Thanks for all the feedback on the Baseball game. We have been following the feedback closely in the forums and wanted to address some of the key issues raised.

First off, as I have mentioned before, we really do appreciate both the fact that you are playing, and are taking the time to come to the boards and give your feedback. In our view, the more feedback we can get the better. We’re not always in a position to make immediate changes in some cases, but in many cases we can try new things or fix problems as soon as we hear about them. Others require us to update the game code itself and we file those ideas away for consideration next season. Either way, any feedback is feedback we want.

Throughout a lot of the feedback, there have really been 4 general themes that have surfaced:

- General Game Design
- Consistency in the game experience and quality of the questions being asked
- Consistency of scheduling
- Perceived cheating issues


I want to touch on each of these issues. Not everyone will be happy with the answers and we get that, but we do want to make sure you are heard and have some insight into what we’re trying to do.


Game Design

To start with Game Design, Baseball is a brand new game type for AirPlay, and we have taken a new approach to the gameplay experience. As many have noted, it is obviously different than Football and Basketball and in many ways more similar to Deal or No Deal. Part of this is because the design allows us to be pretty flexible with our game experience – changing the types of questions, frequency, and timing in response to customer feedback. The design also will allow us to roll out more games for more content (i.e. other sports, game shows, and Reality TV) more quickly – something we’re really keen on doing this year. That said, we don’t expect to get it 100% right out of the gate so that’s where your feedback it much appreciated. Many of your suggestions are things we’d like to do (i.e. add a fantasy style element to the game a la basketball) but will likely have to wait as we develop that capability.

With the basic framework in place, we have listened to the players to begin tweaking the game to make it more fun and enjoyable. The addition of the mini-breakers and the tightening up of the at-bat questions are good example of tweaking based on community feedback. All I can say on the basic game design front is keep the suggestions coming, we will continue to tweak to make the game as fun as possible. We also recognize that we aren’t going to make everyone happy – some of you clearly prefer the sit back experience of basketball and some prefer the high level of interactivity football provides. Our goal is to provide a game that resonates with as many baseball fans as possible.


Consistency & Question Quality

I’ve interpreted the feedback around "bad questions" and "missed questions" to be primarily a consistency issue and quality of question issue. Our goal is to give you a consistently enjoyable experience in every game we produce. We have a very talented, very Baseball savvy group of game producers who eat, live and breathe Baseball every day, and who know the game inside and out.

We continually work as a team to get the most consistent experience we can out there for every game. When you have mentioned specific game issues here on the message boards, we always go back and review the games in question with the producers, and determine how to make future games better. Our goal in each game is also to ask relevant questions with 0 missed questions, but there are times during the games we have missed questions or asked questions that were not best for the particular situation. We will continue to work hard at doing our best to deliver a tight and consistent experience.


Scheduling

I have always felt really badly about the few weeks of many cancelled games we had at the launch. We have updated the hardware that was causing all the issues, and have had very few scheduling problems since. Please keep in mind that we try to stay up with the Nationally Televised Baseball schedule, so changes to that schedule will result in changes to ours as well – hence some of the “late adds” to the schedule. We try our best to get the games on as soon as we know they’ll be nationally televised but I can assure you our objective is only to bring you as many games as possible, not to “trick” some users into missing games. Many of you have asked about the criteria for which games we produce and why there are not more games and I wanted to address that as well. Our initial schedule includes all nationally televised games, and to begin with, all the games for 2 selected teams. Here’s how we are currently determining our schedule:


- All New York Yankees games on YES, & MY9
- All Chicago Cubs games WGN, & CSN Chicago
- All National games on ESPN (usually Sundays, some weekdays), ESPN 2 (usually Sundays, some weekdays), FOX (usually Saturdays), & TBS (usually Sundays)


“Cheating”

I am not sure where the "cheating" perception began, but I can tell you that there is absolutely no cheating happening with the producers, nor is there any way for other players to cheat the game. When an AirPlay producer produces a game, they also log in to the game at the same time to make sure what they are sending out is displaying properly, but they rarely answer any questions. They do not see who is playing outside the group they are in, and they do not adjust anything based on who is participating or winning. We want the games to be absolutely fair for everyone and have no incentive to want otherwise – quite the opposite.

Our only thought on where this perception may have come from is at various points in the season we’ve had some technical difficulties that prevented us from sending new questions during games. In these cases you may not have seen any questions for a long time and thought either we weren’t asking any or maybe you couldn’t answer the questions while other players could. In these cases (which we believe we have fixed), rest assured that everyone was having the same experience, including us at AirPlay – no questions were being seen/answered by some players and not others. As always, if you have any specific instances you would like to talk about let me know, and I will look into them.


We really appreciate the feedback - keep it coming! It’s easy to beat up on the producers but I’m going to ask that you take it easy on them when you provide your feedback – there’s no need for personal attacks. If a particular game doesn’t meet your expectations, let me know and I will personally review your comments with the producer for that game. They are good guys, doing their best to bring you a fun game.


Thanks,
AirPlay Zev

Today early game had problems around the 3rd inning are we lost points. I myself lost 6,700 points minus the GB's. I would like my points back. I don't know how your going to do it but I want mine. I didn't sit there for an hour an a half for nothing. Please add my points that I earned. And I should have my GB's added in there which would make it 9,700 points. Please address this issue.


If this keeps up you won't have to worry about baseball because there won't be anyone here to play it. We should have to suffer away our points for your tech problems not after we have earned them.

This is all very well said Zev..... I for one do appreciate the uniqueness of the game.... As for the cheating, my perception of it is in several games questions are being resolved incorrectly.. Now some of the producers will go back and fix them but others may have up to 5 wrongly resolved questions and despite our chat requests choose to ignore them... In general I do think most producers do well to produce a new game and think they will continue to improve going forward.

Well said...some people have such a hard-on about this game and just need to shut up. It's getting annoying...I went into a few games and just heard the same few clowns jabbering and just said f it...

dufus the same clowns are the ones who been sticking it out through all the bs and zev there have been a few of your procoucer cheating no doubt about it.sad part is there are no prizes just braging rights and none of us brag anyways well maybe bax but then again he never shuts up anyways.biggest issue is inconsidentcy thats all.ive seen players get the boot with 1 out end of segment and lose there segment and i know its hard to win a segment with lem and others.i know crymeariver wont play anymore he has a hard time trying to win a segment and the guys gets booted right near the end so i can understand why some are mad they take the time to come and play and no one is perfect but i have to say some of the callers were really bad it has gotted better seems like they are listening to the players a little more but some of your so called live eat baseball people really dont know as much as they like to think they know.if there was no segment wins no avg just overall points no one would care but i know guys been chasin lem and i all year and i know its frustrating w hen your winning a segment and wrong answers are given and some not all of your prodocuers have that answer for that question i guess they dont know as much as they think because most of the time the regs are s moking them but we have had a couple of your people come in put in wrong answers and sweep the board but yet have never played before just that one game begginers luck .NO WAY.come on now zev no one wants to complain just all want to be on a even playing field not much to ask..............................................if anything u should have one standard question for every batter the out-walkreachbase-single-extrabases.for every batter but one of your prodoucers said to that is just as predictable in an out fest and i tried to tell him no matter how u look at it there is going to be 3 outs every inning and 27 per team and more in extras so either way no matter how u ask it its going to be an out.but what seperates the good players and the bad players and lucky ones is if u have the kahoonas like 3d to go for the gusto or sit back like lem and call out every play throwing a single here and there in an out game no matter how u ask it u will always see lem asnwering out.this is not rocket science but lets listen to what the reg players have to say not what staff wants to say and call the game if im airplay i want more players playing then staff members and right about now its even and thats not a good thing............................................................thanks zev

Zev,

Thanks for the post. I appreciate your efforts.

PS - Any chance to get the White Sox game tonight? It's on WGN.

Thanks

Feed "bax" is good....It keeps me from getting hungry (please laugh).
AIRZEV, your efforts are highly informative and appreciated. Thankz

ANYWAYZ, my feedbax:

As one of the more avid AP Baseball players i felt it was time to say something after playing a couple of yesterday's poorly produced games (1st game - Yanks/BluJays and 4th game - Rockies/Mets).

The problems were numerous and highly irritated the players.....here is a brief rundown:

1) Who ever you had running these games A) didn't know what they were doing or baseball that well and/or B) didn't care since very little adjustment was made to correct the probz (which i can only think chased many of the players away). Personally, 1st game was so bad, i quit playing it knowing that would lower my average score (lol, no big).

I would like to refute fact that you say they all live/eat/know baseball, when it is obvious by a couple of the producers' questions/answers and performance they don't. This is why you may get peeps thinking producers are cheating/rigging game because of the lack of care to make sure answer is correct wasn't taken. This has happened on numerous occasions besides yesterday and upsets players cuz it has a drastic effect on the outcome of the final scores.

2) Producers missed questions/answers. Sometimes we'd only get 1 or 2 questions each half inning. We prefer a minimum of four questions for each half inning (one general inning question and one for at least 3 batters). In most cases this is accomplished by the "good" producers and seems to becoming a standard. I think being attentive to the game helps. Also being attentive to the player's chat helps. Cuz we'll be the first to tell ya you were incorrect or missed a question or answer! LOL We do realize fact that at times monkies can be like humans and make mistakes too....just not as often.

3) SLOW - The producer wasn't delivering questions in a "timely" manner......Keep in mind as players....we have to READ the question/answers and make at least one mouse click for choice before we get locked out. This is really hard to do when producers don't get questions to us fast enough (in some cases they had plenty of time between innings to do it and didn't). Also on many occasions, the producer would ask a question but not "lock out" players until AFTER the event for the question occured......allowing some players to (lag) or put in correct answer AFTER they see it on TV.

4) Irrelevent questions or just plain wrong: I realize it is hard to see all what's going on and then formulate questions that pertain to the current real time situation and get them to us in a timely manner...BUT ITZ NOT IMPOSSIBLE cuz several producers ARE doing it and WELL i might add.....But many times we'd have wrong player or a question that wasn't considered very relevent to the situation.

5) POINTS are POINTS: Someone should review the points awarded for answers...........It is much easier to get OUT! and you get three an inning per team no matter what happens..... Calls as a result of being SAFE should alwayz get more points than an OUT (by a factor of about at least 3-1 odds as dictated by MLB batting averages that say a runner gets a hit 25-35 percent of the time.

6) Missed Questions by the player......I can't really comment on this....since the player that sits there every moment will get a chance to answer EVERY question if they pay attrention and click quick enough. In my case i'm often playing more than one game or step outta the room often....so "missed questions" are common for me...... i can say, it would be easier for players....if all producers would get on same sequence for play calling......so we don't have to guess when you are going to ask the questions or Gamebreakers....all i can say there.........

Finally, i wanna say for the most part i enjoy (and am addicted to) this game and the people that play it and participate in the live chat.......Tiz very fun when AP takes proper effort to produce it the right way........

THX MUCH AP,

Combax (aka 'Bax)

-Who is an expert finishing 2nd for the segment LOL....

PS. Hang in their CRY......i miss ya.

well said bax and its about bloody time u spoke up lol.i must agree with bax and i also am addicted to baseball.love airplay very much and enjoy the company alot as well but like i told the caller yesterday hey if your a new caller and u need some help dont hesitate to ask the players,we will give out output if they need it..................thanks zev.

Bax and Bo

You say there are good callers and bad callers. Maybe Airplay might get a better idea of which caller is which if you all take it upon yourselves to post comments bout each individual game produced in the forums, what the caller for that game did well and didn't do well. Since Airplay doesn't want to label the callers but still know who's calling the game, this might help them separate the good callers from the bad.

Just an idea.

yes that works bax posted the 2 bad games already.

capecrusader wrote:

Bax and Bo

You say there are good callers and bad callers. Maybe Airplay might get a better idea of which caller is which if you all take it upon yourselves to post comments bout each individual game produced in the forums, what the caller for that game did well and didn't do well. Since Airplay doesn't want to label the callers but still know who's calling the game, this might help them separate the good callers from the bad.

Just an idea. 

OK



AP Monkey Report Card: (for fun o'course!)
EVENT: MLB All-Star Baseball Game.
DATE: 7/15/08 8pm ET

QUESTION COUNT: A+ (for 15 innings/5+ hrs, no less).
TIMELINESS: A- ( i only saw 2 or 3 really late calls).
ACCURACY: A (i counted 1 incorrect call in 90 outs).
RELEVENCY: B (too many "advanced runner" questions).
ATTITUDE: A (but kinda quiet).
KNOWLEDGE: A (does KNOW the game).
OTHER: A+ (OK feedbax/fast corrections excellent!).
-Thanks for listening to us during the game. d; )

OVERALL GRADE: A (TY, you did a very good job! )

Bax atya.

PS. When a chimp getz an A, it means the game was really fun for us "AirPlayers" regardless of the score. We also would request AirPlay give this chimp a large bundle of bananas for his stellar performance inda face of adversity.

That's a real good job Bax! Now if we could get somebody to give Bax a report card on "his" report card

since bax did not do the report card i will.friday july 17 th.........yankee game caller started off slow but picked it up after the 3rd inning all in all i give him or her a B plus .the chicago game caller was boring slow asked alot of low point calls he must have been working for welfare was brutal give that caller a d minus.lets hope with the reports zev can get rid of the callers that should be calling bingo cause they sure have not got a clue when it comes to baseball.

i have to say the last week of callers has gotten a lot better and even some of them are now interacting with the players which is nice to see and some are even asking the question we request.i still thin we should have a standars question out 500 walk/reachbasee1000 single 1250 extrabses 1500 should be given to every batter ..but u can add will the runner attempt to steal will the runner be stranded.an outfest is an outfest so it isnt more predictable cause u ask the same question.anyways keep up the good work been alot more fun to be honest...

ZEV: Just when u think its getting better in steps jtsmom never played before first game blows everyone away for first 2 segments but also allowing major lag when lag gets fixed jtsmom is nowhere to be found.have no ide why your prodoucer wants to come in for the first time make it look so obvious what do u gain .u can brag and say hey my first game i beat all the regulars because i got alot of late calls get a grip jt u have no skill come play a game u are not prodoucing like tonight.........ZEV FLORIDA VS CHICAGO SUNDAY AFTERNOON GAME.CALLER FOR FIRST 2 SEGMENST AN F LAST SEGMENT AN A AND JTSMOM NO WHERE TO BE FOUND all in all the caller all week have kept it fair but always one bad batch in the bunch ..and thats mmy report on gumby for today cheers.