Out of the Park Baseball 27 officially launched on March 13, and I had the chance to talk with Com2uS USA Director of Business Development Richard Grisham a few days before the release.
Richard talked about the goals for this new title, what led to the changes implemented this year, how the game is more in-depth than ever, and the future of the franchise, among many other things.
Without further ado, let's dive into the interview. I hope you guys enjoy it.
How would you describe OOTP 27?
Richard: Without trying to sound bombastic, OOTP 27 is the best version ever made of what is regarded by fans around the world as a really accurate and realistic sports strategy game. I realize that’s a bold statement, but I work with the development team every single day of every single week of every single year, and they are always laser-focused on improving anything and everything with our game. Plus, I know now, based on the beta and the feedback that we’ve gotten, that OOTP 27 is getting rave reviews. Best of all, all of our fans now get to see that for themselves starting today!
What are OOTP's 27 biggest goals?
Richard: Our biggest goal is always to delight our fans because when that happens, everything else takes care of itself. Every version of OOTP is different; we have some fans who play every single year, some fans who come and go, and some fans who go years between versions. We think that everyone who plays Out of the Park 27 will agree that it’s the best version yet and, more importantly, that it’s just a whole lot of fun.
How hard is OOTP 27 for someone who has never played a baseball simulation game before?
Richard: Well, if you’ve never played a baseball simulation game before, which is a very common thing by the way, we hope that OOTP 27 is easy to get into. I say that unironically because trust me, I know how big and in-depth OOTP is and how intimidating it can be; with that said, we have taken steps over the last few years to create a lot of different ways to play the game.
Let’s face it, running a baseball franchise with a major league club and multiple minor league clubs takes a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. But there are many different ways to experience that, including a mode called Drive for the Pennant, which is very guided, and we just bring you to a bunch of different interesting points all along the way of a season, so you get to experience various things, like making a trade or a key bullpen decision.
We also have a lot of tutorials that really focus on specific items, and we also have our real secret weapon, our streaming community. We have dozens of people who stream OOTP every day, and they play all the different parts of the game, and they go in depth, and then it can be a lot of fun for every kind of player, especially a newcomer.
Were there steps taken to make the game more new-player-friendly?
Richard: Yes, we always try to do our best for new players, whether that is adding tutorials or tightening up Drive for the Pennant or making it easier to play alternative modes like historical tournaments or fictional leagues. These are all things that new players can explore.
What are some tips you would give new players?
Richard: The best thing about OOTP is its community. They know the game inside and out and love to bring new people in! Even better, the community is in a bunch of different places, so, depending upon how you like to live on the internet these days, it’s all there for you. For example, we have a lot of live streamers; if you go on Twitch, you’re very likely to find Out of the Park Baseball being streamed. YouTube is another great place for incredible OOTP content.
Then you have our forums, which have been around for over two decades, and have some of the most dedicated OOTP fans in the world hanging around there. You also have our Discord, which is very active and has a lot of people talking Out of the Park in there every day, including a lot of people helping other people.
How important is the addition of the fully licensed World Baseball Classic™ to Franchise Mode?
Richard: Well, considering it was a big project I worked on for years, I think it’s incredibly important (laughs). All kidding aside, the World Baseball Classic™ has absolutely exploded in popularity, and it’s chock full of real MLB players and played in MLB parks. We really feel strongly that it is crucial if you’re gonna be an authentic baseball game maker, the World Baseball Classic™ better be in there.
A plethora of new advanced stats tracking metrics were added. How do they impact the game, and do they make it more immersive?
Richard: Oh, they impact it in a big way, just like all of these advanced statistics have impacted the real world of baseball in a big way. You know, people of a certain age or mindset might not be all that into a lot of these new statistics, and that’s fine, but there is an entire wave of baseball people who really value what they mean and what they bring.
So we’re really proud that we’ve been able to add so many of them to the game this year; I definitely think they make it even more immersive simply because it just continues to speak the language of baseball in a way that very few experiences can and do.
Dynamic weather, updated player models, and new animations are just some of the upgrades to the graphics and 3D game model. How long have they been in the work?
Richard: You know, it’s funny; Out of the Park Baseball has been around for 27 years, but for the vast majority of its existence, there was no 3D animation of the games as they were played. It really was only a few years ago that watching a game of OOTP looked like real baseball, with players swinging, throwing, running, and jumping. Up until then, there was very flat static animation, and so we’re still (relatively speaking) in the early days of 3D gameplay and animations.
One of our senior developers is an absolute genius at this, so we are always updating, upgrading, fixing, and improving our animations and our 3D because it’s still in its relative infancy. So in some ways, these have been worked on for years, and we are also continuing to every single day, week and month add more 3D animations and innovations to the game. It’ll never be completed, and that’s actually very exciting.
Do these changes to the 3D in-game experience make matches more realistic and immersive? If so, why?
Richard: The answer is yes because it’s just really a lot of fun to watch the games being played in real time. If you go back in time 5-10 years and you’re managing a game of OOTP, it didn’t look anything like it does now. It didn’t have beautiful 3D stadiums with animated crowds. It didn’t have player models that would throw and run, and jump. It didn’t have any of that.
The stadiums were flat, the field was flat, for a long time. There was no animation at all; then, for a few years, we had little tiny chess pawns that would shuffle around the field and things like that. Now that was a situation of “you didn’t miss what you didn’t know”. At the time, OOTP was known almost completely just for being this incredible stats engine/video game fantasy combo for big-time baseball fans.
So it was great. But! If you look at the games now, it’s just so much more visually appealing these games jump out at you in a different way and so to me, if it’s really fun to watch the action happen, and not only set your lineups and build your rotations and make your trades and draft your players and sign your free agents all of that other stuff, then that just makes it even more appealing to keep on playing.
New difficulty settings have been added in OOTP 27. What are some of the things players can expect from it?
Richard: These are really for the long-time hardcore fans. The people who have been playing with us the longest really will appreciate these new difficulty settings the most. These really take the level of cleverness and skill that you’ll need to build a competitive championship franchise to a new level that we haven’t had before. One of the great things about OOTP is that you can make it as easy or as hard as you want.
If you just wanna say “you know what I’m an owner and I’m showing up with $70 billion and I wanna spend it all and put the game on easy mode and just go build a super team”, if you wanna do something like that, we will let you, but you also can really challenge yourself and make it as close to what it would be as if in the real world, all of a sudden you found yourselves in the chair of a real baseball General Manager of a Major League team.
And just like any game, if you’ve played OOTP for a long time, you have probably come up with some strategies that will work, maybe not always, but some things that you’ve come up with against the computer’s AI that that you’ve just gotten comfortable with and gotten good at doing, these new difficulty settings will definitely make you have to come up with some new approaches, and that’s what’s exciting. Like I said, especially for our longtime fans, this is gonna be a real treat!
Does the experience feel significantly harder with the new difficulty settings?
Richard: Well, it’s funny. I love OOTP, but I also know that I am not equipped to be the General Manager of a Major League Baseball franchise, so I find the game difficult just on the regular settings. So I personally can’t tell you directly if it makes it feel significantly harder. But I know our community is gonna have lots of thoughts on it, and I’m pretty confident that they will say yes.
What are the main challenges players will face in the new difficulty settings?
Richard: There’s a great Road to Release video with our senior developer, Will Beh, who goes into detail about this, so I think it’s best to point people to that video, but I’ll just say that it’s about the computer being smarter and savvier than it’s been in the past. We spent a lot of time on this, and so that’s why we’re confident that our fans will agree!
For a new player, when would be the right time to jump into these new difficulty settings? Is it a trial by fire you suggest the most daring newcomers to attempt?
Richard: I would say new players can let these be for a little bit because they are purposely much more difficult than the standard setting, but that’s OK. There’s lots of stuff for new players to play well before they would be up to the challenge of playing OOTP on a really hard mode.
There were improvements made to the UI that make it more intuitive and streamlined. What do these improvements entail, and will players be able to notice them from the get-go?
Richard: Similar to the difficulty settings, there’s a Road to Release video where Will goes through a lot of this, so I’ll point you to that as well, not to answer the question, but just because it’s described and illustrated in such detail. The bottom line is we are always listening to our fans, and we are always trying to make sure that we have real estate on the screen as optimized as possible.
We know there’s a lot of information in the game, and we do our absolute best to make it all presentable and findable and actionable, but as you can imagine, with so much information and so much already built that we leverage each year, there’s only so much you can do. Plus, a lot of fans don’t like it when you change things up on them. We also have to be wary that any change that we make to the user experience really needs to definitely, positively be for the best, and that can lead to some spirited discussions.
Do these UI changes come from community feedback, or was it something that was already in the plans? Or perhaps both?
Richard: Everything comes from the community. I mean, that doesn’t mean the development team doesn’t come up with ideas, and we talk about them and orient them and prioritize them, of course we do. However, I can’t think of something that is in Out of the Park Baseball that didn’t start with the community, and it was like that before I got here, and I’ve been here 10 years.
One of the reasons I wanted to work at Out of the Park was that, at the time, it was the best product of its kind on the market. I believe today that it’s still the best of its kind, and one of the reasons that it is the best product on the market is because so much of it is community driven, and the community sees it. They talk about things, they tell us things, and then quite often those things show up in the game, and it's a virtuous cycle, and it’s one of the reasons that our game is successful.
What are some of the biggest changes coming to the Perfect Team mode in OOTP 27?
Richard: There are a lot! Personally, the thing that I’m most excited for is the new challenge mode tournaments. I can set up a very small two or four-team tournament for bragging rights against my friends in Perfect Team. That is going to be a whole lot of fun! I also love the inclusion of fun artifacts from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
That’s something that we’ve never been able to do before in Perfect Team. But as you can see from these Road to Release Perfect Team videos here, here, and here, there is a whole lot of new stuff coming down the line this year that our fans are really excited about.
The partnership with The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has been a success since its inception, and if it isn’t one, it’s on the way to becoming a staple of the franchise. What can players expect from the partnership this year?
Richard: I absolutely love the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum. Not only the actual place, but also the people who work there. They are incredibly great partners, and you can expect more artifacts, more Hall of Fame players, more Hall of Fame Plaques, and really amazing-looking Hall of Fame cards in Perfect Team this year.
I’m so proud to be partnered with such an iconic institution, and so every year we are like kids in a candy store with what we get to do with the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum.
Is OOTP 27 the most authentic and immersive baseball simulation game ever?
Richard: I’m pretty sure you will not be surprised that my answer is yes.
Is there anything you want to say to the OOTP fans?
Richard: Out of the Park Baseball fans are the best fans in the world. I say that all the time because it is true. The community that has built up around this game for the past 27 years is by far the most welcoming to new fans, most knowledgeable about the game, and truest to themselves. It’s an honor to be a part of making this game, and it's a privilege that we get to deliver this every year to our fans.
I want to thank Richard for his time and the insightful answers.
I hope you enjoyed reading the interview. If you want to stay up to date with everything Out of the Park Baseball 27, stay with us at RealSport101.com.