I agree. I've mumbled for a while now that we are asked to treat this as a community when things are not going smoothly, but are treated as customers when real offers of help are made.

How much does it cost to get the data, host the site, etc? How much is development costing? What are the fixed costs? Maybe people can offer suggestions there, or even provide financial help. In theory this game has revenues of over $75,000 a year, based on leagues and owned teams. That's maybe $300,000 since the last real update. When we hear the resources aren't there to do this or that, in a community its not unreasonable to ask where the money is going in general.

Why not divulge in detail some of the statistical algorithms and open code some of the programming? Many have discussed the accuracy of the SIM, and how much weight is given to different parts in the modeling, and would be willing to run tests to see what could improved. Instead we get debates like the one below where people thought the RT data was being weighted as the season progressed - something that was claimed when the leagues first started, and then was expected to be rolled out at some point. In a community, there may be people who could figure out how to do this very easily, if we knew how the data arrived and what the final format was. There also may be folks here with plenty of experience in statistical modeling that could help the algorithm. Even something simple like writing new game descriptions to add some variety to the game play, why not get us involved?

Why not lay out the long term plans for the game? We've heard the goal is a better demo game now, a couple of years ago it was integrating sound into the game and live playoffs. What's on the table and what isn't? I appreciate the game needs to grow and get new customers, but the truth is, with the game stagnate this long its a lot harder to recommend to others. And maybe the attrition rate among current owners is high due to the lack of updates and improvements. In a community, why not survey and ask your customers what they like, don't like, and what should be focused on?

I want the game to thrive and improve. We need to accept that questions and criticism is not the same as complaints and attacks. I know many feel that posts like this are an attack on Mike - that's not the goal, the goal is to have honest dialog about where things are going here. It worries me that we have gotten to the point we thank Mike for setting a season start date.

Fred Cline