Conducted By – Adam Ames
TPG interviews, Markus Heinsohn, Co-founder of OOTP Developments and creator of Out of the Park Baseball.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the development of Out of the Park Baseball.
I’m 36 years old and live near Hamburg, Germany. I am the creator and lead developer of Out of the Park Baseball.
How did you get started in developing PC games?
I started programming when I was still a kid, on my Commodore VC20. I was fascinated by the fact that I could tell the machine exactly what I wanted it to do, and the better I got at programming, the more often things actually worked. The first game I developed was some sort of Tic-Tac-Toe clone in the late 80’s if I remember correctly.
Starting from its inception, where did the idea for Out of the Park Baseball come from?
I live in Germany, where baseball is admittedly not a major sport. However, in 1991 a friend of mine took a trip to Miami and came back with a bat and glove. We started out hitting tennis balls into my neighbor’s garden, and then we moved on to forming our own baseball club. By 1994, we were playing in organized baseball leagues. I was a pitcher with a low-80s fastball, so I didn’t expect any pro scouts to knock at my door, obviously.
Management games of all types are very popular in Europe, so I had grown up playing all of them, especially sports games. There were no baseball management games that I really liked, though, so in 1998 I started working on my own game. I finished it in 1999 and thought, ‘Hey, maybe a few people will want to buy this.’ I teamed up with sportswriter Sean Lahman to distribute the first version of the game, which sold well and financed my studies during that time, so I decided I could turn OOTP into a full-time endeavor.
Now here we are 14 years later, and OOTP is still going strong. We’ve added an iOS version of the game since then, and this year we launched a hockey title. We have plans to possibly branch into even more sports in the coming years.
What are some of the successes and failures you learned from in developing Out of the Park Baseball?
The most important thing I learned was that you cannot please everyone. Obviously, the main goal is to create a game that everybody loves, but that ultimately is not possible, especially in the sports management genre. There are just too many possible ways to implement certain features, and you’ll face criticism no matter which way you decide.
Outside of creating the game itself, what is the toughest aspect of developing Out of the Park Baseball?
Putting the rosters together and rating thousands of players is the most daunting task we face every year. We have all levels of pro baseball, down to the rookie leagues, and we make sure that by Opening Day we have accurate rosters for all the teams. Our roster team is a dedicated bunch of people, and my hat is off to them every year for the work they do.
The statistical knowledge needed to create such a detailed and complex text-based simulation of baseball is quite a daunting task. How do you make certain you can get as close to real life as possible?
This year, we started using Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system for forecasting player performance, which has helped us make players’ ratings and careers inside the game even more realistic than before. Beyond that, there are many variables that affect player performance, and I’m always tweaking this one or that one and running test sims to see how well they work. I also get a lot of input from long-time OOTP players on the forums – they offer a lot of great advice.
Out of The Park 14 has been available since April, but only recently did you publish the Steam Greenlight campaign. Is there a reason for the long delay?
No particular reason, other than wanting to put our hockey game on Greenlight at the same time, to benefit from having the audiences for both games vote for our titles. We had to wait until Franchise Hockey Manager released a couple updates, and we needed to coordinate the creation of two introductory videos too, so we had a few moving pieces that had to fall into place.
How important is it to get instant feedback about Out Of The Park Baseball from users through online message boards and other social networking sites?
It’s vital to the success of the game. Our forums are full of long-time players who offer all kinds of feedback, and the most dedicated ones are members of our Beta team, so they get access to early builds and can offer valuable input right away. We get a lot of feedback on places like Twitter and Facebook too, and our PR and Marketing Manager makes sure it’s handled correctly – he often passes suggestions to me.
Is there a difference in your eyes between those who review Out of the Park professionally as opposed to individual fans?
Not really, except for the fact that many of our long-time fans love to dig into the game’s little details. That’s not something I expect a reviewer to do, though.
Do you have any opinions on why graphically–based baseball titles have all but disappeared from the PC? Do you have any old favorites?
Consoles and living room TVs have finally caught up to computer when it comes to hardware specs, so I don’t blame publishers like EA for abandoning the PC. Playing a sports game with cutting-edge 3D graphics with friends on an HDTV is an experience that doesn’t really lend itself to huddling around a computer on a desk.
However, that just leaves more room for games like ours, which are a more thoughtful experience better suited to sitting in front of your computer and making roster moves, setting lineups, and so forth. I can’t imagine playing OOTP on a PlayStation 3, but I also can’t imagine playing a game like MLB The Show anywhere but my HDTV in the living room.
How do you feel about the various indie bundle promotions and the “Pay What You Want” pricing methodology? Would you be interested in contributing to a project like that in the future?
There have been a lot of interesting pricing experiments in the indie gaming world in recent years, and we’re exploring all of them to see what could work best for us. Since the World Series is over, this is the perfect time to dabble in some of those promotions and get some new fans onboard during the offseason.
What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?
Some of it really goes overboard and ends up hurting legitimate customers, but I don’t blame publishers for using all means at their disposal. We’ve certainly had our share of lost sales due to piracy, but we try to keep our licensing process as simple as possible. It’s frustrating, though, when we release a new version of our game, or even just an update, and cracked copies start showing up on the pirate sites right away. We’re a very small developer, so it doesn’t take much piracy to hurt our sales and impact the livelihoods of all our employees.
How do you feel about individuals posting videos and receiving monetization of Out Of The Park Baseball?
I don’t have a problem with that at all. OOTP lets fans build all kinds of interesting baseball worlds, so if someone has created something unique and exciting and makes money off gameplay videos on YouTube or elsewhere, then more power to them. In the long run, they’ll help bring us even more fans.
How do you feel about DLC and its current implementation in the PC gaming industry?
I think it does make sense in mobile gaming, but for the PC gaming market I’m not a big fan unless the content is for free. OOTP for desktop will always be an all-in-one product – you pay once and get everything we have to offer.
In celebration of the recently completed 2013 World Series, give us your personal favorite post-season moment.
Definitely 2004 as the Red Sox beat the Yankees after being down 3 game to none. That was unreal.
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Developer Quick Look:
Official Game Site
Facebook
Twitter
Steam Greenlight
Headquarters – Hamburg, Germany
Release Date – April 14th, 2013
Available PC Platforms – Windows, Mac and Linux
Team Members – 2
Publisher – None