Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The End...For Now?
I've decided to close the blog for the time being.
One of the problems with Statis Pro Basketball is that you have to purchase the card sets, and if there are no manufacturers making card sets you have to make them yourself. This is a laborious process, and the return of enjoyment I'm getting on it is diminishing.
Second, I'm realizing just how many games I'm going to have to play to replicate a full college season. Not quite one a week, but fairly close to that. With my busy life, it's very hard getting a game in every week and I'm starting to resent the time the game takes out of my personal life. Once again, there's a diminishing return.
Third, there's the fear that I'm going to fall behind and when that happens, collecting these old statistics is going to become more and more difficult.
Fourth, the blog doesn't have many readers. A few people bump into the blog by accident, but in general, the number of readers - including accidental ones - I get in a day can be counted on the fingers of two hands - sometimes one hand - sometimes none. With all of the output and with so little "input", there's not really much to buoy this project during this down time - unlike with a much more successful blog I write.
Therefore, I have decided to stop putting so much energy into this project and just let it lie dormant. It might be picked up again in a new format if some of the technical difficulties can be solved. However, the project simply has too much going against it, in terms of its difficulty, in terms of the time it takes, in terms of the decreasing enjoyment and lack of interest others have in it.
I think I'm going to try something else for a while. If any part of this blog has amused you - thank you for reading.
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I google "statis-pro basketball" from time to time to see what is out there becasue I am an ardent supporter of the game. SP b-ball is, in my opinion, the best sports simulation I have ever played, and I have played dozens of them. That being said, I didn't get into this blog because of the Brenda Dean thing. Injecting fantasy into a statistical replay game did not appeal to me. I understand that you were trying to create a story line with Brenda, and for that you should be applauded, it is a fine idea. If that is your aim, however, I would stick to the story and just let SP be your content generator that no one needs to know about.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about how you determined defensive ratings. I use a convoluted formula that is helped along by the statistics freaks at basketball-reference.com. Defense is one of the toughest things to guauge statistically and I still don't think there is any foolproof method out there.
One last note regarding SP. I find that the base-10 version of the game is superior when playing solitaire, and the base eight game is a better option when playing face-to-face. Have you tried base-10?
Best Regards,
Stephen
I figured the Brenda Dean thing would be a bridging thing that would keep the posts from being a recapitulation of statistics. I think the problem was that after a while, it didn't even keep my interest.
ReplyDeleteI've never played the Base-10 version of the game. I know that it has a lot of detractors, probably because of its solitaire nation. I might have to seek out a Base-10 version on eBay someday.
As for deciding how to gauge defense, since this was an imaginary universe, I used the fouls-per-minutes-played idea suggested by Statis Pro as a way to gauge defensive intensity. (With some randomization.) I'm a big fan of basketball-reference.com, but I don't think it could have helped me for this particular project.
SP Basketball is definitely the best thing around. There has never been a text sim that has matched it. I wonder why?
I played a lot of Statis Pro before I got married.... The only way to do the defensive ratings is to watch a lot of games and use your own judgment. I had one or two close friends that I would run my ratings by to see if there were any major errors. Another method was to give the NBA's first-team all defensive picks a -5 rating, the second-team all defensive picks a -4 rating, and go from there. (DPOY could get a -6.)
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