How could a computer sports sim replicate real-life urgency?

[QuikSand]

I've gotten more deeply into the NFL offseason in recent years, for multiple reasons.

I can't help, as a long time sim gamer (FOF especially), but see how dramatically different the team front offices behave in the real world, in contrast to what nearly all of us do playing sim games.

In FOF, we generally award flat contracts, right? Certainly it's the norm in the serious MP leagues, sometimes base salaries escalate maybe 15-20-25 or something like that, but as often as not they are effectively flat. I hardly ever make an offer to a player that is structured so I will expect to release him after the first 2 years of a 4 year deal, and accept a load of dead cap money afterward. I just don't do it. hardly anyone does.

In the NFL, it's... completely routine. It's just expected. If my team has $10m to spend under the cap, as a plugged-in fan I fully expect that means we can afford three guys, on backloaded deals with staggered guarantees, all to minimize the first year cap effect and delay the pain of the contract as much as possible. We see that sort of analysis all the time, right? Contract is for 4/52 but is effectively 2/24. OBJ signed a one year deal last season that the Ravens will pay on for something like 5 seasons ahead. The Dolphins are trying to finish a deal with Tua in part because re-signing him will free up cap spaced right away. Geez, that's the exact opposite of what I face in FOF when I need to extend a young guy... I'll be paying out a ton of new money this year to do that.

So, in FOF... sure, part of it is the simplifed contract systems, with just base salary and a single prorated bonus. We cannot create the sort of tiering that is common i the real NFL.

But I think it's more than that. It's more subtle.

In FOF, what is the purpose of "going all in to win now?" Why don't we all do it aggressively all the time? I think it's because the game just doesn't create urgency the way real sports do, right? Playing solo FOF I can just get to the next season in a couple hours. Even in a slow MP league it will be a few weeks. No angry fans calling in to radio stations calling for my head, no pressure arising from the lack of season tickets... it's just absent. Why push to win now, I can afford to be thinking about two or five seasons down the road, because I don't depreciate the future the way real human beings, living and deciding things in real time, instinctively do.


So... with all that... how might a computer sports sim introduce more of that element of "urgency" into the experience?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Well, the option to be fired adds an element of that IMO.

I mean, when I sit down to a game that's intended to run for so long that I've already figured out what year to retire my character and replace them with their "son" (as a ', Jr.") then time pressure really isn't much of a thing.

Win now decisions are much more likely if you run the risk of getting canned I think.

[GrantDawg]

I think about Football Manager where the season is long and not as easily zoomed through. That might be part of the way in making "win now" more important as long with as Jon says the real risk of getting fired for poor performance. You can build up over time but if you are just constantly loosing when the seasons take so long it will not be fun for long. I think the problem with any simulation is it is very hard to make a game that the AI isn't in some way exploitable. At least in single player.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Well, the option to be fired adds an element of that IMO.

I mean, when I sit down to a game that's intended to run for so long that I've already figured out what year to retire my character and replace them with their "son" (as a ', Jr.") then time pressure really isn't much of a thing.

Win now decisions are much more likely if you run the risk of getting canned I think.

Yeah. In a sim, the difference between being a bit under .500 and being the worst team in the league isn't that big of a deal. But in real life, that's the difference between being retained or being fired.

If I'm in a season in a sim, and I'm still in my building phase, I can be patient. I don't really care how many wins I rack up before I consider my team ready. So I can make decisions with that in mind.

I sim for escapism, so I don't really want the GM-gets-fired setting put to 11. But that's probably one of the bigger disconnects between sims and real life.

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

So... with all that... how might a computer sports sim introduce more of that element of "urgency" into the experience?

I solely play FOF MP. It takes us 6 weeks to go through a "calendar year" season in IHOF. Do I play to win this season? Not 100% all out all the time, but quite certainly even when I'm severely cap strapped, I still want to win at least 9 games, this season. 6 real life weeks is a long time in a sim to me. Not having won the league since July 2017, yes, that feels like forever away.

The thrill of Wordle and possibly having the streak end grabbed me. Sure, I gave up once a streak ended due to a third out of control missed day, or when I had about 1 in 5 odds to get it on the final guess. The real life time aspect, the inability to "play one more game/season", that's the urgency aspect to me.

[Kodos]

It’d be kinda fun to have a multiplayer league where the owners of the worst-performing teams get canned.

[molson]

If you get fired the game deletes your hard drive.

[bhlloy]

I think in addition to getting fired, you mentioned it in your post the vast majority of sports sims don’t simulate the pressure… from fans, media, players etc…

You can take over that Yankees team that had one bad year, bench or trade all the starters for prospects and get a nice little rebuild going. In reality the fan and media outcry would mean you wouldn’t last 6 months, and also you’d lose the locker room which would just turn the thing into a massive downward spiral.

The only sim that tries to and can try to replicate that is FM as usual, but even there I think they’ve softened it, the versions 10-15 years ago were brutal for getting fired out of left field because the fans lost faith or you asked for the wrong things from the owners. Ultimately more people want to have an enjoyable game rather than get canned in a realistic manner.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

Ultimately more people want to have an enjoyable game rather than get canned in a realistic manner.

I agree entirely.

This is something I talked to customers about many years ago when I was involved at WS. Where we basically came out on it is that some people were interested in it, but they were not interested in any of the realistic type of features that could bring it about. In other words, better in theory than practice.

Examples of things at least tangential in my view:

- Getting fired/fan pressure not just for poor results but for trading/not playing popular players. There's a sense of wanting to treat the game as dry strategy, but then have outcomes that don't correspond with such a thing.

- Had a conversation a while ago here about not being able see ratings of players on other teams in a college bball game. Basically came out with the response of 'yeah that's realistic, but it's not fun'.

- Conference movement well before the recent craziness happened. Stuff like 'but traditional football rivals should be followed' came up in basketball context, and it was like 'well, the game can't possibly know any of that, and has to support completely fake schools etc.' In other words it can never know or care who 'Penn State' is or who they'd be likely to join a conference with, it has to follow the in-game info on the sport in question. .

- Wanting GMs to not be predictable/exploitable, but also not wanting them to do dumb things like the Pau Gasol trade. Basically 'make it realistic, but not realistic in a way that is dumb' - which is of course, not realistic at all if the dumb things never happen. Pick your favorite example; Russell Wilson's contract, whatever.

- Wanting realistic outcomes without realistic constraints (such as uncertainty/variability in player ratings). I remember one conversation with someone who was a PureSim player who wanted the AI to be competitive, but without using information on historical performance of, say, Ted Williams for example, while the person playing did want to use that information.

I'm more of a strategy game person now, but what all this comes down to for me is that most people who say they want challenging/realistic games don't really want that. A lot of them even think they want it, when they really don't. What they want is a game that is challenging enough to make them feel like they are working for a win, without actually having to do a whole lot of truly working for it. I.e. the feeling of a great accomplishment without most of the effort that actually goes in to such a thing.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I'm more of a strategy game person now, but what all this comes down to for me is that most people who say they want challenging/realistic games don't really want that. A lot of them even think they want it, when they really don't. What they want is a game that is challenging enough to make them feel like they are working for a win, without actually having to do a whole lot of truly working for it. I.e. the feeling of a great accomplishment without most of the effort that actually goes in to such a thing.

That is exactly what people want and I will include myself in that. The trick is to still make the game "feel" as real as possible without taking it to aggravating extremes.

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by molson

If you get fired the game deletes your hard drive.

Now THAT is some immersion!

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

I think the problem with any simulation is it is very hard to make a game that the AI isn't in some way exploitable. At least in single player.

Definitely agree with this sentiment, overall. But I'm still open to play whack-a-mole with the issues that we do face, even if we acknowledge that we will likely never get all the way there.


On the firing angle... yes, I agree that's mostly missing in FOF, and it could be a way to introduce the urgency element. I also agree that could make for a game that I/we don't want to play.

So, the equilibrium we occupy is probably an outcome of a balance between what-we-want versus what-is-realistic... and we do want a game that lends itself to the long form dynasty immersion style. Panic about squeezing every drop out of every roster slot, future-be-damned, likely doesn't fit well with that.

So, I get it. There might not be a good answer to the base question. I'm still mulling it over.

[QuikSand]

Side note: every so often I dip into one of the ZenGM browser games for a quick spell, and I get my ass fired a lot there, mostly for thinking too long term. It's an unpleasant gaming experience, to be honest.

[stevew]

So to borrow from Nathan for You, perhaps the player could be faced with real life embarrassment if he doesn’t put a winning team? Like your browser history gets leaked to one of your random aunts or something

[albionmoonlight]

One issue that we've touched on a bit is the exploitable AI vs. rewarding hard work.

If the AI worked perfectly and/or the game was so random that putting in hard work to learn it didn't matter, then what's the point?

You need there to be (IMO) some reward for pulling out your spreadsheets and trying to learn how to play the game.

But when you do that, you end up with situations where, say, you figure out that "quickness and college assists are the only things that really matter for drafting point guards. You can ignore any other bar or stat." And then suddenly, you have such a huge advantage over the AI in drafting point guards that you will always be able to exploit it.

[albionmoonlight]

dola

thinking this out in real time . . . In real life, if a team figures something out that works, then other teams notice and adapt it (Moneyball, etc.).

So maybe one answer would be if/when adaptive AIs really come into existence and the computer actually learns from you. Instead of the AI being static, every season it notices what works and does not and some subset of the AI GMs improve based on that observation.

[Brian Swartz]

I agree on the dangers of AI that's too good. If the AI is optimal or even close to it, then all you end up doing is copying it as best you can. You don't have to worry about figuring out what to do, because if the AI does something it's the right play. If they put in subs at a certain point of the game, they're telling you the game is over and they're not going to be wrong, so you can do the same thing yourself. Draft strategy, all sorts of issues would go this way.

Adaptive AI creates a sense of unfairness unfortunately. It's basically a 'game is punishing me for playing well' lever. Essentially the opposite of the idea of figuring something out to give yourself an edge.

[GrantDawg]

I would say that adaptive AI that copies working strategies is more realistic. The NFL is a copy-cat league, after all. The other part of that as someone earlier pointed out the need for realistic randomness as well. That would be just as hard to program. Things like teams getting too attached to a player and not moving on when they should. Sunk investment fallacy "I know he sucks, but we picked him in the first round, so he is going to keep starting till he gets better." There are things that happen in real life that we would call a bug in a sim.

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