Bad management

by ERIK LEIJON

As someone who doesn’t read books, the prospect of playing a game loosely based on the last book I actually read cover to cover was an exciting one. In 2003, the baseball world went topsy-turvy when Michael Lewis released Moneyball, a non-fiction tale about Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, whose innovative adoption of statistical analysis (called sabermetrics) made scouting players about so much more than how far they can spit tobacco. So awe-inspiring was this tale that Moneyball is now being adapted for film, with Brad Pitt rumoured to be portraying Beane.

If MLB Front Office Manager (X360, PS3, PC/2K Sports, Blue Castle) actually attempted to recreate those torrid old vs. new ideology clashes in Oakland’s 2002 draft war room, then we could have had a brilliant interactive experience involving detailed statistical spreadsheets, well-developed AI characters (including a weasel-faced J.P. Ricciardi) and some genuine conflict as each team attempts to build a potential World Series winner.

Instead, Front Office Manager’s menus are no different from 2K Sports’ actual MLB series, except in Front Office one can’t actually play the games. Since armchair managers can only watch their team in action, Front Office is tailored towards the very limited, albeit hardcore market of fantasy baseball buffs. These people should especially be prepared for disappointment.

Even for obsessive micromanagers, Front Office Manager is shockingly impersonal. Within a half season, every team was overrun with fictional players (none of baseball’s real-life minor league prospects are represented here) and most of the in-season action involved moving players to and from the disabled list.

I wanted to leave the boring line-up card duties to my manager, but the auto-fix option always misconstrued my desire to make minor batting order shuffles with turning my entire organization upside down. There is no interaction between rival managers—either the other team accepts or declines your offer outright, reducing the thrill of negotiation to zero. It was a neat idea to include Beane in the game—he provides e-mails with advice—but his comments aren’t particularly insightful and it doesn’t feel as natural as the excerpts from the book where he’s grifting fellow general managers and cursing like a drunken sailor.

Front Office Manager doesn’t even get the little things right, such as how, when sorting statistical columns, it always reverts back to its original disorderly state if I move my cursor away (this makes offering multiple contracts a monotonous chore). Scouting was another big factor in Moneyball, although here it’s whittled down to one screen and a list of generic names. I would also recommend packing more info onto each screen—most menus don’t even display the in-game date, or when looking up a player’s statistics, his talent rating isn’t listed (or vice-versa). Some sabermetric stats are available (VORP, EqA for you statheads) but there’s not enough and they don’t translate to on-field performance. I do think a Front Office-type game can work separate from 2K Sports’ actual baseball title, but it has to understand what makes fantasy baseball an obsession for so many fans. This game doesn’t get it.

Food for thought

The Maw (XBLA/Microsoft, Twisted Pixel) is a platform puzzle game based on a unique interaction system between a space traveller and his leashed purple blob companion called the Maw. Maw moves on his own, eating animals and plantlife, eventually transforming into a gigantic monster with unique abilities based on what it has consumed.

It’s an incredibly simple game and can be finished in one afternoon. The short playing time results in each level feeling fresh, although if The Maw were a standard-length title, the gameplay would undoubtedly wear thin.