Highlight Maker Hoops Prime Time: Road Map

Photo credit ro Markus Spiske, Unsplash.com

Wow. We're finally getting ready to release the full-play basketball game to the sports sim game community, less than four weeks from now. It'll be satisfying to finally close the book on this chapter, it's been TEN YEARS in development, a full decade, almost to the day. As the game prepares to launch, I felt like it would be a good thing to look back on the past ten years to remember how we got here.

Let's start with this excerpt from the May 2014 (!) edition of the PLAAY Games monthly newsletter...

"The topic came up on the PLAAY Games Delphi Forum recently about what might be coming next from the PLAAY pipeline. I have been thinking about that myself, and among the thoughts bouncing around in my head, Basketball. (Hoops) is certainly a difficult sport to capture on the tabletop! The biggest challenge, to me, is how to capture all the dynamics of a full basketball game in a 45-60 minute time frame."

From there, I went into a couple of paragraphs about what a PLAAY hoops game might look like. The key sentiment, though, was encapsulated in the first paragraph: there's no shortage of great tabletop basketball games, only a shortage of time to play them. Thus, I felt that the real opportunity for a table top hoops game was one that could be played in under an hour, with stats. That's the gauntlet I threw down for myself.

Later that year, work began. I created my first prototype and experimented with it off and on through 2015. It was rough, but held some promise. In late 2016, with our golf game poised to launch, I posted a newsletter article about how basketball might be the next PLAAY game. Development went in fits and starts, but community interest pressed on. I brought the game with me to our Seattle “Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY” event in the fall of 2017. In late 2018, I announced the Chicago HOOP-La event, to be held in March of 2019, with the express purpose of getting the in-development hoops game in front of people to see what they thought about it. A couple dozen people showed up, many traveling from far away. The response was encouraging. Some people said they'd buy the game in its present (2019) form. Most saw areas where it could be refined and improved, but everyone enjoyed the experience. I remained adamant in my insistence that the game should take no more than 40 minutes to play. Here's a portion of my description of that original hoops game engine, posted right after the 2019 event...

"For me, the design process for this engine has been much like that scene in the movie "The Martian," where Matt Damon's character has to keep discarding parts of the booster rocket in order to make it light enough to reach the rendez-vous point with the rescue ship orbiting the planet. Stuff had to be ruthlessly blowtorched off and left on the planet surface, yet the rocket still had to be flight-worthy. A seemingly impossible challenge. Similar thing with this basketball game. The 40 minute run time was not negotiable, in my mind. But the game still had to feel like basketball and be fun. Tough to do."

I continued to refine that version of the game using the Hoop-La suggestions, and posted an enthusiastic update in May. A few months later, I presented the game at our convention, PLAAY Dot CON. That's when I felt like cracks were beginning to develop in the overall concept of a 40-minute full-play stat-tracking basketball game. I had a difficult time teaching the game in the twenty minutes I'd allotted, and there was a lot of confusion about how to read and apply the fast-action cards. Later I realized that the brevity of the readings on that four-sided FAC deck forced people to continually refer to the rules until everything was familiar. The problem was, it took so long to get familiar with the terminology that learning the game was a real chore. Thus, completed play-test game results were scant.

As play-testing continued into 2020, I felt less and less satisfied with the "blast" application to hoops. I discovered that it would occasionally generate unrealistically prolonged runs, if the FACs stacked up a certain way. The "auto-basket" mechanism (needed to save time) felt unsatisfying--it didn't feel like a player's shooting ability really mattered so much as what colored chip he had on his card. The way the results were structured, it wasn't possible to really track rebounding statistics, something I knew many people wanted to keep. But the biggest thing was the time frame: I was finding it took about 50-60 minutes to play a full pro game. Sure, that was 20-40 minutes faster than most full-play hoops games, but we weren't generating full stats. I didn't feel like the trade-off was worth it.

My first response was to begin work on an "express" version of the game, one which would quickly generate results of the first three quarters of the game in perhaps ten minutes, allowing 10-15 minutes for a transition to a full-play mode. I spent most of the spring and summer of 2020 working on various versions of this concept. Results were mostly unimpressive and discouraging.

Then, inspiration struck in late 2020. I had just watched "The Last Dance" (the Netflix documentary series on the '95-96 Chicago Bulls) and was struck by the way basketball game broadcasts were presented on the show--condensed, concise, only the key moments, presented in chronological order, opening tip-off to final horn. I remember telling Sam (who had turned me on to the series), "THAT'S the way a basketball board game should go! Just the highlights" I began to think about which game engines might fit that style, and Face to the Mat (wrestling) came to mind.

I got out the wrestling game and, basically, started playing basketball with it. That is, instead of scoring points with a body chop or neck breaker move, I imagined scoring points with a big dunk or an epic assist or huge rebound. Right then, I knew it would work. Everything fell into place pretty quickly after that.

Once the highlights game was on track, it dawned on me that a traditional full-play treatment of hoops--with a standard 75 to 90 minute game time--could be acceptable as a complement to the highlights game. So I began re-tooling the "blast" fast-action deck so as to de-abstract everything. It wasn't too difficult, and within a few weeks I had what I felt was a smooth-playing, fun full-play working version. It still needed a lot of fine tuning, but I felt very optimistic about the potential. So optimistic that, when the new PLAAY Classic site launched in February, we made History Maker Hoops "official," "coming in 2022."

Most of 2021 was spent play-testing both versions of the game. We held an "express" hoops tournament at PLAAY-Dot-CON 2021, and it was amazing. But the full-play version still had some bugs in it. We just couldn't get sufficient play-testing done on it to make me comfortable enough to release it on schedule, January 2022. That's when I made the decision to switch gears and make the highlights game "the" PLAAY basketball game, and leap-frog it ahead of full-play.

While that was a tough decision, I was encouraged by the fact that every sports game we'd introduced was different than what had come before. Hockey incorporated the highlights-based action engine, and the LULL mechanic. The NASCAR game used a "king of the hill" methodology instead of cars moving around a track. Baseball used qualities instead of numbers. Golf dispensed with club selection, yardage and math and focused entirely on narrative. It made sense, then, that the lead hoops game should be the one that's different than anything that's come before.

Some tabletop sports fans were disappointed. I get that. But, I still feel the same now as I did in January 2022, that the highlights game is THE optimal way to present a basketball game. Or, rather, the optimal way to present on-the-fly an ESPN Sports Center "highlight reel" recap of a real pro basketball game. You get all of the great moments, none of the tedium, and at the end of fifteen minutes you feel like you just watched an NBA game.

Satisfied with the highlights game, we had time to refine the full-play module to a point where I was similarly pleased. The core group of play-testers and I spent all of 2022 and 2023 working on getting the full-play game as polished as it can be. There's been some friction in the community, some have expressed frustration with the pace at which development has taken place. To those people, I apologize--but I do feel the game will be worth wait. I think Highlight Maker Hoops Prime Time is a fantastic tabletop basketball experience. Here are some of the reasons why...

• Fatigue system. I love the TV Timeout mechanic! In-game book-work is eliminated. The coach gets his say. You rest the indicated player(s), and that's usually a function of how much they've worked, based on what chip(s) they were assigned for the previous segment. Moreover, you find yourself resting star players because you WANT to, not because you HAVE to. The game has a built-in benefit for players who are FRESH. Thus, like the baseball game, where it's often to your benefit to bring in an inferior pitcher who is FRESH to relieve a struggling star, a third-string bench player who is FRESH can often provide a key play that a fatigued star would not. Furthermore, the mechanism that makes all this happen--the TV Timeout--feels almost like a mini-game of its own. It keeps the process fresh and engaging, something that's appreciated in a game that takes 90 minutes to play.

• Narrative results. The FACs not only tell you WHAT happened, but also WHY. A player can make an amazing assist and then have his team-mate throw up a brick. Great defenders can take away open shots. A rebounder can make a big grab and turn it into an instant basket on the transition. The story element is very strong in this game.

• Coaches and Referees. Definitely influencers in a game of pro basketball, it's only natural that they be included here. Coaches get input every segment, and you can almost hear them interacting with the players. The referee element happens just often enough to be memorable and fun. Example: I was playing a game between the '64-65 Celtics and Warriors, Warriors in position for a massive upset, trailing by two but with the ball. A ref check came up, obvious foul but Richie Powers (•QUESTIONABLE) decided not to make the "fouled while shooting" call, Warriors miss, Celtics rebound and hold on to win.

• Wide variety of results. It's a challenge to generate upsets in a tabletop re-creation of basketball because of the high number of individual game actions that are resolved--play-making, shots, rebounds, assists, fouls. Because so much is happening, the law of averages directs the better teams to naturally pull away as the game wears on. Similarly, it's tough to generate a wide variety of scores without artificial means. (The 1980-81 Nuggets for example, won a game against Portland 162-143; three weeks earlier, they'd lost to the Rockets 98-97.) The HMHPT fast-action charts, which are a hybrid FAC and chart, allow for this kind of variance.

On the flip-side, the game offers some quirks that statistical purists may not love. I don't want to come across here as apologetic or defensive, but at the same time, I have always tried to be as transparent as possible...

• Scoring ability is based on points per game, not shooting percentages.

• Not every statistic is generated from a rating. That is, not every rebound will compare two players; not every foul will check a range.

• The FAC deck is designed to encompass all eras of basketball. ("Era Specific" results, included among the FAC results, become an important factor in distinguishing between eras.)

...these aspects (and perhaps a couple others that I'm not remembering?) are carry-overs from the highlights game. It has been critically important to me that the full-play module use the exact same cards as the highlights game. I didn't want to offer two different basketball games; rather, my objective was ONE basketball game that could be played two different ways. Thus, the "Prime Time" version of the game has been developed around the original player card design based on the existing, original “How-To” guide. Using that framework, "Prime Time" adds the ability to track player stats and a true possession-by-possession presentation that's not part of the highlights game.

The play-testers and I have worked hard to balance, counter-balance and fine-tune the full-play game engine so as to generate overall realistic outcomes with the existing cards. The FACs have been designed and calibrated very carefully to work in tandem with the pre-existing cards to produce overall results (statistics) that are realistic and plausible when measured over time. Adjustments have been made throughout the play-test process so that the card design and FACs work despite the era being played.

Bottom line? I'm very satisfied with the results, and I think PLAAY gamers are going to love Highlight Maker Hoops "Prime Time!"

In a few days I'll post a couple of design notes for the full-play hoops game as we wrap everything up and prepare for release!...