Hoop-LA ‘22 News and Notes

Hoop-LA week continues! THANK YOU for all the pre-order activity, it's pretty humbling to have that kind of faith placed in us to deliver a fun basketball board game experience. I especially noted a couple of comments from folks talking about how they had begun to think (or were convinced already) that a PLAAY hoops game was never going to happen--yeah, I felt that way, too, sometimes! But here we are.

By now, you've had a chance to watch our demo streams for both the Highlights and Full-Play versions of the game. Each stream has generated additional questions, and I thought it would be helpful to do talk about them here, in a new blog post.

Let's start with three-point shots. A number of folks noted that there were no three-pointers made in the first quarter of our sample full-play segment. Now, we've play tested enough to know this aspect of the game is NOT out of whack. The most recent batch of a dozen full-play games (from a few weeks ago) with the 2020-21 cards shows an average of 11.0 three-pointers per team, per game, compared to a league average of 12.7.

I have a theory--and I think I am going to include this in the game's designer notes: There's something about that first game with a new deck of fast-action cards where the FACs just never get mixed up well/correctly. I'm going to suggest that when you get your copy of HIGHLIGHT MAKER HOOPS (and, again if/when you get the HISTORY MAKER expansion), you should decide beforehand that you'll play the first game and then immediately tear up the score sheet, throw it away, and ignore the results. Your second and following games will be much less wonky. For our full-play demo game, I think every HORSE result was a HORSE TRAILING result--that's where a lot of the threes come from, the HORSE readings, and we didn't get any. Aside from that, the play-making shots generated by the FACs just never matched up with the underlined qualities. It happens.

Another topic, I wanted to point out that I omitted one of the components of the highlights game in Monday's "unboxing" segment. The game will come with two sets of strategy cards, which work in a similar way as the strategy cards for the "Throw-Down" mode of the wrestling game. Each coach gets a set of twelve strategy cards, featuring seven different "highlight strategies" (some strategies get two cards), from which he chooses three to implement during the game. The "Big Dog" card lets you move a player to the ACTIVE position from anywhere in your stack. BOXED OUT forces your opponent to rotate the ACTIVE player in HIS stack. We used these cards in our convention hoops tournament, with great results. Obviously, they work best in a head-to-head context. But feel free to use them solo, if you want.

Moving on...

In a recent edition of Sports Sim Magazine, ST Patrick's article about PLAAY Games included an observation that video streams typically don't really fully capture the engagement of PLAAY Games. I completely agree, and I feel like that applies to my own hoops demos. I got to watch my own video along with everyone else last night--a scheduling conflict precluded me from streaming live. I'm on-screen making card readings like, "is he QUICK? No, he's not--so he doesn't steal, next fast-action card."

Instead, I should have been elaborating and articulating the action that the card reading generating in my head. Not for the benefit of PLAAY gamers, they already “know the code.” For those new to the PLAAY universe who are checking out the game, I should have been like this: "Beverly reaches in--nope, not fast enough--if he WAS, he would have made that steal and the Clippers would be going the other way. But he doesn't have the quickness needed to make the play, and Paul dribbles around him. Suns keep the ball, continue the possession."

These are the kind of play-by-play details that are generated in our imaginations as the fast-action cards interact with the player ratings, but we don't articulate them in normal game play--we don't NEED to (unless we enjoy talking to ourselves)! Personally, I'm super sensitive to time--I don't want the game to feel bogged-down, sluggish and "klunky," so I guess maybe I go a little TOO fast sometimes.

Then there was the referee interaction, which I felt like I kind of glossed over. On at least two occasions in our demo segment, referees had the opportunity to call fouls but because of their ref style (reflected in their ratings), they did not. I think that's pretty cool. Especially in the fourth quarter of a tight game where a pair of free throws could be crucial. This is an area that makes HMH interestingly different.

I mentioned in Thursday's full play demo that I would talk about the FRESH aspect in detail in a blog post. So, let me do that here. But before I do, let me underscore that I am not criticizing other basketball games--believe me, if anything, working on hoops has given me profound respect for anyone who has designed a basketball game. It's just a VERY difficult sport to simulate well.

Anyway, I think the HMH FRESH quality works in a really unique and realistic way. In the basketball games that I have played (and, granted, I have not played all that many, so I may be wrong here), there's really no reason to rest a player, except that the rules say you HAVE to. When he's in the game, a player is considered to be playing at full-strength up until the moment he's taken out. But in reality, there's a reason he comes out--because he's tired, and it's affecting his play. Especially among players with roughly equal abilities, a fresh player is better than a tired one.

In HMH, there's a real BENEFIT to resting tired players and bringing in FRESH ones. You saw it in the full-play game demo when Kawhi Leonard missed a play because he wasn't FRESH. Had I taken him out, his replacement would have made that play. With the FRESH quality, you get to make realistic decisions--do you keep a player in the game after his "freshness" is expired because you need his abilities? Can you afford to rest a star player arbitrarily--not because you HAVE to, but because there's a strategic benefit to doing so, in that he gets that next segment at full "freshness?" It adds a dimension of realism to the game that transcends book-keeping of minutes played.

A couple of other quick "housekeeping items" to touch on...

Envelopes. The basketball cards are the same size as the baseball cards, and will use that size envelope. The dimensions are 2.5" x 4.25". A lot of people don't realize, you can get those envelopes at most office supply stores.

As of right now, we're expecting to update the fictional hoops league (Basketball League of America, or BLAM) yearly. A lot of that will depend on community support, but right now the support looks pretty strong.

A couple of people asked whether the pro season card sets would include Instant Results charts--that's something we didn't plan on including, but we can probably put something together along the lines of what we've done for the other games. I'm thinking a generic grid and a letter code system of rating team strength. Such a system would generate a winner, but not a final score. There might be a way to bring the scoring grid into play to determine a score, probably someone in the community will devise that.

Thanks again for the warm response to the PLAAY hoops games! We'll have more to share after the pre-order concludes!