Archive for Baseball

The popular ride-sharing app Lyft has announced a new partnership with Major League Baseball just in time for the playoffs, and is celebrating by offering baseball fans a free ride to or from the park.

Lyft will now be the official rideshare app for MLB for the 2014 Postseason and the entire 2105 season. Details aren’t too plentiful as of now, but Lyft promises “varied, creative promotions across MLB’s industry-leading web and mobile platforms – including ongoing free ride giveaways, special promotions for the playoffs this October, sweepstakes opportunities and more across all clubs’ websites and social media sites.”

Yep, that’s a little vague, to be certain. But while future details might be a little fuzzy, baseball fans can cash in right now on the new collaboration. Lyft is offering one free ride to new customers if they use the promo code HOMERUN when paying for their trip. There is no mention that the ride has to be exclusively for a baseball trip, so fans in a losing city (or a city with no Major League team at all) still should be able to take part in the program.

Fans who use the MLB At Bat app — and especially the MLB At The Ballpark app — should begin to see special promotions and offers from Lyft on their smartphones in 2015, and playoff-ticket holders might be seeing them sooner. Apps like Lyft offer affordable and environmentally-conscious options for sports fans to get to and from a game, and a safe way to get home for those who want to participate in more beverage-heavy ways. MLB is no stranger to business partnerships, and one with direct ties to the fan experience could be a welcome one.

(Header image via Raido)

The smartphone app Snapchat may seem like it should only appeal to over-sharing tweens and dirty little dirty birds, but the company’s higher-ups are hoping that they can gain further traction with sports, leagues and athletes (pause for Brett Favre jokes) with a recent hire.

According to TechCrunch, Snapchat has recently swooped in and stolen Nike’s global director of digital, Eric Toda. Toda brings experience in social media, licensing, and content syndication, among others. Snapchat is most likely hoping to leverage Toda’s skills into cultivating partnerships in the sports world — to help teams and leagues better engage with fans.

This is all possible with Snapchat’s Our Stories feature. Users have the ability to add snaps to their own individual accounts, allowing their friends to view a 24-hour collection of all they wished to share. Our Stories brings in a bigger sense of community, allowing users to add their content to an event-based story that anyone could see. The recent 2014 World Cup was one such event, and fans could post images and video to that stream from the stands in Brazil or their own living rooms.

If Snapchat can work deals with sports entities, the Our Stories feature could widen to include individual games, playoff rounds/tournaments, or just be a place for fans of a certain team to post all their team-related pictures and videos. Fans could post scenes from their seats at the NCAA basketball tournament, videos from the Super Bowl, or clips of them cheering for their team during Game 7 of the World Series for the whole world to see.

Though it’s easy to speculate, exactly what Toda’s roll at Snapchat will be remains to be seen. But Snapchat would be a modern and fairly unobtrusive way for teams to create and cultivate fan engagement. Snapchat has moved on from naughty pics into big time corporate involvement. Sports seems like a logical next step, and it appears to be one Snapchat is trying to take.

(Header photo via Maurizio Pesce)

It appears 2K Sports’s NHL video game franchise is returning to life via the mobile sphere (h/t Polygon). With an undated title (simply: NHL 2K) it will be 2K’s first NHL game since NHL 2K11. While there is merit to the question “How terrible will the game be?” given that the rival game, so to speak, has been a wasteland of missing features, I think the enduring question is: What future lies ahead for sim sports games on mobile platforms?

And more generally: Are mobile devices becoming viable platforms for simulation sports game?

Madden NFL Mobile (Metascore 66) and the mobile edition for NBA 2K14 (Metascore 59) have shown (by their graphics) that mobile platforms are viable outlets for graphical demands of the simulation video games, but also (by their relatively weak reviews) that mobile platforms need more than just pared down or freemium versions of the platform games.

The mobile platform, to me, seems ripe for a renter model of video game use — a model many companies seem keen on using given the proliferation of MMORPGs over the last decade. Imagine paying — let’s be user-friendly — $5 a month to play an actively updated (with fresh rosters and occasional bigger patches and upgrades) version of MLB The Show. No upfront cost, just $5 a month — tacked onto your phone bill or your XBOX Live / PS Plus bill. You can play it on your mobile device, your home console, your computer. You can save your games to the cloud so your franchise is constantly developing whether you’re on the bus to work, in the bathroom at work, at home, thinking about work, and so on.

Brian Mazique and 2K Sports exec Chris Snyder discuss the new game.

I’m not talking about a freemium game. Because freemium games are not really cut out for simulation gaming and are also kinda the devil. Instead it would be a good game that, over the course of a year, would cost $60, but not expire come the end the season.

This model seems like a win-win to me. I can test out a game for just $5 (or, heck maybe $10) and if I love it, I will never have to buy a replacement and I will have it across all platforms simultaneously. I firmly believe this is what fans of simulation sports games want. Meanwhile, the gaming industry will get a steady income stream for his gold coin pool.

Of course, I could be wrong — maybe no one has an interest in pairing a controller with their iPad or Nexus phone; maybe no one else wants franchise mode in something that has a battery life; maybe there’s no better way to do it than it’s being done now — but maybe it’s time for a developer to find out. And maybe NHL 2K is the first step in that new direction?

(Header illustration via Bradley Woodrum)

The phrase “I have seen the future, and it works” is attributed to Lincoln Steffens, a proto-socialist who thought the USSR would be humanity’s haven for order and beauty. What he saw in the soon-to-be failed state, however, was merely a glimmer of the true light. Here is the true light:

It is a homemade arcade system equipped with every worthy game of our generation; it is the shimmering jewel of the ages, three decades-worth of pixels and magic. According to its assembler, Brian Collette, brother of baseball writer Jason Collette, the device has all you require:

Some of the sports games I do have working are arcade games like NBA Jam, Tecmo Bowl, ‘80s WWF games, Punch Out, Super Dodge Ball, Arch Rivals, Blades of Steel, etc., and some home console games like RBI Baseball 1-3, Baseball Stars, NHLPA ’93, among others.

A hearty giggity goo! A giggity goo to echo across the ages!

The principle of the machine is very simple — it’s basically just an old computer with a MAME emulator inside it. For more info on the parallel beauties and troubles of emulation, check out David Wiers’ excellent emulator article.

The hard part, really, is the hardware. But according to Brian, this is a device you, sir and/or madame, can build too:

• The “arcade cabinet shell” hails from Rec Room Masters
• Brian says the assembly is not taxing and that particular dealer has “lots of cool styles at all price ranges.”
• You will need a two-player joystick and trackball control panel.
• You will need a cheap PC and monitor. Says Brian: “I used a $200 Dell, any old one you’re no longer using would work; doesn’t need much modern power. Add some old computer speakers.”
• And for the cherry atop the castle of techno-awesome, Brian elected to add a coin-operated edifice so as to simulate spending extra money on playing these games. (And though he does not explicit suggest this, it may also work as an excellent power play in the family dynamics. He who controls the quarters controls the universe.) According Brian, this cleverness “only requires some simple wiring setup. They sell them here.”

(NOTE: We and I personally do not get any kickbacks from any of these above-linked business. Of course, if you work for one of those businesses, feel free to send me free stuff.)

And before you assault your loved one with tales of digital valor and majesty — and therefore signify the pressing need for a device such as this in your own home — girdle yourself with this knowledge: Apparently Brian is not the only enthusiast in the house. According to him, it’s a family affair:

My wife and son love it too, there’s nothing like playing a game on a real arcade machine whether it’s Galaga or Street Fighter II. Even Nintendo games like RBI Baseball translate well.

So really, not building one of these babies is like voting no on family values.

Bri-man estimates the total cost in the $500 to $1000 range, depending on what you’ll need to buy fresh. I, for instance, have lobbied to save at minimum two old towers (both of which have smaller processors than my Nexus 5 at this point), so I’d be gravy on that end, but the monitor would need to be acquired — perhaps via prudent garage saling. But can we put a price on awesome? Or, more importantly, can we put a price on the validation we will douse ourselves in when we suddenly have a (moderately) legitimate reason for storing those old computer parts in the baby’s closet?

Some things, I argue, are worth more than money.

While we here at TechGraphs recently wrote about wearable tech, a new addition to the style of gadgets was officially announced: the Apple Watch. Shiny, new wearable tech, all for the price of $350. Now, for that much money, I would hope that there would be great new things that come with it, sports and fitness related. There are some of those, though, so don’t be disappointed. But when it comes to sports-related things? It doesn’t look like there’s anything on that so far, at least, when it comes to new, shiny things.

As a sports fan, I want to know if there will be anything new and specific to the Apple Watch that would pique my interest. If there are going to be Watch-specific apps that would enhance my viewing of games or anything that would just be helpful when I go to games, then awesome. Could I order a hot dog through a Watch when I’m at the game? Have we reached that level of 21st century technology yet?

There’s a lot of user-interactive technology on it, such as the Digital Touch features. While it’s not the thing that sports app developers would utilize, it could be something that would come into play in future Watch-friendly apps for sports. I’m not saying that it would be logical or that there would be a coherent reason, it’s certainly possible. Even with simple things like being able to go back on a game and see previous plays, or use a modified version of MLB’s AtBat or NHL’s GameCenter to track scores. Say, if watching highlights isn’t available because of a spotty connection, just pull up AtBat and you can swish through the gameday highlights.

The potential is certainly there, but is it worth the $350?

Since the Watch isn’t out yet, and third-party apps haven’t been announced, it’s hard to tell what exactly we can judge what it’s capable of. But for the Apple Watch to be a must-have for a tech-loving sports fan, they’re going to have to sell the product hard on sports features. Otherwise, I might as well just go for the cheaper alternative in Android Wear if the features are similar. I’m an Android user myself, so selling me on an Apple product might be tough enough, but I could easily be swayed by Back to the Future II-esque futuristic options that are snazzy.

(Screenshot via Apple.com)

Each Friday, we here at TechGraphs like to point out some of the sports-tech stories that may have slipped through the cracks. It’s the Friday News Roundup. I have a busy schedule of getting my butt kicked in Madden, so let’s get right to it.

• It’s football season! To celebrate, the temperature in the American Middle West dropped twenty degrees within 24 hours. As of this writing, we are one game into the NFL season. Hopefully you didn’t blow your entire nest egg on Seahawks/Packers, because betting on games just got easier. Thanks to the Windows Phone feature Cortana, all you have to do is ask who is going to win. Cortana will use a “combination of stats, previous match-ups, and subtler criteria like stadium conditions” to pick a winner for you. If you program your bookie in your phone, your gambling problem can be 100% voice-activated.

• Speaking of the NFL, Fox announced that you should be able to use its Fox Sports To Go app to stream 101 games to which they have the rights for the 2014 season. One will need a cable or satellite subscription to access the feature on their computers, phones, and laptops, and the game will have to be available in their local area. This means that fans of out-of-town teams are still stuck with needing Sunday Ticket or sketchy streaming web sites.

• Verizon is also offering up a similar service, but with the added bonus of RedZone.

• Also on the streaming front, ESPN announced that customers of MediaCom, Suddenlink, NCTC and NTTC should now have access to the WatchESPN service on computers and mobile devices. There’s a joke here about watching First Take while sitting on the toilet, but I can’t nail it down yet. I’ll get back to you.

• ESPN also updated their SportsCenter app for the iPhone, allowing quicker access to favorite teams and shows. It seems as if my request to add curling to the scores section went unnoticed yet again.

• GOLF! The Ryder Cup said it would ban social media posting by fans on the grounds, but then they changed their minds. Or succumbed to scrutiny. Either way. Limiting ways fans can interact with a game everyone says is dying was probably a dumb move, so it’s nice to see the Ryder Cup rectify it.

• Not a Madden person? Don’t have $60 to spend on something that pretty much only makes you angry? You’re in luck! Tecmo Super Bowl 2015 has been released! With just a little emulator magic, you can get that virtual football experience without all those buttons and joysticks to get in your way. Now you can get angry for free, though that was already pretty easy.

• In baseball, MLB said that they have crossed the point of no return — more people are watching MLB.tv on devices than on computers. I’m guessing this guy had a lot to do with it.

• We may be closer to removing the first down markers and chains from football, thanks to some research being done with magnetic fields. While I’m all for getting the calls right, I will miss that part when the ball is short by a good foot and a half, but the quarterback runs to the coach signaling that they ONLY NEED TWO MORE INCHES. I grew up watching Brett Favre, so I remember this happening a lot.

• And finally, EA Sports launched their Madden GIFERATOR this week. This tool is supposedly for taunting your Madden opponents on Twitter or something. I’m not really sure what the practical use is. Anyway, the Internet did what the Internet always does, and ruined it. Actually, they took a dumb, gimmicky thing and made it pretty funny. I even tried my hand at it today:

That’s all for this week. Remember to ice those thumbs periodically, and try not to curse too much at pre-teens.

(Header photo via John S)

I’ve never been to Cooperstown, but thanks to the Google Cultural Institute, I’m able to check out a virtual version of it. Now, as a baseball fan, of course I’ve got Cooperstown on my eternal baseball bucket list, but a virtual tour? How could it possibly hurt my desire to visit the place itself?

The screen starts off simply enough. A little too simple, maybe. You have three categories on the first page: Exhibits, Street View, and Items. Exhibits show you a slideshow of photographs featuring Osvaldo Salas’ work. The exhibit itself is fascinating, showing a side of baseball from a time when minorities began to be included in the game after Jackie Robinson’s debut. There’s an atmosphere that’s lost when looking at it on a laptop, though — I don’t think you would get the full effect of the exhibit from looking at it on a computer screen.

Street View is a bit more interesting. It’s Google Maps Street View, except you can go inside a building — which is neat! Because who doesn’t want want to use Street View inside a building? There’s a floor map alongside the Street View, so you have an idea of where certain items are in the building. Because of Street View, it’s kind of (very) awkward to see every item on the walls, so keep that in mind if you’re looking at the exhibits. It’s not the best view of the exhibits, either.

Items leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a collection of photos on the main page of the Cooperstown Google Cultural Institute and that’s basically it. You could just Google images of your favorite ballplayers from the past and it would have the same effect.

All in all, I don’t think this is something to take time out of your day to check out. If you feel like it, of course, go and give it a look. It’s a good way to figure out which parts of Cooperstown you want to check out when you’re actually there, but don’t let it be a replacement for going to the actual thing.

The way things change and progress these days, seven years can seem like a lifetime. When viewed through certain filters, 2007 looks like ancient history. Our laptops were huge, our smartphones were pretty dumb, the Bears were good at football. A lot has changed. Our interaction with sports — the ways we observed and learned about our games — have also taken enormous leaps. The level of analysis available to us is at an all-time high. And as recent news suggests, it’s only going to get better. What we take for granted now may have seemed like a pipe dream seven years ago, but it was a technology that came about in 2007 that let us peek into the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

Game: MVP Baseball 2003
Platform: PC, Playstation 2, Xbox
Release Date: 2002
Metascore: 82
Techgraphs score: 4.1 or 82 B-

Let’s Play
You want two solid hours of annoying commentary and awful gamesmanship? Wait no longer! Watch below:

Game History
Come back with me, through this darkly curtain of time, to an age of innocence, an era of good feelings, a place before complicated swing mechanics — a time when the X button was swing, and that’s all it took. The year is 2002, Scott Hatteburg is in Oakland — all’s right in the world.

And as we approach this brave new 2003 season, Miguel Tejada and Barry Bonds are both coming off MVP seasons, the Anaheim Angels are reigning world champenes, and league offense is trending up up UP!

We, the people, needed a game. We needed a successor to Triple Play, and EA Sports said, “Thou shalt hath MVP Baseball.” From the heavens and delivered unto us mere plebeians was a rectangular prism, white in color and adorned with Miguel Tejeda, the Unbesmirchable, and Randy Johnson, the Man of Thousand Awful Hair Choices.

This was MVP Baseball 2003; this was our baseball. And it meant the world to us.

Ratings

Graphics: 4.5 stars
Strong points for the graphics, which at times did not look their age — like a Hollywood starlet well past her prime, MVP Baseball 2003 at times looks the visage of a much younger game, at other times, baseballs lined through players’ backs and into their gloves, faces disappeared entirely, and the starlet’s skin looked more plastic than flesh.

Concept & Game Modes: 4.0 stars
What was the state of the great and mighty Game Mode of 2003? I don’t recall. Perhaps having a mere 10-season franchise mode was enough for the base gamers of that era, but this is a post-hypermodernity, post-Marxist, post-Facebook world — I need infinite seasons and I need a game mode that’s all about me, all about the self. I want a player mode that allows me to start as a glimmer in my father’s eye until I’m a manager in God’s own Afterlife Baseball League.

Gameplay & Interface: 4.5 stars
Not enough Linkin Park during the menu screens.

Glitches: 3.5 stars

He who was in charge of catching fly balls said,
‘Why when I moved the joystick
to catch the ball did you not catch the ball?’
Caned me.

-Anonymous

Rosters: 4.0 stars
Um, hello, everybody knows Dan Johnson got drafted in 2001 and should have been available in the Oakland Athletics minor league system. This enormous oversight greatly damages the game’s respectability.

See Also:

98 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2015 (PC)
98 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2014 (PC)
97 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2013 (PC)
96 A+ Baseball Mogul ’13 (PC)
96 A+ MLB ’12 The Show (PS3)
79 C+ MLB 2K12 (PS3, XBOX 360, Wii, PC, etc.)
74 C MLB Ballpark Empire (Facebook)

I had big hopes for my Pebble smartwatch. I envisioned a time when I could just leave my phone in my pocket or bag, and go hours and hours without having to dig it out. I could be such an engaging tablemate at restaurants. I could ride public transit and smirk at all the suckers who are glued to their devices. I would be free. Free from distraction, free from the rectangular device that has taken over my life.

Don’t get me wrong, my Pebble works just fine. It does exactly what I wanted and even more. But I am still a servant. I’m still always glancing, always clicking. Only it’s at my wrist instead of my phone. While this is an upgrade of sorts, I have learned to accept and embrace my technology overlords. Everything is still coming to me — every email from my fantasy league, every Google chat from my friends, every text from my wife — it’s just coming in a slightly more convenient way. That is, if you assume glancing at your wrist is more convenient than glancing at your phone

The Pebble has a few useful apps, but its main selling point is notifications. It relies on whatever notifications my iPhone sends me. If the phone gets it, the watch gets it. The usual fare is offered — email, text messages, etc. — but it also works with notifications from nearly any other app. When I go to a ballgame, my watch (via my MLB At the Ballpark app) welcomes me to the field. When a player on my fantasy roster has been put on the DL, my watch (via my fantasy apps) alerts me. When my beloved Astros are about to take the field, my wrist vibrates. The same goes for when they take or give up the lead. It goes on and on. This may sound annoying, but I wouldn’t be honest if I said I didn’t love it. The sports fan in me loves the updates, and the tech geek in me loves that it’s happening on my watch.

But the Pebble is a one-way street for the most part. There’s no communicating back to it. If I miss the scoring alert of the Astros game, I need to pull out my phone. If I want to check my roster to make sure my matchups are correct, out comes the phone. It’s passive. It’s a message from a carrier pigeon. It’s a fortune cookie.

Which is why the news surrounding the new round of wearable devices is so encouraging as a sports fan. Earlier this year, Google announced Android Wear, a platform for running Android apps on third-party wearable hardware, which may be getting a significant update soon. Samsung just announced their line of Gear S watches, which offers both voice and teeny-tiny keyboard input. And, of course, Apple is expected to announce their own line of wearable tech next week. The details are still fuzzy on this device, but the ability to run current iOS apps (or at least modded versions of them) isn’t out of the question. All these devices offer a good deal more of interaction. Finally, there will be a tin can on the other end of the string.

Android Wear can already offer some help for sports fans. The integration with voice search allows the user to just simply ask their watch what the score of the Giants game is. If Apple integrates Siri with it’s watches, it should allow this functionality as well. Android Wear offers pushed notifications much like the Pebble, as well. As wearable technology becomes more common, it’s easy to see tighter integration with fantasy apps, news apps from ESPN or CBS Sports, even the ability to simply pull up scores from across the league without the need for pushed alerts. The ability to change a fantasy roster from your wrist, or send your friend a taunting text after seeing his favorite team’s latest score without the need for digging a phone out of a pocket or purse is on the horizon. Who wouldn’t want to see a towering Giancarlo Stanton home run pushed to their wrist? An injury report from their favorite team at the ready with their phone still tucked away? Is MLB.tv and Sunday Ticket streaming video on a watch that far down the road?

I may be getting carried away, or I could be just scratching the surface. Pebble’s Kickstarter ended in May of 2012. A little over two years later, we’re ready to accept the next great swarm of wearable tech into (and onto) our arms. If things play out more or less as expected, I’ll still have my phone in my bag. That familiar blue glow will be coming from from wrist instead.

(Header photo via Maurizio Pesce)