About the Text Suggestion Subforum

[battists]

Welcome to the OOTPB Text Suggestions subforum!

What is this subforum for?
Certainly one of the aspects of OOTPB 2006 that brought out the most conversation was the quality of the text, both in articles and in play-by-play.

During 2006, there was a private "text team" consisting of about 10 people from a variety of writing, editing, OOTP, and baseball backgrounds. While the text team was very proud of their work, I think everyone involved in the launch would have enjoyed a more positive response from the customers regarding the in-game text. We took that criticism to heart, and to that end, we've taken a different approach for 2007, in the hopes of getting just such a positive response. Essentially, we are opening up the in-game text to suggestions from the entire community.

This year, instead of limiting writing to members of a select team, the private text team will consist solely of editors. The editors will work with the community in this subforum to write, edit, and add messages into the game. We're looking for text snippets that:

1. have a solid "baseball feel."
2. have correct, consistent grammar and spelling.
3. have simple, concise language.
4. meet the technical requirements of the in-game text engine.

You heard that right: OOTP Developments and SI heard your feedback, which said that the majority of the community prefers more basic baseball language. The text will not be reduced to a complete skeleton. However, there will be a much stronger focus on simplifying the text.

So, how will this work?
This forum will be used exclusively to collect text suggestions from the community. It's not our intent to turn this into another feature suggestion forum. Therefore, only moderators (and the text team editors) will be allowed to create new threads in this forum. However, all community members can reply to those threads.

Over the next month or so, editors from the text team will begin posting threads here. Each thread may discuss a particular message category in the game. For example, they might post a thread seeking ideas for the "player of the month" category. They will lay out some basic information about what data is available to be used. The process will flow like this:

1. Editors post a category thread.
2. Forum members reply with suggested text.
3. Editors review, edit, and place into the game.

There will be no confirmation whether or not certain messages were accepted. The editors will select the ones they feel match our goals best.

Quick obligatory quasi-legal statement: This work is strictly on a volunteer basis. By posting suggestions, you are agreeing to allow SI/OOTP developments to edit and use your suggestions in the game without any compensation or credit.

Welcome to the forum. I look forward to hearing your ideas!

Steve Battisti

[battists]

dola,

Just as a follow-up, while you're welcome to discuss what I've written in this thread, I am not asking you to post your text suggestions in this thread. For that, please wait for some of the text editors to begin posting specific threads soliciting input. That may not start for another while yet...

Thanks,

Steve

[mikev]

Will there be any plans for an "Online Leagues" subforum so we can have suggestions specific to online play?

[A.J. Holz]

Originally Posted by mikev

Will there be any plans for an "Online Leagues" subforum so we can have suggestions specific to online play?

I would love that as well. I never read play-by-play as all my OOTP gaming since OOTP4 has been in online leagues.

[battists]

Originally Posted by mikev

Will there be any plans for an "Online Leagues" subforum so we can have suggestions specific to online play?

Nope, because that's already been done over in the main Suggestions forum, and the development of the game is already well under way. There was a big initiative where we collected suggestions from the community.

The reason we can do the text separately is because it's not part of the code Markus writes, so we can pursue that without affecting Markus' development timeline.

Again, the "text suggestions" that will be garnered in this forum are not along the lines of "What do you think we should do with the text engine?" or "What kinds of messages should the game generate?" It will be more like "Here is a specific text category that will be in the game. Post examples for that kind of that message."

So, we might say "post examples for the category that is used when a hitter swings and misses". You might reply:

"LastName swings and misses..."

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by A.J. Holz

I never read play-by-play as all my OOTP gaming since OOTP4 has been in online leagues.

Keep in mind that this topic isn't just confined to the play-by-play that online leaguers never see. As battists mentioned, the text being discussed includes all the news articles, messages, and such that are generated and displayed within the GM portion of the game.

So you needn't feel excluded.

- Kai