One of the two main reasons that I fell in love with WIS was the ability to form powerful (and---often---strange) bonds between my WIS players and myself. I felt back then as I still do today when I sit down every Saturday afternoon and see the stadium that I love shake and the faces that I love (or, sometimes, get so angry with) tucked under the same headsets that I see every week on the same men in Polo shirts in the press box: these are people I know. This is the team I love. *THIS* is why I give up 4 hours every Saturday fall afternoon without fail to watch the same group of incompetents take us to another Outback Bowl.
With WIS, it's the exact same love of familiarity that permits us to form such religious attachments to our Tarleton States in GD and HD and our Scranton Dunder Mifflins in HBD.
Lately, though, I have found my lack of interest in WIS dwindling rapidly (as it has, historically, for every other WIS mainstay that suddenly went from twenty to zero teams because a spark that had been there every morning, afternoon, and evening cycle for the past five years suddenly wasn't there often enough to reward the time commitment that playing WIS the best way requires).
The big problem is that I just don't care about players anymore. I couldn't care less if this new handle-bar mustachioed closer named Catfish Johnson (who looks exactly the same as the last handlebar reliever I had: Sal Gehrig) does well or gets shelled: I just want the W and the reward points, because these players haven't been believable enough for me to want to spend the time staring at their player profiles to learn that they were from (Insert hometown with typo here), Mississippi.
With familiarity and attachment so important, why, then, hasn't the player image database been updated for countless years, or, just as disappointing, that the technology of player imagery, itself, hasn't mirrored computer graphic advancement? I am still staring at the same Madden 64 depictions of players. "Dude, {unwraps phone cord under his Reebok shoes} my shortstop just dove and now his head is going in and out of the base....No, it won't let me move on to the next play.....I think the game thinks that because one of the players' heads is stuck in a rubber square, it's not Kosher to just move on to the next pitch just yet...........................Yeah, I'll blow on the cartridge." It just doesn't feel realistic anymore.
And, Christ! What about those ******* player names, huh? Have you ever seen so many 20 year-old Rogers and Terrys and Dons and Chesters in your whole ******* life? In the name of realism, where are the Lamars and the DeAndres and the Devins and, hell, even the Michaels (really.)? Or the Jordans and the Jorges and the Joses and the Kevins and the Kawhis and the Raekwons and the Adens?
OH! THE ******* Adens! Look around in the real world, man! Every kid born since Y2fuckingK is named Aden! Get with it, WIS!
How am I supposed to believe that this NHL 95 graphic staring back at me is a real *person* on *my* team? And, isn't that what this is all about? The search of realism of concept for the fulfillment of fanatical interest?
I guess, to wrap up hastily, lately, I'm just struggling to feel like I'm running a sports program; rather, most days, I'm likely to feel like I'm playing in Exhibition Mode in NBA Live 97, and 98 came out last week and I'm really close to going to Gamestop to pick it up to see if it might be an improvement over my current copy.
It's just that I'm tired of Dell Curry's stupid *** looking at me crosseyed every game.