Preface: Longer than intended but backstory required.

After our recent "scandal", I began to wonder because the main character said(paraphrasing) "I don't play for respect. I don't play to make friends. I play to win games." Which, to me, seemed odd because I assume all of us play to win games. So I dug deep into my brain to figure out why I play beyond the "time-killer" reason.

My childhood was before video games(I got an Atari when I was 13-14), internet and iPhones. So, after school, we'd go play ball until dinnertime. As an only child, there wasn't **** to do after 7 as there were no one person games. I had a nice 13" black and white TV with 3 channels if I moved the rabbit ears around. I read a lot.

I found a Statis-Pro(baseball sim board game) while reading SI. Bought it but hardly played because I think it takes longer to play than an actual baseball game. But that was my first SIM(assuming my memory is right).

In the mid-80s, a buddy bought Earl Weaver Baseball. Awesome. Wished they'd had that when I was a kid.

I've had an odd fascination for sim games since.

I used to play Strat-o-matic baseball. I also used to play some of those fantasy games where you would draft real players through the mail and they would mail you results every once in a while. I tried the sports games on xbox and whatnot, but they really lacked realistic simulation stats. I barely watch sports anymore(except for my Denver Broncos). But I am still thrilled to find the results of my games everyday. I think about it constantly while I'm at work. I play because I have an obsession with strategy games.

I got hooked on Baseball Simulator and Baseball Stars on Nintendo. I ran hundreds of 6-team "league play" seasons on Baseball Stars, and kept track of the league leader stats every season. Filled up a number of notebooks with my page long season almanac-type entries. When I burned out on that, I developed a dice game that some HS buddies and I played, with baseball cards - at its height, I had the cards for ~20 teams, though only about 4 of us ever played at a time, the other teams were "simmed". I became aware of Diamond Mind at about that time, and Sierra Sports had a nice PC baseball game (with Randy Johnson on the cover) with a really nice franchise mode. Then Baseball Mogul came out. Game over for me, for a few years anyway. Still my favorite sim game.

Growing up in the upper Midwest, I'm a Twins fan, and I was an early Aaron Gleeman reader, from pretty much the time he started in his moms basement. I joined his first private HBD world from season 1 back in 2006 (different user name that is no longer in use). I didn't like the sound of HD at the time, especially starting at D3, taking years to get to low D1. Seemed like a first in, first up kind of set-up, and I'm too egalitarian for that. Took a few years off of WIS, because HBD was too slow for me at the time (primarily played OOTP between 2008 and 2013). Came back in 2013, and got an itch to give HD a try, for whatever reason. Like many, I found I liked D2 best. I enjoyed the competition and the mechanics of the game engine, but the recruiting always irked me. Even moving up to high D1 (as pkoopman) I was irritated by how the game felt like winner's ball. Advantages in perpetuity once you got to the top. I was cutting back when 3.0 was announced. Now I'm enjoying this sim as much as I enjoyed Baseball Mogul 15 years ago.

I don't play "to win". I play to have fun. There are lots of things people can do to win that I don't do, because they're not fun. I do try to win as much as possible, as I suspect most do. But I actively try to avoid doing things that "break the fourth wall", or destroy the illusion for me, because ultimately, I want the experience to feel like a fun and less tedious (and less high-stakes) version of the real life activity it's simulating. To echo TJs other thread this morning, this is essentially why I like 3.0 much more than 2.0. Recruiting now feels like a recruiting simulation, based on discovery, scouting, and prioritization, with less emphasis on the poker and eBay aspects featured so prominently in 2.0 D1 recruiting. And I no longer have the urge to wake up in the middle of the night to see if anyone above me is vulnerable, or anyone below me has started a snowball on me. FTS man, good riddance to 2.0. :)

Earl Weaver got me hooked as well.

There was a text based games called Hoops that came out in like 1986 I played a lot as well.

https://www.si.com/vault/1987/03/30/106777569/warning-hoops-may-be-addictive#

Since I was around 16, and it was confirmed that I wasn't going to be a major league baseball player (not to say there weren't some pretty heavy suspicious about it leading up to then), my dream job has been to be General Manager for the Houston Astros. The only reason I buy any video game now is to play Franchise/Dynasty mode in sports games. It's just fun.

I'd imagine that it's the same reasoning as someone who loves comic books - it's nice to escape life's day-to-day monotony by focusing on something you'd be truly passionate about if it were your reality, which in my case is the very specific kind of day-to-day monotony provided by SIM games and similar sports video games.

I play because HD combines 3 of my favorite things: basketball, sim gaming, and competitive strategy.

When I was in elementary school my dad introduced me to APBA baseball and I was immediately hooked. I ended up playing out the entire 1995 AL season, keeping track of stats manually for every player (this took several years to accomplish).

In middle school my best friend and I started to create our own baseball sim using historical players. It was pretty basic at first, using dice and a baseball encyclopedia. By high school we had created cards for the players we drafted and used a random number generator (1-100) on our TI-83 plus to run our sim. Both of us were also on the varsity basketball team and he is now a HS basketball coach. Around the same time I also got really into Baseball Mogul.

I discovered HD when I was in law school and primarily played with one team for a couple years. However, after a few seasons at Xavier I was no longer enjoying the game and ghost-shipped my remaining credits. About a year or two ago I got the urge again and came back. I fully intended to stay in D2 (since I enjoyed it way more than D1 in 2.0) but I decided to try D1 in 3.0 and am really enjoying it.

I play cause basketball is my favorite sport. I play for the competition and my favorite features are recruiting, nt and ct tournament or non-con tournament provided by players.

I wish they would realign the division to make it closer to what it is today and that they add a new feature enabling us to put invitation tourney more easily. Syracuse and Arizona State fan.

Years ago i was looking for an alternative to Fantasy Football and stumbled upon WIS. I started in Sim League Baseball where I was fascinated by having the choice of any players that i wanted either past or present. I love the dead ball era of hitters and yes, before salary adjustments those were the guys to have. they sucked on defense but led me to a TOC Championship.

I was watching Eight Men Out one Sunday and decided to create a team with all the players. Yep, i had Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams and Eddie Cicotte, Had fun putting that team togher, but boy did I get smoked in league play! I still enjoy SLB and am playing in the WIS Championship because of the great themes. I really suck at most of the sports i play, but i really love how competitive they all are.

I really love College Basketball and HD is my favorite. Again, I am not very good at it, but love the development of the players and just having a top notch school makes me happy! The little things in life! Since a "Glitch" has caused a lot of controversy recently, does anyone remember the Slow Down/-5 saga about 10 years ago in HD. If you do, you have been around a long time!

Grew up playing a ton of Superstar Baseball, in the late 1970's... that's the game with 1 black die and 2 white dice, and has a ton of Hall of Famers. Also played Stratomatic a little.

i like the recruiting, roster building, scheduling... there's a lot to like about HD, especially 3.0...

I'm about the same age as Mike. I didn't own a computer until I was in graduate school (1992.) While I have always been a sports fanatic, my computer gaming tastes were centered on strategy/fantasy games. You have to be old school to recognize these titles but I loved playing Civilization, Darklands, Colonization, Master of Magic, etc. I still do on occasion.

A friend at work back in 2004 suggested I try WIS for the baseball simulation game. I didn't care for it but I tried one season of HD and was hooked. It combined the strategy I liked in my PC games with my love of sports. It was a perfect match and I'm still playing 13 years later.

I don't remember specifically why I started, but I like basketball, sim, strategy, and competition. This game is crack, after the first season i was addicted.

I used to also play Baseball Stars on Nintendo which was one of the first video games to keep cumulative stats I believe...I think RBI Baseball did as well. And loved it. Started making up my own dice games for baseball (yeah, SUPER nerdy) and then someone told me Im basically doing the exact same thing as Stratomatic Baseball so I started doing that....then stopped during my "metal head banging" phase. Then a co worker years later told me about WIS and the regular baseball Sim so I started playing that and the rest is history.

Posted by Arfy on 7/13/2017 12:02:00 PM (view original):
I used to play Strat-o-matic baseball. I also used to play some of those fantasy games where you would draft real players through the mail and they would mail you results every once in a while. I tried the sports games on xbox and whatnot, but they really lacked realistic simulation stats. I barely watch sports anymore(except for my Denver Broncos). But I am still thrilled to find the results of my games everyday. I think about it constantly while I'm at work. I play because I have an obsession with strategy games.

I'm a huge b-ball fan and used to play a ton in high school. I also freakin love stratomatic. I'm a sports and math addict. Definitely defined as a jock-nerd. I'm also a huge NBA2K Myteam fan. I also love strategy games like Catan, Dominion and stuff like that.

I'm also one of the best fantasy football players I know. Pick up Ryan Tannehill this year.

Like shoe3, I played Baseball Simulator 1.000 and Baseball Stars a lot. My friends and I would “draft” MLB players and rename the players on Baseball Stars and play seasons. I also played a lot of TECMO Bowl – early on I enjoyed sports games that accumulated stats through a season. When my parents bought me a computer in the early 90’s, one of the first games I purchased was Microleague Baseball. I printed out so many stats on that dot matrix printer that I had boxes and boxes of print outs. I was also in a Wayne Gretzky Hockey simulation league where we did live 10-person drafts and the commish would simulate games and send out results. I also played a lot of Hardball III on the PC and got the stadium add-on disk and did some leagues w/ friends on it. The first basketball sim I played was Cactus League Basketball and I played my fair share Strat-o-Matic baseball on the computer. About 12 years ago I started playing Sports Mogul Baseball – that was a pretty awesome game, but I don’t get into as much as I once did. Right now my favorite game title is the MLB “The Show” series – I enjoy playing franchise mode. I don’t really remember what brought me to the WhatIfSports website, but it may have been the SimMatchup function and I eventually bought an introductory basketball team to check it out and have had at least one active team ever since. I have also tried HBD and GD (won a championship at DII I believe). While I never played any of the “simulation” board games like Strat, it has intrigued me all of these years and have also wanted to try it. I’ve thought about buying it and playing alone, but that just seems too weird/nerdy to me. LOL

I've always loved management-type games...used to play a Pursue the Pennant league each year when I lived in Minneapolis where everyone would gather one night of the week and sim off that week's games. When the new cards came out each season, we'd hold the draft for the new players, etc. For all the EA Sports titles, I loved playing the managing/head coach modes more than actually controlling players and having the x-button, x-button, left stick spin, etc. So the games were right up my alley. Once I started playing, I realized it was way cheaper to play here than to buy a new EA title every 'x' months (plus EA was basically marketing the same game for about 5 years in a row so you were paying $50 for new rosters basically...).