Mike, you keep saying that you don't think there are many people out there who would enjoy HBD but haven't found it yet. Can you do me a favor and count how many people that have posted in this thread saying something along the lines of "I would've never thought about a baseball Sim until I randomly saw an or heard about it."

Then count how many people in this thread have said something along the lines of "I wanted to play a baseball sim so I searched for one."

Small sample size no doubt but your insistence on disagreeing that people will play if they see the game has been proven wrong within this thread.

No need to count.   There might be a half dozen.   And, IMO, that's about how many people who'd sign up if FOX ran non-stop ads for the next 24 hour period on Fox Sports 1 tomorrow. 

Now do me a favor.    Tell me how many people you've told about the website and how many joined.

Word of mouth is great for business, but if the future of WIS and HBD is hinged on its customers being street reps, I think we're not going to see much positive growth.

I don't know how to make things good, but I sure don't have the time or the arena to pimp WIS. 

Maybe we should be thankful we have this much;  I can still play and feed my addiction, even if it's existence is threatened.  But for now, it's here.

Maybe there's no market.  I can understand that.  I don't watch sports or give a damn about fantasy games.  So I understand how people wouldn't be interested in something I just have to have.

bbqjason just hit on something.  He "doesn't watch sports or give a damn about fantasy games."  He's right.

I don't play this stuff because I watch sports live or on TV, and the part of me that plays fantasy football etc. isn't the same as this.

I play WiS because I'm trying to beat others at manipulating statistically based programs.  Which is interesting, because I don't gamble - ever.  Whatever part of the brain is tickled by gambling, I don't have it.  But this is probably closer to that thing than anything to do with actual sports.

Commissioners should now be coming to realize that the job is requiring some adaptation to this different HBD environment.  What worked for 30 seasons won't work today. 

A learning curve shouldn't be a surprise as this mirrors real life.  How to solve the problem, of course we don't want to increase our own work load as a first option. 

It is apparent that HBD doesn't get much sunlight.  Maybe that's the problem.

But, we're a rare breed.  Maybe that's the problem.

It could be a combination of both, and that's where my thinking is.  It's in our power to give a little more, and we will have to.  And naturally we would like FOX to reciprocate.

So at least we should do what we can to make things better.  And realize that FOX has bigger fish to fry.  As unfortunate as that is.

What I think some people are asking for is the "supermarket tabloid" strategy.    If the National Enquirer is on display while you're waiting to check out, someone will eventually buy one because they want to know what's up with Kimye's marital problems.  Of course, that impulse buy is no good for HBD.   While tossing aside the NE after seeing only "unnamed sources" are claiming Kimye problems creates no issues for anyone else, throwing out your HBD team as a "waste of $15" does create issues for 31 other people(if they care about abandoned teams affecting their world). 

And that why I think shoving HBD into people's faces until they give a shot is a bad idea.   If someone doesn't have the ambition to search "simulated sports games" or something along that line, I don't think they're going to make it in HBD.

Then this is an inherent fault and we have to live with it.

It's easy to get people to try, but hard to get them to buy.

Worlds crashing will naturally be a problem.

We can't live in an atmosphere where the demand is greater than the supply.

You just have to personally create a desirable product (kickass world) within the product.  And understand that some worlds are here today, gone tomorrow.

Can't be advertising... plenty of people/companies survive without doing much. Even if they did, what they do/where would they advertise to justify the expense? I seriously doubt a $25K boost in any kind of advertising is going to get them double in new revenue. 
Word of mouth? If we tell 50 people and nobody sticks/stays... we're getting them here... technically, the word of mouth works. 
They reward us with credits towards future seasons for playing.
What more should they do? 
Considering the lack of new development in the game, I'm guessing that this game itself cost nothing to create and the upkeep is very minimal. I would also venture to say that this has paid for itself many times over and what the diehards keep pumping into it.. keep it going. 
Why would you put more into it? I surely wouldn't.

We can all moan and groan about the "what-ifs" of WIS, but as long we continue to feed the beast... I wouldn't expect it to change much. I would focus more on keeping better people in our leagues, worrying about quicker rollovers with pro-active commissioners, perhaps more gimmick world stuff just to keep the concept fresh and updated and mergers of the weaker crappier worlds.

That's my rant... all 2 pesos worth.

Actual quote from a very very long time owner who didn't want his world to merge even though 16++ other owners were advocating for the idea because they had been sitting since August and still had double digit openings.

"Ok, One possible solution... HBD seems to have no fresh blood, I think if anybody has any free time we could contact WIS persuading them to invest in our future by spending some of our money advertising and recruiting....Other than that I can't think of anything. In the past, waiting seems to work, but i know some of you don't have the patience".


100% total denial of the current HBD climate.

The days of just waiting it out when you've already sat for months and still need 10+ are LONG LONG gone.

Another world (I won't name names) decided the best way to get over the hump was to OK the idea one owner had of buying 4 additional alias teams which brought their openings down from 8 to 4. Then when the season starts he'll just advertise "replacement owner needed".

I think that's exactly why you get so many "replacement owner needed" threads when a world is still in ST or whatever. 

It amazes me because the team(s) that are basically abandoned from day one in these types of scenarios is/are going to be even MORE tarded up and even harder to fill next season. But owners overwhelmingly don't care about next season. They just want to get THIS season started NOW.

I can't keep up with all of them. I try to merge worlds as fast as I can and before I get one done there are two or three more worlds that rollover needing 8+. 

I'd LOVE to see them institute the adjustable world size idea you've put forth a bunch of times now. That would solve SO many issues, and at least allow worlds to continue for a few more seasons before they ultimately fold.

You look through the worlds with 8+ openings and it won't take terribly long before you see one of 4 things:

1) One or more super dominant tard teams.
2) Abandoned team(s) (not surprisingly its usually a currently open team)
3) An unusual amount of "new to WIS" owners signed up and played only the one season last season or the last few seasons (sometimes replaced mid-season).
4) Lack of participation either by the commish (no ad in the forum) or by the world at large (ad in forum but sitting on page 3 or 4, and no chatter in WC, except the occasional "any lead on any new owners commish"?

Many of those worlds have more than one of the above attributes and the more of them a world can check off the less likely they will ever play another season.

Commissioners should really, really start considering taking on an HBD world as an everyday pain in the ***.  If owners suck as much as you guys are saying.  And yes, they do suck as much as you guys are saying.

I came here years ago because the NFL season had ended and after a few months I started looking for something to fill the void. I had tried fantasy basketball, rotisserie baseball, etc., but those games didn't really hold my interest. I had no idea what a sports simulation game was until I found this website. But WhatifSports presented some pretty interesting scenarios. What if I was an NBA coach and had Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan on the same roster? Or what if John Elway, the 2000 Ravens defense and one of the Jimmy Johnson era Cowboy O Lines were all on one team? So I tried Sim Football and was bored almost immediately. However, Sim Basketball really did it for me. Regular leagues, theme leagues...it was all great fun. I went ahead and gave Sim Baseball a shot but wasn't really thrilled with it. The whole time I avoided the Dynasty games like the plague. I think this was because the players weren't real and I didn't want to do anything other than be the "coach". Being a baseball franchise owner or the Athletic Director at a DIII college didn't seem like my idea of fun.

But I finally said to hell with it and tried Hardball Dynasty. I was immediately hooked. I haven't played a regular Sim game since, and I eventually stopped playing fantasy sports games altogether. It's been nothing but Hoops and Hardball Dynasty for me.

So long story short, I came here from a Fantasy Football background and wound up becoming hooked on Sim Basketball and eventually, Hardball Dynasty. I might be the exception to the rule or I might not be, I just don't know. But I have to believe that there are plenty of people out there who would love the Dynasty games, but they have no clue what a Dynasty game even is. It's not fantasy sports, nor is it just a sim game. It's almost like Madden after about 10-15 seasons, when all of the "real" NFL players have long since retired and all that's left is the computer generated ones that only you can appreciate.

What I'm saying about being a commissioner is, you can't call someone responsible when they have no authority.  What can a commish do outside of waiting two weeks for WIS to respond with a yes or no?  No power.  A commish is a figurehead to take the blame within the current structure.  It's crap.

Commissioners need more authority.  Enough authority to make them legitimately responsible.