Hoops Release Wrap-Up: Two Things We Got Wrong!
Well, I think we can officially close the books on the release of our pro basketball game, with only a couple of housekeeping items left to take care of. Let's do that right now...
First, thanks to everyone who participated! I've been exceedingly pleased at the response the game has gotten from the sports game community. As with other games, I was a little nervous (well, maybe a little more than a little), because it's such a different take on the classic tabletop basketball board game standard. In the end, I went back to my tried-and-true litmus test: if I personally enjoy a game I've designed, then I feel like other people will enjoy it, too.
As is always the case with a new game released, there have been a couple of bumps in the road. After 20+ years of doing this, you'd think I'd have gotten acclimated to expecting them, but I still find it to be discouraging when they happen. So (deep breath here), here's what went wrong...
• The pre-order version of the How-To Guide was missing the section on how to calculate player experience. While the highlights game doesn't incorporate the experience element (hence the inadvertent omission), it's part of the full-play game and people want to know how to rate for it. It's the same ratings structure we use for baseball: 0-1 year, PROSPECT; 2-3 years SEMI-PROSPECT; 4-5 years, no rating; 6-7 years, SEMI-ICON; more than 7 years, ICON. As with baseball, there is some flexibility allowed based on personal subjective judgement. Some college players are "pro ready" and can be rated SEMI-PROSPECT from the get-go. On the other extreme, there are veteran "hangers-on," career back-ups who could probably best be rated as "no rating."
We've created a downloadable print file on which this information is contained, presented in the how-to guide fonts and formatting. The idea is you can slip this page inside your pre-ordered how-to guide and have all the info you need. I hope this isn't too much of a hassle.
I should mention it's dawned on me that, since the full-play game is still in development, the hoops "how-to" guide is going to be a work in progress as well. The section on game pace may see some small revisions down the road, and perhaps some other things will get tweaked as well. However, I think this is a fair tradeoff for having the how-to available rather than waiting until the full-play game is ready. My sense is that the highlights game is going to get the lion's share of table time, and most people would rather have the ratings info in their hands now.
• The PLAAY hoops mat has two errors. 1) In the Defense Check section, results for defenders with 0 or 1-2 qualities call for the offense player to rotate when it should, of course, be the defense player. 2) In the Final Minute section, the putback chart lists 2-5 as a score instead of 2-6 (it jumps from 5 to 7). Ugh. Very frustrating. I wish it were not the case, but I still make mistakes. And as time goes on, it gets harder and harder to fix them.
We have a set a pretty high bar in the past with sending out corrected stuff. I saw a Facebook post just the other day, thanking us for sending out a corrected card and praising us for our customer service. That's how we always want to respond. A couple of years ago, I let a typo slip through on the 20th An(n)iversary Second Season box. It was an expensive mistake. We immediately stopped shipment, had new boxes printed, shipped corrected boxes to the people whose orders we'd fulfilled, delayed everyone else's until we got the new boxes in.
We won't be able to do that this time, I'm sorry to say. After thinking carefully about it and discussing the pros and cons of the various options, we’ve decided to continue to offer the mat as-is, rather than conducting a “recall.” It’s a difficult call, balancing economics, the depth/inconvenience to which the error affects game play, and the impact to the good will and trust we’ve tried to build over the years.
People offer to proof stuff for us--it’s greatly appreciated, and we do take advantage of it. The hoops mat was proofed both in-house and out. But errata is a part of the hobby. I've often commiserated about it with my good friend and fellow gamer David Gambrill—a professional editor himself. David is of the mind that mistakes seem to find a way to slip through no matter how deep the scrutiny, and he should know.
There are two takeaways for us in all this. One is that, going forward, we’re going to move away from including game charts on PLAAY mats. It’s the charts that have the greatest potential for errata. Future mats will focus on enhancing the game experience rather than re-creating the game materials on a low-density rubber composite surface. The second takeaway is that it’s better to order smaller quantities of game mats. Stock depletion of a small print run has a better downside than large quantities with an error. Also, we’ve discovered that the more mats we order, the longer it takes to get them.
As an aside, I want point out that, in the case of the hoops mat’s player rotation discrepancy, the game is not broken if the text is applied as-written. In fact, up until the late stages of play-testing, the offense player DID rotate after scoring in HMH. What's important is that a player rotates after the score, not so much who rotates. So no matter how you played it, it’s OK. (Sorry if that sounds like a cop-out, but I'm just shootin' straight.)
On the subject of hoops game rules, Michael Owens has a couple of tweaks he's been experimenting with awesome results, including a way to inject the experience quality into the highlights game. We'll cover that in a separate blog post, coming soon.
As always, if you have questions or comments, we welcome them!