My Thoughts on our Boxing Game

[wildhawke11]

Below is a copy of a post i did some years back when we were trying to think of ways to drum up more support for our game and i still stand by it today.



The real problem is good as this game is the average buyer of computer games is not that interested in a pure simulation of boxing. They have been brought up on flashy graphics, first person shoot ups. Games that scare the **** out of you and loud bangs from sound cards and speakers. Next to these games our game seems very dull to them. If you really want to make money you have to give the average buyer what he wants. Look at it from the average persons point of view. They download the demo of our game. Then just sit there watching a page full of text strolling down. The names of Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Roberto Duran and fighters like Sam Langford mean nothing to them. After a while of watching pretty much the same text in a few fights. They are bored stiff and look for another game in which they can at least take part in some real time action. No sad to say most people would have no interest in wasting there lives watching text stroll by on a computer screen.

Our small band of boxing lovers see it entirely different, We don't just see the text strolling by. We use our imagination and see the crowd cheering as both fighters make there entrance into the arena. Before the bell even sounds in the game. We see Mike Tyson at his peak pacing up and down in the ring just waiting with hatred in his heart for the man they call the greatest Muhammad Ali in the opposite corner who is waving and playing up to his adoring fans. The text in itself is only part of it, to us we see it as if we were there at ringside. Our imagination does the rest because we understand the excitement that a big fight can bring. The average person who does not follow and love boxing can never experience this in his mind, and therefore most will never fall in love like we have with this game. The mind and your own imagination is so powerful The pictures that you can see in your own mind with a little help from a few words can never be beaten, That why so many great books when turned into a film never come up to the expectations that you were hoping for. How many times have you heard people say "Yes it was a good film but i thought the book itself was so much better"

Have to say though that i feel that add ons that will be hopefully coming will perhaps take Title Bout on to another level. and hopefully appeal to more then us die hard old time boxing lovers. I to am a tester on the boxing games and having done a little boxing myself as a young man as well as being a lover of the fight game for more years then i care to remember. I can with hand on heart tell you guys in my humble opinion right now there is nothing on the market at present that comes close to a decent boxing simulation as does Title Bout.
Thank You Gentlemen for hopefully taking the time to read this.

Cheers To You From UK ------ Danny

[bear]

Originally Posted by wildhawke11

Below is a copy of a post i did some years back when we were trying to think of ways to drum up more support for our game and i still stand by it today.



The real problem is good as this game is the average buyer of computer games is not that interested in a pure simulation of boxing. They have been brought up on flashy graphics, first person shoot ups. Games that scare the **** out of you and loud bangs from sound cards and speakers. Next to these games our game seems very dull to them. If you really want to make money you have to give the average buyer what he wants. Look at it from the average persons point of view. They download the demo of our game. Then just sit there watching a page full of text strolling down. The names of Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Roberto Duran and fighters like Sam Langford mean nothing to them. After a while of watching pretty much the same text in a few fights. They are bored stiff and look for another game in which they can at least take part in some real time action. No sad to say most people would have no interest in wasting there lives watching text stroll by on a computer screen.

Our small band of boxing lovers see it entirely different, We don't just see the text strolling by. We use our imagination and see the crowd cheering as both fighters make there entrance into the arena. Before the bell even sounds in the game. We see Mike Tyson at his peak pacing up and down in the ring just waiting with hatred in his heart for the man they call the greatest Muhammad Ali in the opposite corner who is waving and playing up to his adoring fans. The text in itself is only part of it, to us we see it as if we were there at ringside. Our imagination does the rest because we understand the excitement that a big fight can bring. The average person who does not follow and love boxing can never experience this in his mind, and therefore most will never fall in love like we have with this game. The mind and your own imagination is so powerful The pictures that you can see in your own mind with a little help from a few words can never be beaten, That why so many great books when turned into a film never come up to the expectations that you were hoping for. How many times have you heard people say "Yes it was a good film but i thought the book itself was so much better"

Have to say though that i feel that add ons that will be hopefully coming will perhaps take Title Bout on to another level. and hopefully appeal to more then us die hard old time boxing lovers. I to am a tester on the boxing games and having done a little boxing myself as a young man as well as being a lover of the fight game for more years then i care to remember. I can with hand on heart tell you guys in my humble opinion right now there is nothing on the market at present that comes close to a decent boxing simulation as does Title Bout.
Thank You Gentlemen for hopefully taking the time to read this.

Cheers To You From UK ------ Danny

Danny
Have to add my thoughs regarding your second paragraph, which does a great job of describing my own experience with the sim. Guys like you and me, and a lot of other folks on this board grew up with fights. My sister, who is in no way a great boxing fan, remembers listening to Conn-Louis II on the radio with my dad. This was a little before I appeared on the scene but we had a TV when I was four and dad watched fights, which meant the family watched fights. When I was seven, dad took me to the show (Chicago slang for the cinema) to see Bogie's last film the Harder They Fall. He spent the rest of that Saturday telling me stories. Dad was a first rate yarner. My head was spinning with tales of Primo Carnera, Maxie Baer, Ernie Schaff, the mob and its involvement in the fight game, tricks used by cornermen (including a technique for stopping nosebleeds that I have used successfully ever after) and other wonderments. A magical moment. Watched a lot of fights with dad. Was taken to fights at the armory two blocks from home. Began to remember some of the fights and fighters with Basilio, Fullmer, Robinson, Tiger Jones, Patterson, and Ingo.
Also watched the fights on the radio. I use the verb watch quite intentionally here. I listened to the commentary and visualized the action in my mind's eye.

[IceTea]

Great stuff here. What is your trick for nose bleeds?

[Bonedwarf]

Originally Posted by wildhawke11

Our imagination does the rest because we understand the excitement that a big fight can bring. The average person who does not follow and love boxing can never experience this in his mind

That's the only bit I take any sort of issue with. I can't even call myself a boxing fan really. I can't remember the last fight I watched. I don't follow the sport. I couldn't name any current champion. (Only sport I follow religiously is Formula One racing.)

Yet my imagination is just fine and I do exactly what you say. Being a passionate boxing fan no doubt helps the appeal for sure, but isn't mandatory. I am a fan of text based sports sims, and have a very active imagination. While I do like the graphics games and stuff, I love text sims, and have done for almost 20 years now.

Out of interest, anyone reading this is obviously a fan of the game. Do you read books? We're always being told that book reading is on the decline, yet I still read a lot of books. I'm just curious if folk who enjoy Title Bout are readers who are used to using their imagination.

Great post. (Yours not mine)

[Jersey-Jim]

Some of my family who were around in the 40's used to say that there were fights and wrestling matches just about every night with the exception of Sunday. That was in Newark, New Jersey. There were local rivalries, crosstown rivalries, fight in MSG across the river.

Today, if you want to see boxing every night you have go to YouTube or play TBCB.

I agree, though, that the mind combined with TB can really produce some entertaining results. Sometimes, the fights (the build-up, promotion and everything else that goes along with it) starts long before you click on the .EXE file and continues long after you've closed it down.

You don't get that with EA sports on the XBox 360. I don't, anyway.

[wildhawke11]

Bonedwarf
Guess i can afford to be wrong once it makes a nice change for being right 99.9 times out of a 100. ( only joking To be serious anyone who has ever been to a major boxing match and i don't mean the sort of crap fights they sometimes put on PPV today, then they will know what i mean. Its not just the fight, its the tension, the atmosphere. Its the difference between watching a war film and then having real bullets being fired at you. I have a article wrote by a former pro boxer about the wait in the dressing room for a fighter just before he takes that walk to the ring. You might be surprised at what its like and also make you smile next time you hear someone in a bar say "I would fight Mike Tyson for a million pounds" They would probably be near having a heart attack before they got to the ring

[bear]

Originally Posted by IceTea

Great stuff here. What is your trick for nose bleeds?

It involves the use of butcher paper. Since I don't ever have that handy I'll use part of a brown paper bag instead. The paper needs to be a bit thick and crisp. Start with a rectangle about 1 inch by 3 or 4 inches. Keep folding it over itself to get form a thicker rectangle of paper 1 inch by about 1/4 to 3/8's of an inch. Shove it into your upper gum below whichever nostril is bleeding. I like to make sure the paper goes around the front of the upper canine below the bleeding nostril. It will pinch off the flow of blood to that nostril and slow it down. It has worked for me for over fifty years of nosebleeds. I've never needed to use anything to help the blood coagulate either. Dad told me it was a trick he learned from cutmen and i never had any reason to doubt his word on that score. Harry Dublinsky's brother Joe (who looked like he'd seen a few rounds of action himself) was a frequent houseguest when I was a kid.

[wildhawke11]

Originally Posted by bear

Danny
Have to add my thoughs regarding your second paragraph, which does a great job of describing my own experience with the sim. Guys like you and me, and a lot of other folks on this board grew up with fights. My sister, who is in no way a great boxing fan, remembers listening to Conn-Louis II on the radio with my dad. This was a little before I appeared on the scene but we had a TV when I was four and dad watched fights, which meant the family watched fights. When I was seven, dad took me to the show (Chicago slang for the cinema) to see Bogie's last film the Harder They Fall. He spent the rest of that Saturday telling me stories. Dad was a first rate yarner. My head was spinning with tales of Primo Carnera, Maxie Baer, Ernie Schaff, the mob and its involvement in the fight game, tricks used by cornermen (including a technique for stopping nosebleeds that I have used successfully ever after) and other wonderments. A magical moment. Watched a lot of fights with dad. Was taken to fights at the armory two blocks from home. Began to remember some of the fights and fighters with Basilio, Fullmer, Robinson, Tiger Jones, Patterson, and Ingo.
Also watched the fights on the radio. I use the verb watch quite intentionally here. I listened to the commentary and visualized the action in my mind's eye.

You know old buddy we have a lot in common, then again in our time people had very little. There were as you well know two really big sports in the UK soccer and boxing. All most every young man did one or the other. Lots of factories had a boxing team and the ex service men's clubs had them as well. Its ohhhhhhhhhh so different today. I know my friend i am saying nothing you don't know Bear. Oh i yearn for the days with only eight world champions. Today its so easy, just pick the weakest so called world champion to call yourself a champ. A lot of them today would never even got close i believe to even being a contender the depth of competition was so deep back in our time. By the way that film *The Harder They Fall* i to loved it, for its time it was a real gusty down to earth film. I also enjoyed that old film *Champion* with Kirk Douglas in it. Have a great day my boxing buddy.

[Bonedwarf]

I have never been to a boxing event either Though the local boxing gym down the street has fight nights (ironically in the afternoon, but I guess "Fight Afternoon" doesn't sound as dramatic). But unless it's hockey or football, where I live couldn't give a crap.

I don't have cable TV, so can't watch on TV. And I can't even grab stuff illegally as I only know one site that hosts boxing, and their ratio restrictions make it pointless me signing up.

And I can't stomach YouTube as their video quality is, for the most part, garbage.

So I'm stuck boxing-less sadly.

[wildhawke11]

Thanks for the info Bonedwarf.
Yes i understand what your saying buddy. I know you like formula 1 racing. I used to follow it one time but over the years as the cars became even more advanced and the big money manufacturers were streets ahead of the other cars in the race. It often seemed to me that the reality was that in truth 9 times out of 10 only the big 5 cars who could also afford to use the best drivers were the only cars that had any chance of finishing in the top three. In a way it was really becoming a 5 car event with the other 17 just there to make up the numbers.

I have many videos upstairs from the past years when i used to follow the racing. One in particular is a documentary made of former world champion Nigel Mansell and the build up to a race, including the qualifying laps. In the documentary they attached equipment to Mansell to test his heart rate during his final qualifying lap. His heartbeat was so high almost at danger point. In fact the doctors there said after listening to Mansells heart beat that if they average person had been able to sit in the car at the same time. He would probably have had a heart attack as the car approached the first bend. I can quite believe that as its surprising how hard the drivers have to work to get in a top class fitness for the race. The G force that the driver has to put up with during a race is astonishing i
Anyway wont bore you any longer on this one.

[TSalathe]

Originally Posted by wildhawke11

Below is a copy of a post i did some years back when we were trying to think of ways to drum up more support for our game and i still stand by it today.



The real problem is good as this game is the average buyer of computer games is not that interested in a pure simulation of boxing. They have been brought up on flashy graphics, first person shoot ups. Games that scare the **** out of you and loud bangs from sound cards and speakers. Next to these games our game seems very dull to them. If you really want to make money you have to give the average buyer what he wants. Look at it from the average persons point of view. They download the demo of our game. Then just sit there watching a page full of text strolling down. The names of Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Roberto Duran and fighters like Sam Langford mean nothing to them. After a while of watching pretty much the same text in a few fights. They are bored stiff and look for another game in which they can at least take part in some real time action. No sad to say most people would have no interest in wasting there lives watching text stroll by on a computer screen.

Our small band of boxing lovers see it entirely different, We don't just see the text strolling by. We use our imagination and see the crowd cheering as both fighters make there entrance into the arena. Before the bell even sounds in the game. We see Mike Tyson at his peak pacing up and down in the ring just waiting with hatred in his heart for the man they call the greatest Muhammad Ali in the opposite corner who is waving and playing up to his adoring fans. The text in itself is only part of it, to us we see it as if we were there at ringside. Our imagination does the rest because we understand the excitement that a big fight can bring. The average person who does not follow and love boxing can never experience this in his mind, and therefore most will never fall in love like we have with this game. The mind and your own imagination is so powerful The pictures that you can see in your own mind with a little help from a few words can never be beaten, That why so many great books when turned into a film never come up to the expectations that you were hoping for. How many times have you heard people say "Yes it was a good film but i thought the book itself was so much better"

Have to say though that i feel that add ons that will be hopefully coming will perhaps take Title Bout on to another level. and hopefully appeal to more then us die hard old time boxing lovers. I to am a tester on the boxing games and having done a little boxing myself as a young man as well as being a lover of the fight game for more years then i care to remember. I can with hand on heart tell you guys in my humble opinion right now there is nothing on the market at present that comes close to a decent boxing simulation as does Title Bout.
Thank You Gentlemen for hopefully taking the time to read this.

Cheers To You From UK ------ Danny

You are so right, I am also not a fan of console games to me most don't have much for content just a lot of eye candy. I do have some fun with Fight night round 3, but all the button mashing wears my fingers out. It is unfortunate that some of the younger generation will likely never be exposed to some of the great fights. I don't see many great fighters anymore, guys that would lace up and take on all comers and not worry about paydays. Joe Louis comes to mind taking on his bum of the month club, but would never consider them bums and trained hard for every fight and took all his opponents seriously.

I started playing the original titlebout board game some years back, and I wore those poor cards out, and had a ball using my imagination, hearing the roaring crowd as their favorite fighter was making his way up to the ring apron. Hearing the announcer call out each fighters name, and who was judging. I was glad to see it simulated by OOTP, since I no longer have the board game. I have always been a huge boxing junkie, I haven't been around as long as some of the folks here on the boards, but I have studied quite a few fights in my time, and have a nice video collection of old fights, starting from Corbett and Fitzsimmons, up to around the early nineteen ninties.
Some of my fondest memories was when I and my father would sit and watch boxing on friday nights. His favorite boxer was Ray Leonard. What a slick fighter he was, and defiantly earned the nickname "sugar". I had always liked watching Ray "boom boom" Mancini, and Vinny Pazienza. Both were very colorful, and what they lacked in the talent department they made up with true grit and determination.

[Jersey-Jim]

I read these posts (which, by the way, I enjoy very much) and find or sense a common thread running through them. It's more noticeable with the "ancients," of course, but that also makes sense.

Sports, over the years, have become much like the food we find ourselves eating. Artificial. To an older person, the comparison is all the more striking. The other day I ate a small chocolate donut. Well, it was chocolate flavored. The actual cocoa content was probably about 1%. It took me two to three tries to pronounce the ingredients and "flavorings" listed on the wrapper.

The products we buy in the store - throw-away products. Shoe repair shops are just about obsolete. The shoes don't long enough to warrant new heels. Maybe if you have a really good pair of boots, but that's about it.

New furniture doesn't last.
New cars have pieces snapping off or breaking off here and there.

Poor workmanship has become the norm.

Sports have always been big business. But today, we're looking at 10% sport, 90% business and entertainment. That's why so many of my friend's follow college football and college sports. That's why we used to like the Olympics so much in the old days. Because the "spirit of the sport" was still in tact.

Take the "sport" out of the sport, and what you have is more of what we see just about everywhere else. Artificialness.

When sports relied upon "live gates" in order to profit, the event was more of a "peoples event."

Now, sporting events are corporate events. Sponsors have replaced the fans as the main source of revenue. TV rights, promotional rights, heck, you could have a boxing telecast from an empty room and still cash in.

Fans no longer "own the game." Big Corporations do.

Yeah, I know I'm sounding like I'm complaining. I guess I am, sort of. The thing is, if the Hershey bar I ate yesterday were the first chocolate bar I'd eaten in my life, I would think it was perfectly normal that the chocolate tasted sort of like - "chocolate wax."

I wouldn't have anything else to compare it to or against.

To balance the scale a bit, I will say, technology today is absolutely amazing. Medicine, communication, transportation, kung-fu action sequences, they've all come a long, long way.

It's just that a lot of good things have fallen by the wayside along the way, too.

[bdennis2]

Jim you are very,very right that is why the only sport event's that i have paid to
see the last 5 yrs have been boy's high school baseball,Basketball and football,girls high school scocer and basketball and local college baseball and basketball noway will i pay to go see a bunch of spoiled pro. players that get 10 million and complain because they didn't get 15 million but go eat at a place where people get 6 dollars and hour and complain about the food.

[bdennis2]

I want to make it clear that all pro players are not like that.Mostly your high paid
players.The rest are just trying to do what they love.

[stevebydac]

Originally Posted by Jersey-Jim

Sports have always been big business. But today, we're looking at 10% sport, 90% business and entertainment.

Now, sporting events are corporate events. Sponsors have replaced the fans as the main source of revenue. TV rights, promotional rights, heck, you could have a boxing telecast from an empty room and still cash in.

Fans no longer "own the game." Big Corporations do.

It's just that a lot of good things have fallen by the wayside along the way, too.

You explain perfectly why the closing of Yankee Stadium last week was such a sin. Perhaps the most iconic stadium in North America, home to the world's most famous baseball team. They are building a $1.3 billion park next door that will be priced out of most fans' range, stuffed with corporate boxes full of leather couches and TV sets so that the ticketholders won't have to be bothered with cheering for or even watching the game. Imagine how great Yankee Stadium would be if they took even half of that $1.3 Billion and renovated it in the manner the Red Sox are continually doing with Boston's Fenway Park. But no, not enough luxury boxes - sorry little people -- gotta build a new corporate-friendly park. Screw history, screw being able to sit in the seats where people watched Ruth, Berra, DiMaggio, Mantle, Gehrig.

Back to TB, I too am a "reader" and the game often helps me go to sleep at night as I imagine my own little preview show in my head of the upcoming championship bouts in my universe. Same thing when I am struggling through a long run and need something to take my mind off the pain.

Great game, but yes, better graphics would bring in more casual fans.

[IceTea]

Originally Posted by Jersey-Jim

I read these posts (which, by the way, I enjoy very much) and find or sense a common thread running through them. It's more noticeable with the "ancients," of course, but that also makes sense.

Sports, over the years, have become much like the food we find ourselves eating. Artificial. To an older person, the comparison is all the more striking. The other day I ate a small chocolate donut. Well, it was chocolate flavored. The actual cocoa content was probably about 1%. It took me two to three tries to pronounce the ingrediants and "flavorings" listed on the wrapper.

The products we buy in the store - throw-away products. Shoe repair shops are just about obselete. The shoes don't long enough to warrant new heels. Maybe if you have a really good pair of boots, but that's about it.

New furniture doesn't last.
New cars have pieces snapping off or breaking off here and there.

Poor workmanship has become the norm.

Sports have always been big business. But today, we're looking at 10% sport, 90% business and entertainment. That's why so many of my friend's follow college football and college sports. That's why we used to like the Olympics so much in the old days. Because the "spirit of the sport" was still in tact.

Take the "sport" out of the sport, and what do you have is more of what we see just about everywhere else. Artificialness.

When sports relied upon "live gates" in order to profit, the event was more of a "peoples event."

Now, sporting events are corporate events. Sponsors have replaced the fans as the main source of revenue. TV rights, promotional rights, heck, you could have a boxing telecast from an empty room and still cash in.

Fans no longer "own the game." Big Corporations do.

Yeah, I know I'm sounding like I'm complaining. I guess I am, sort of. The thing is, if the Hersey bar I ate yesterday were the first chocolate bar I'd eaten in my life, I would think it was perfectly normal that the chocolate tasted sort of like chocolate wax.

I wouldn't have had anything else to compare it to or against.

To balance the scale a bit, I will say, technology today is absolutely amazing. Medicine, communication, transportation, kung-fu action sequences, they've all come a long, long way.

It's just that a lot of good things have fallen by the wayside along the way, too.

* Great post!

Football isn't football any longer. It is a severely over coached game that allows players to celebrate after making a tackle when the ball carrier gained 6 yards. They live in the moment and think of themselves as individuals and not members of the team. When they go to 18 games in the near future, and suck the remaining revenue from the fans, they will lose me. I refuse to purchase a throwback jersey which is the only reason they wear them. They could care less about the players that played 20+ years ago, but they love the revenue that a throwback Dallas jersey brings in. Blah, blah, blah.........

You can still find quality shoes but they aren't in retail stores. I like Doc Matens but I discovered that they are made in China now so? LL Bean has some nice quality.



:r ant:

[JohntheHammerHeyes]

Without wishing to be disrespectful to anyone, I do wonder what the thinking was behind the decision of OOTP to buy TBCB when is must have been at least suspected that there wouldn't be enough time to devote to developing/patching it. As it is the game seems to be withering on the vine imho.

[bear]

Originally Posted by JohntheHammerHeyes

Without wishing to be disrespectful to anyone, I do wonder what the thinking was behind the decision of OOTP to buy TBCB when is must have been at least suspected that there wouldn't be enough time to devote to developing/patching it. As it is the game seems to be withering on the vine imho.

Guys
Just a reminder here. OOTP does not own TBCB. Andreas bought TBCB from the Trunzo's. Andreas works for OOTP and OOTP hosts these forums, but OOTP doesn't own TBCB. As far as TBCB goes, Andreas is the boss.

[Antonin]

Originally Posted by stevebydac

You explain perfectly why the closing of Yankee Stadium last week was such a sin. Perhaps the most iconic stadium in North America, home to the world's most famous baseball team. They are building a $1.3 billion park next door that will be priced out of most fans' range, stuffed with corporate boxes full of leather couches and TV sets so that the ticketholders won't have to be bothered with cheering for or even watching the game...

I love the Miller High Life TV commercial where the guy and his crew go into the baseball stadium luxury box, and he asks the assembled power-lunching yuppies:

"Can anybody tell me what inning it is?"

And of course they don't know...

But getting back to Danny's post, great words, Danny. Thank you for them.

I was born in 1957 and therefore grew up during the Ali era. When I was a child we used to go up to Buffalo, NY, for Thanksgiving and other holidays. After dinner the men would go to the living room and there was much good conversation about football, baseball and...the fights. My great-grandfather and great uncle in particular were great tellers of stories, and they had fond memories of the greats: Johnson, Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, etc etc.

I agree that perhaps a text-based game will not appeal to many people of the younger generation. Times change and society's perception of entertainment changes. That's unfortunate.

For me, perhaps because of the time I grew up in, it is natural to use my imagination to fill in the gaps. That is how we played when we were kids. A stick could become a sword, or a rifle. A towel could become a cape. An empty lot could become Cannae, or a beach could become North Africa and you could become Erwin Rommel.

No amount of graphics can give me what my imagination can and does, which is why I love text-based games.

I "watch" my TBCB fighters enter the ring, I see the ref stepping in to stop a fight when one guy is taking a beating. When I look at a fight history for one of my favorite fighters I can even "remember" certain fights. Sometimes, punch count numbers in the game actually make me wince. "This guy should maybe find another way to make a living."

The way I see it, TBCB doesn't really need *major* graphics changes. I don't want it to have an arcade look. I consider it to be a thinking man's boxing sim and I hope it will remain so.

[Mad Bomber]

Excellent post. I couldn't agree more.