Digital Diamond Baseball V8

After going through a myriad of PC baseball-sim games, dating back to the start, I finally stumbled across DDBB and feel as if I have hit the "mother lode." All of the things for which the other games left me longing, are available in DDBB. Foremost among these is (1) the free availability of seasons, the lack of which always irked me about the other sims , with their charge for individual seasons. And (2) the ability to create your own leagues easily. In DDBB, it can be done quickly and easily. I had been trying to set-up my own league in one of the other games available, and it was a nightmare, even after back-and-forth emails with the developer. With DDBB, I have played independent league seasons, local collegiate seasons, and other seasons that have been put together with a variety of qualifications. The accuracy of DDBB's sim stats can easily be verified. Stats in replayed sim leagues usually have results closely aligned with the actual stats that were produced. You may have the outliers (Ted Williams hitting .260 for a season while Ron Hunt hits .342), but they balance one another and reflect what actually happens in each year of MLB play. There are some drawbacks, per se, to the game, but I have no doubt they will be addressed in the future, based on the advances I have seen over the last four updates. The play-by-play results can, over a long time of playing, seem monotonous at times. If this is really a problem, users can easily edit the PBP file and add their own calls. There is also a need for more split variations on the statistics, but I realize this is a personal wish that may not be widely shared. I am a stats freak, and when I look at a player's stats, I want to be able to see how they did at home and in each individual park on the road; how they did in day vs. night games; and etc. The developer of DDBB is named Mark and is always responsive to users' input. The advances in each version of the game have largely been the results of user input. DDBB maintains a very active forum, and Mark is always quick to respond to users' input, whether it be criticism, suggestions, or a request for support. It sounds as if I am a "DDBB Groupie," and I will not refute the accusation. Be aware, though, that it has come from several years of experience playing the game, and seeing the advances that have been made in it. DDBB is and has been a "work in progress" that has been steadily advancing. In sum, DDBB has two things that had always left me dissatisfied with other PC baseball -sims: The free availability of any season you can imagine, and the ability to easily put together any season you may want. For the low purchase price, DDBB is an exceptional value. PS - This is being added the day after the review was written. I realized I had forgotten one of the features I like best: You can play the current season virtually in real-time by importing the latest stats for the season from Baseball-reference.com. DDBB then imports the stats and while it does, updates which players are active/inactive for the period covered by the stats update. It used to be very agonizing with other PC sims when you had to wait until a year later for the previous season to be available. That is no longer the case, and another difference, which has been noted before, is that there is no added cost for this in DDBB, as other games usually charge for the season when it is finally available.

Beautiful, elegant, and transparent system that drives a highly-realistic in-game engine. This is not a GM Simulator. It is a baseball simulator. If you like having a tabletop feel with (just enough) PC features (such as incredibly strong league, team, and player creation tools) then try this out. It’s my new Strat-o-Matic! In fact, it’s the way that Strat should have been done in the first place. Again, it’s not an Out of the Park GM-style game (which is over-rated by the way, with poor trade logic**) - but does have a superior in-game engine that actually allows for you to see WHY things work as they do. **I’d rather have simple trade logic that works than complex trade logic that leads to broken games.

incredibly easy. downloaded 1965 season. added player photos and logos. ballparks were already there. up and playing in about 15 minutes. changed the dice rolls to '2' and was off and running. wasn't sure of the AP lineups so i checked retrosheet and they are right on. excellent game. tigers and A's. detroit won....moving on to next game. well worth the cost.

You can come up with various leagues matching different eras. It's kinda like Stratomatic where there's no fancy graphics and it's dice based. It's not intuitive but the developer responds on the forums. The forums aren't very lively as noone has posted in months but if you had a problem, the developer would respond. It takes a minute to figure out how to set things up but I got so tired of OOTP's ridiculous 3-D animations. I just wanted a straight sim and this game gives that to you. I think my biggest beef with the game is the way pitchers are handled. It's based on how many batters he faces, instead of pitch count. Like if he can only face 23 batters per game and he hits that mark in the 5th inning...welp, then his quality starts going downhill no matter how many pitches he's thrown. Pitch count needs to replace that system and have a way to see how your pitcher is doing and stead of OK and TIRED as the only reference.

Good things? Graphics are vastly improved though a little cluttered. P-B-P finally left the 1940s and are a little more to the point. I almost Forgot and I apologize. This gane without a doubt has the best TRANSACTION Database out here. You know exactly who is on your roster and on what day. If you do find a mistake Don't hesitate to let Support know and they will fix it Immediately. The Transaction database is far and away even better than Baseball-Reference it cannot be beat. I even use it for other games that I play. Middle of the road? Still need to work on Stat Package. Playing screen is just a little too busy for me but I can always remove items which is a good thing POOR: Customer service . Just so people know how much I like it? I have over 50 seasons either downloaded or I built myself using their V6 Instructions which work very well. I Highly Recommend this Game It still has a long way to go with their Stat Package but they're getting there I'm positive of that

Would definitely recommend. Good text-based simulation. Regular upgrades - game is progressing nicely and is getting to be one of the better computer baseball games out there. Has a HUGE play-by-play file which is totally editable if you want to change any of it. Also, there are tons of seasons available at the ridiculously low price of "FREE"! Or, if you want, you can create your own season. One thing that does need to be added is more statistical detail - e.g. games played in the field by position, pinch hit appearances. I expect that will all be there at some point. Game itself is also very reasonably priced.

Edit - I found my preferred baseball and have played many seasons as a GM and others as a manager. Baseball Mogul 2019 is what I have been playing. My rankings in baseball would be 1. Baseball Mogul of any year 2. Digital Diamond Baseball of any year and then3. OOTP of any year. However, all sports have become more interested in playing politics than entertaining. I stopped watching several years ago (despite formerly playing many sports and being an umpire) and now will not be making any further purchases of sports games based on real players. Fictional only with no license fees paid to real teams. I'll never play much simply because it's too complicated and has no written instructions as far as I can tell anywhere. It appears to be watch a bunch of old videos that are hard to see what is being done and use no speech. It looks like many hours to learn followed by many hours spent on constantly manually updating. I'll keep looking for a decent manager mode for baseball. For GM it looks like OOTP is the best so far which is great if you never manage and ignore the visual defects. DDB doesn't have to worry about visual defects as it really has no visuals. For those who have or have had OOTP and gotten rid of it be sure to do a search for folders on your computer for OOTP and delete all of them. It's amazing how much space that game can waste over the years. No other baseball has that problem. OOTP still has a problem in their hockey but nothing like what I found in baseball.

This is a very nice game. Quick to play, and, requires some tactical thinking. I think over time it will become a very strong franchise.

There are a lot of seasons for free, so it's a great value, and the results are pretty true to actual outcomes. It's been an excellent value and I've enjoyed it!

I can, highly, recommend this game on many levels. First, the fact you can run this on a low end pc plus it is 'drm' free. You don't need Steam running. This game offers every season for free & statistically is very accurate. Better than some other, more pricey, sims. This game offers all the 'bells & whistles' one would expect form a detailed sports sim & the UI functions quite well when one gets used to it. One can also play 'one off' games vs humans, (yes, there is mp) unlike another popular sim. Per the 'fielding stats' issue. Remember...baseball is, primarily, a match-up of batters vs pitchers. All the statistics generated per this confrontation have already had the fielding (to include the ballparks) factored in. Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to including fielding data as long as it is done within the confines of realism to the batter & pitcher results. The great Ozzie Smith had tremendous range & received as many errors as an average SS because of it. But he sure was fun to watch. :)