela.
If you had a magic button that could make any person explode, who would it be and why?
Tough one. I would say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, because he is clearly insane, and he holds so much power in a country that is positioned to be dominant in the region, and he wants to leverage that power to bring about the end of the world.
Either him, or the old lady who spilled coffee on her lap and sued McDonald’s.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Fonzie[/B][/COLOR]
I seem to recall you saying that your house was being made from an unusual material. What was it, and are you happy with it?
Our exterior walls are made from Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF). From discussions with builders, I get the strong impression this is the future of home building. ICF walls hold up better, and provide a much higher R-factor, which saves a lot in energy costs.
We’re already seeing many of these houses in the south, especially in areas prone to hurricanes or extreme termite infestations. They are largely unknown in the north, though.
So far, I’m very impressed, but we still have some problems related to the fact that our HVAC contractor had never worked with an ICF house before, and we still have extreme hot and cold spots (though part of that is because he forgot to connect the cold-air returns to the duct system in one part of the house).
Oh, and how long did it take you to code the 2-minute comeback and halftime "flipped switch" routines?
I had heard about the infamous comeback code, of course. Hadn’t heard about the flipped switch, though. No, neither of these ideas seems like one I’d think would add anything but annoyance to a gaming experience.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]hoosierdude[/B][/COLOR]
What segment of technology would you rather see regressed to "how it was done years ago" and why?
Telephones. I despise cell phones and refuse to use one myself. I realize it’s out of my control, but I wish people who called me didn’t use them, either.
The reason? The wireless sound technology is still choppy, the microphones are cheap and pick up far too much background noise, and I have to strain to hear ordinary conversation.
Some day, wireless phones will be as good as land lines, but until that day comes, I wish cell phones were only used for emergencies.
[B]Electric or blade razor?[/B]
Electric.
What would you rather do, learn a new talent/skill or enjoy a relaxing hobby?
Learn a new skill. Some day that will change, but I’ve chosen a profession ideally suited for those who need to learn constantly.
Fishing or Hunting?
Neither. I like supermarkets.
[B][COLOR=DarkRed]ardent enthusiast[/COLOR][/B]
Would you buy me a hat?
You just left the armed forces. You already have plenty of darned hats.
What's your favorite offense in TCY? I'll play double wing till I die.
I like the Pro formation, because I enjoy the illusion that my quarterback will be more successful at the next level if he masters the more modern innovations.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Flasch186[/B][/COLOR]
I will make a dinner of your choice for my roomie and wife but I'll need recipes and instructions. so please...
Will you give me your favorite recipe(s) for a dinner (at least 3 courses) and instructions for making it to your fine standards?
Is Jim Lange standing next to you with a stack of index cards? Will I win a trip to Barbados?
Okay, call 904 353-4744. Course 1 – ask for Buffalo Chicken Kickers. Course 2 - ask for a classic hand-tossed with pepperoni and olives. Course 3 – ask for Cinna Stix with extra-sweet icing.
Wait half an hour. When the doorbell rings, it’s done.
[SIZE=4][B]Karlifornia[/B][/SIZE]
How does it feel to have wasted your time answering a question like this?
It was rather nice and quick, because I didn’t have to Google a Domino’s menu or anything.
If Jimmy Carter were alive today, what is one question you'd ask him?
Ooh, politics, and a trick question… can I change one answer above to read “Jimmy Carter” instead of “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?”
I think I’d ask him if he thinks SEC football is better than Big Ten football.
Any scars?
Yes. When I was 8, I received a speedometer for my bicycle, and immediately drove around the neighborhood trying to see how fast I could go. A day or two later, I was headed down a hill and reached 29 mph. There was gravel at the bottom of the hill from construction. I face-planted, and lost some teeth, and needed a few stitches near my nose.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Vinatieri for Prez[/B][/COLOR]
[COLOR=Black]Who's better? Tom Brady or Peyton Manning.[/COLOR]
I’d rather tell people what I really think about Jimmy Carter than get into this debate.
[SIZE=4][COLOR=DarkRed]JAG[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Have you read any of the Scientific Football books from KC Joyner and if so, what is your opinion of him and his work?
I admire his dedication and would love to see him further refine his skills.
Football is an incredibly difficult game to assess from a statistical perspective, and I think he has a great approach, mixing in the game films. However, the metrics he has come up with so far are still too broad-based, and the numbers are still too prone to small sample-size error.
I like his work, and find it more promising than just about anything out there, but it’s still behind the good scout with a gut feeling in terms of accuracy. This kind of work has revolutionized baseball, separating the lousy managers from the good ones. With refinement, I think he could do the same for football coaches and general managers.
Do you have a favorite NFL writer? One that you can't stand?
I enjoy the collection of reports in the Whispers section of Pro Football Weekly. I look forward to reading those every week during the season.
My least favorite football writer is definitely Ron Borges. He has a personal axe to grind with Bill Belichick, and he can’t even write down a grocery list without that grudge affecting his writing. There’s just no way to take anything he writes seriously.
Do you have a favorite NFL announcing team? Least favorite?
Not really. I never watch football with the sound on. The mute button is my friend.
A request for another funny / cute kid story.
Lately, Angela has been introducing Gregory to the world of music, and trying to explain the lyrics, on occasion, to songs by Arcade Fire, which they’ve been listening to a lot lately.
A few days ago, he was playing on a keyboard, and changed the output to “vibes.” He looked up at Angela, and said, “this sounds like apples.” He then made up a rhyming song, “You can eat them every day. They are healthy, hey hey hey.”
So, he’s a little behind Mozart, but he’s making progress.
[B]
[SIZE=4] mtolson[/SIZE][/B]
For those of us who inspire to develop applications, how long did it take for you to develop the skill set you felt required to develop your first FOF game ?
More than 20 years. I feel that my experience as a journalist is a key part of my background. Simply learning how to choose and present information is vital in product development.
How long did you spend writing your first FOF game ?
The actual development phase took five months. Add maybe another three months in planning and research.
Do you get enjoyment out of your games once completed or the R&D cycle wipe out the joy of playing your own products.
I like to take a break from playing the game once a product is released through the first couple of maintenance cycles, but generally I do write the kind of games I like to play.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Dutch[/B][/COLOR]
What is the longest book you ever read?
I’d have to guess Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
What is your favorite event/era in history?
The one when Ross and Rachel got back together.
Hell Atlantic: Overrated, Underrated or Hard To Tell?
Hard to tell. I’m not the type of person who would fit into the whole Vegas trip, midget wrestling scene, so I have no real sense of Hell Atlantic as a person.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Schmidty[/B][/COLOR]
Why did you choose to go to U-M?
I started college at The University of Rochester, as an economics major. I had decided I wanted to go into journalism, and Rochester’s English department was its weakest department at the time. It was a sudden decision made after my sophomore year.
Lacking the time to reapply to any of the other schools to which I had originally been accepted, I took my original acceptance letter to the admissions building at Michigan, and they said I could stay as a full-time student if I enrolled and passed a summer course.
Did you like U-M sports before you went there?
Absolutely. My father took me to Michigan football games starting at about age 4.
What is your favorite moment in MSU sports history?
You probably won’t like this one. October 11, 1985. I was sports editor of the Michigan yearbook, and traveled up to East Lansing for the annual Spartan/Wolverine football contest. I sat up in the press box, where Kirk Gibson (a Michigan State alum) and his wife, I guess, were holding court.
He was bragging that the Spartans were going to destroy Michigan. Everyone else was fairly quiet, because making a lot of noise in a press box is just one of those things you don’t do. Anyone, Kirk’s promises didn’t hold up well, the game was out of reach by the end of the first half. He and his wife were gone after halftime and Michigan won, 31-0.
Not a great favorite moment, I know. I can’t count Magic Johnson’s visits to Crisler Arena because they were usually successful, even though we all knew that he was one of the greats ever to play the college game.
What was the first "video game" that you ever played?
I’d have to say a little BASIC game called NFL ’73. It was text-based, call a play from a short list and wait for a result. There wasn’t any sophistication to it, but I played it endlessly because it was the only computer game I’d ever seen related to sports. I remember something else having to do with Mugwumps from that era, as well as a game based on Star Trek that I wasn’t any good at because I didn’t watch the show.
What is the greatest game you have ever played?
Civilization II.
Do you enjoy the outdoors? What outdoor activities do you enjoy the most?
No, I really don’t. Which is funny because our house directly abuts a large state park. We choose to live in houses with air conditioning for a reason. If I want to see nature, I’ll look out the window from the comfort of my living room.
Are you athletic? What one are you at least decent at?
In high school, I was a year younger than my peers, and I was fairly small (had my growth spurt fairly late). So I was not a very successful athlete. I played constantly, though. Whatever was in season.
I did well at baseball during the summers, though my school did not have a team. I was a decent tennis player. I can also hit the 3-point shots in basketball, but I have no speed.
I would say I’m not athletic, but I have good hand-eye coordination and endless desire to play.
Is it hard not to "let it loose" and be yourself in public, especially in this community? I can imagine that it would be excruciating, but that's only because I'm a spazz.
Yes, I would like to be more active in the political items, and even in the sports items that become polemic. But it’s probably not a good idea, given that most of the people here are my customers. I’ve tried letting it loose here a little, and it doesn’t always go over well.
Did you really hate your time in West Michigan? If so, what parts were the worst? What were the best parts. (Tread lightly, or I will say mean things to you via carrier pigeon)
No, it was a fun time. I was working for The Holland Sentinel, and spent almost all my time with my co-workers. We were fairly close, all just out of college. We just felt we were under siege from a managing editor and a community that had such a unified, conservative viewpoint.
It was definitely a shock having spent almost my entire life in liberal Ann Arbor, moving across the state to a city where neighbors became very angry if you as much as mowed your lawn on a Sunday afternoon.
So we did our best to report the news as evenly as possible, trying to find the other so-called underdogs out there just to tell their stories.
Porterhouse, Tenderloin, or Ribeye? Grilled or panfried?
I like a nice grilled tenderloin on occasion.
Greatest band ever?
Music is so personal, so this is a very difficult question to answer. Based on my own biases, I’d have to say Boston or The Eagles.
Can you play an instrument?
Not very well. I’ve had a few years of piano lessons, but those are long forgotten.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Senator[/B][/COLOR]
You are part of the east coast bias against the greatness of Texas (the state) football, why?
Quite simply, it’s not Big Ten football. Can I recognize the city of Texarkana for putting out the next great college football quarterback?
Did I hear that at one time, you did some newspaper reporting, can you tell me a favorite story from that time, if said time did exist?
When I was a beat reporter covering a small town near Holland, Michigan, I received a tip that a local retirement home owner was about to face charges for skimming money out of his business and using it to illegally build a series of docks for his boats on some waterfront property he owned.
I went out to the property, took a couple of pictures, talked to a supervisor, I guess, who wasn’t terribly friendly. I then called this guy’s office and left a couple of messages.
Nothing much happened at first. I gave my notes to my managing editor and he told me not to pursue the story until charges were actually filed. That happens all the time in journalism. You need a high standard of proof before you can file a story like that. I didn’t have much.
Apparently, the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) was acting, quietly, on the docks charges, though. And the guy knew I had taken pictures. I lived in the same small town, and went to a bar with a date to grab some dinner one night. And that retirement home owner happened to be sitting a couple of tables over with a few people, including that supervisor.
I didn’t say anything to him, but the supervisor recognized me and told him. He then, for the next ten minutes, proceeded to tell his friends, in an extremely loud voice, “what happened to the last reporter who investigated me.” One of them came over and made a rude comment to my date.
I wish the story had some sort of interesting ending, but he then left with his staff, and we left maybe a half-hour later, and I never heard anything about it again, nor did anyone actually file any sort of charges. About a month later, the DNR stopped him from finishing the docks, he refused to comment. I ran a small story about it, but it wasn’t anything serious enough to get him into real trouble.
Reporters are often threatened for one reason or another. It’s happened to me a few times, but that night in the bar was the only time I ever thought something might come of it.
[SIZE=4][B]Crim[/B][/SIZE]
what better statistical accuracy or maximum customizability?
Statistical accuracy.
[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Marc Vaughan[/B]
[/COLOR]
Do you ever watch soccer - if so which is your favourite team?
Like many of us Yanks, I only watch once every four years. I love that soccer hasn’t yet been ruined by the constant drumming of television commercials. But soccer isn’t in my blood like baseball and football.
Since I was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, while my father was spending his sabbatical teaching at the University of Sheffield, I root for Sheffield United and was pleased to see a few games on the Fox Soccer Channel last fall. However, this is not a good year to be a Blades supporter.
[B][SIZE=4]astrosfan64[/SIZE]
[/B]
Do you hate graphics?
I like a pretty picture as much as anyone, but I hate to waste any precious screen space on unnecessary fluff. This type of game should be played in a windowed format, so you can context switch and keep other applications open. And with the more complex screens in the game, the more data you can display at once, the easier the game is to navigate.
Do you play any console sports games?
No. I haven’t purchased any of the recent consoles.