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. :)