Everyone's aware this isn't just an HBD issue, right?

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=476743&TopicsTimeframe=30

We don't care about that bunch of whiners.

I wouldn't see it quite that way. I caught the tail end of the ownership/management prior to the Fox buyout. I beta tested a few things back then, and now I'm actually "friends" with a few of the admin who were "here" back then through social media.

Maybe it was a chummy vibe, but being a WiS player back then had a feeling of investment in the product. We could ACTUALLY make Suggestions and see the best ones followed through on. If there was whining and complaining which resulted in jumping, it was because the people who were doing the jumping were the ones who actually thought up the company, saw the market for the product, invested their own time and intellectual ownership into creating the product.

To move into anti-takeover mode, well, one thing that happens when something gets bought out is that the people with the original plan are no longer there, and there is no intellectual investment anymore. The people running things are just running things and cashing checks. And quite often, the person or people who even took the opportunity to make the buyout are no longer there.

I suspect that's what has happened with WiS. Somewhere in the Fox chain, there's a guy who has stewardship of WiS and doesn't even know what it is or why it's for. All he knows is, don't kill it yet.

Damag nailed it.  Just an educated guess from working in Corp America for many years, at one point someone of influence at Fox had an idea to roll up various independent fantasy sports games and create a must-play offering with the Fox brand.  They got it going and for whatever reason (didn't take off, or the inside champion moved on, etc.) the idea fizzled.  Meantime, all the people who created, nurtured and cared about the product have long since moved on, and those in charge now only know they are in a backwater of the Fox organization and are just waiting for the right opportunity to jump ship to another department or company.  Meanwhile, in Fox's finance group, they only know there's some obscure unit called WIS that generates about a million or two in revenue in a $14B company.  Through inertia the unit is allowed to exist as long as it doesn't take up much resources, but when Fox decides to do some housecleaning, this is ripe for the guillotine.

I would like to think the guillotine means not just hacking it off, but selling it. Regardless of the size of this market, we are a market, if someone else were to choose to invest in us.

Can't dispute any of that but none of it lessens my point.  

The makers of Madden(for example) aren't asking the buyers what they want.  They present the product and you buy it or you don't.    There may be survey groups, product testers, etc, etc but I imagine my email to EA Sports will be treated much like the suggestion forum on this site.   That wasn't how it was when Tarek was running the show.   It is not going to be that way again.   People need to accept that.

But there HAS TO BE a middle ground between jumping through every hoop and totally ignoring the customer base.

Anything would be an improvement to the clowns running the show now. 

One would think.

patrickm885 hasn't been heard from since 1/2013.    My guess is he was the last programmer for HBD and has moved on.   If my $$$ estimates for HBD are in the ballpark, I think there's about 0 chance anyone works full-time on HBD.

Posted by MikeT23 on 5/25/2014 5:28:00 PM (view original):
One would think.

patrickm885 hasn't been heard from since 1/2013.    My guess is he was the last programmer for HBD and has moved on.   If my $$$ estimates for HBD are in the ballpark, I think there's about 0 chance anyone works full-time on HBD.

1) We know that the programmers were pulled for over a year (basically iirc all of 2012) to work on Fox's Fantasy Football website.
2) Patrick left WiS in mid-May, 2013-- I know this since he left a team in the world I commish.
3) Tzentmeyer has not posted since December and no longer owns any teams.

Agree with Mike that there is probably not a full-time HBD programming presence.

Page 4 = the most intelligent HBD page in months.

Now, when are we getting real time FA?