Strat-O-Matic: Спорттық симуляциялар ойындарының тарихы

Sports simulation game company

Strat O Matic is a game company based in Glen Head, New York, that develops and publishes sports simulation games. It produces tabletop baseball, American football, basketball, and ice hockey simulations, as well as personal computer adaptations of each, but it is primarily known for its baseball game.

Strat O Matic began as a company in 1961, when Hal Richman, a Bucknell University mathematics student, began selling an early version of his baseball tabletop game out of his basement, buying advertising space in Sports Illustrated to aid sales. Richman lost money until 1963, when his decision to release a game containing one card for each player in Major League Baseball resulted in greatly increased sales. Richman later released a football game in 1968, an "advanced" baseball game in 1972, a basketball game in 1973, and a hockey game in 1978. Strat O Matic's statistical research and game development methods are implemented with the intent of replicating athletes' abilities as accurately as possible, giving the gamer the feel of making managerial decisions. In February 2011, Strat O Matic celebrated its 50th anniversary with an opening day event at the Community Church of New York. This was a change from the normal opening day festivities of fans lining up outside the company's headquarters in Glen Head to pick up their new baseball products. At this event, over 500 people attended and heard from panelists including Doug Glanville, Rick Peterson and STATS, Inc. founder John Dewan. In March 2011, Richman was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

In a Strat O Matic game, each athlete is represented by a player card, on which are printed various ratings and result tables for dice rolls. A player, who may play solitaire or against another player, is in charge of making strategic and personnel decisions for their team, while determining the results of in game decisions by cross referencing dice rolls with a system of printed charts and tables. The basic scheme may be understood in connection with the adjoining images, representing the baseball game. One die selects which column is used on either the batter or the pitcher card, while the other two dice specify the outcome within the column. The results on the player cards are determined by a combination of the respective athlete's real life statistics for the previous year and (mostly in the case of the baseball game) independent research of news articles and scouting reports. All Strat O Matic games offer a "basic", "advanced", and "super advanced" version; the more advanced versions give more strategic options to players while taking into account additional nuances of an athlete's abilities (e. g., in baseball, differences in hitting vs. left handed or right handed pitchers). The computer adaptations essentially rely on the same algorithms as the tabletop games, but they have the additional advantages of faster play and statistics compilation. When the new Strat O Matic baseball cards are released each year in late January or early February an event that hundreds of players commemorate by showing up in the cold at the company's headquarters—controversy soon follows over the deservedness of such statistics. One such instance occurred in January 2008 when David Alan Tieche filibustered outside of the Glen Head headquarters for 42 hours in protest over Alex Rodriguez's card rankings being inflated due to steroid use. Additionally, there also is an Internet version of the Strat O Matic Baseball game. This was formerly hosted by The Sporting News, and is now hosted by the Strat O Matic Company.