Just off the top of my head (pretty sparse these days), but I always had the sense that there's some generational divide with respect to "management" and "replay" sports sims.
I'm oriented towards the latter given the fact that I started with sports sims fifty years ago. Back then it was strictly working off data generated ratings of something that happened last season or years ago.
My first exposure to management sims was with my son's sports video games roughly twenty years ago. In fact it was some sort of boxing game, if my memory serves me well.
I remember that he created some boxer (he did that with his football & baseball games as well) and then worked him through a career. To this day, I still recall thinking, "Why is he doing this?"
At the time, I sort of thought he was engaging in a form of gaming sacrilege. After all, sports sims were for replay of real-life athletes and their respective teams.
I suppose that's why I'm generally content with TBCB in its current configuration. I'd like to see a "nip & tuck" here and there.
Nevertheless, I can relate to the desires those who are seeking a "management" dimension to the game.
Personally, from my observations, I don't think it's going to happen with TBCB.
I just completed a very frustrating year attempting to resurrect and relaunch a soccer sports sim. Believe it or not, soccer is actually a "niche" sport in the gaming world. In this case, the flag ship is a script-based American football game. The pc soccer game gets table scraps...and there are few of those left.
For me, I see the same pattern with TBCB. In this case the "big guy" is OOTP's baseball game.
Despite the fact that you could label me a "moldy fig" from the prehistoric days, I feel that some of the comments about the younger generation and the games they play might be overly harsh.
So many of the younger folk didn't play board games...good for them!! I haven't rolled a die in nearly twenty years. Once I bought a computer and sports games were converted to a pc format, the board games I didn't toss out have been gathering dust for two decades in the deepest recesses of my attic and basement. I also don't use my typewriter.
I stared playing the Trunzo game when it first came out thrity-five years ago. It's great to wax nostalgic about the old Title Bout board game. But the reality is (at least to me) TBCB is far more enjoyable in the pc format than it ever was when it was a dice/board. Very little or no setup, and there's a much greater sense of a boxing match's flow than you ever got with the game when it was in dice/board format.
And don't be too quick to label these kids who play EA type of games as a bunch of "joy-stickers" who are taken in by pure "eye-candy". I don't play them myself (I'm happy with a script-based pc sports sim, a shawl, and a warm glass of milk), but I've observed my son and his friends for a number of years.
They don't just randomly pound away at a gamepad. From what I've seen, they employ as much strategy as we old-timers did with our old board games.
Last time I looked at the calendar on the wall it was 2011.
