Friday (1 Jun) - Strat-o-Matic Baseball and Sporting News Online

Friday (1 Jun) - Strat-o-Matic Baseball and Sporting News Online

This weekend The Sporting News (TSN) plans to officially turn over it's online baseball simulation game to the Strat-o-Matic Game Company (SOM), the game that the TSN Online game was based on. TSN could no longer support the game (nor did they want to, apparently), despite a still solid base of fans paying $25 per team. On the other side of the transaction, SOM has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance as it attempts to hoist itself into the 21st century. SOM is taking over the online version of the game, with a lot of promises about all of the great new features being implemented. Knowing that the TSN employee who runs the game has already become an employee of SOM is a very good sign.

The TSN Online game was a passion of mine for several years, often played during breaks at work (with more than a few peeks during working hours as well). I haven't purchased a team in about three years. I'd like to support this new endeavor, and I am keen to try my hand at building a winning team against some really good competition once the new SOM site is up and operating.

The problem is that I currently have a tiff with SOM. It's a problem mostly of my own making, and perhaps I'm being unreasonable, but the issue galls me and I can't let it go.

First, remember that SOM baseball has been around since the 1960s. It started as a board game using paper cards to represent ball players. My 13 year old self fell in love with it in 1969. Eventually, SOM created a computer game version. The game and season data came on a 3.5" floppy disk. Remember those? The disk held a license key that authorized the use of that game/season. You HAD to have that disk whenever an installation was required. It was a pain. SOM was well behind in the computer revolution, so their next evolution was to shift to CD, while still using the license key approach, and while still putting only the annual game upgrade and a single season on that CD. Once they figured out it was cheaper to load ALL of their products on one CD, they jumped on that idea but still required the use of the floppy disk license key for installation. Players like me complained that we still had to hold on to all of our out-dated 3.5" disks and had to keep an old 3.5" drive around to use them. 

SOM thought about that, and their solution was to take the license key off the disk and put it on a piece of paper, which they now called a product code. For products already purchased, we were required to MAIL ALL OF OUR FLOPPY DISKS to SOM, and they in turn would send us the unique product codes for them, a slip of paper for each product. The funny thing is that when I wanted to buy a new product, it was right there on my desk on a single disk, but SOM had to MAIL me my product code - that slip of paper, which cost me $2.50 for what SOM called postage and handling. I still have all the correspondence associated with that somewhat monumental effort, but the end result was that I got rid of the disks. Those slips of paper with the long string of letters and numbers were now treasures. Sadly, I didn't always treat them that way and over the years and several moves a few got misplaced. I paid for those mistakes by having to buy those products again. In some situations SOM graciously provided me a replacement product code, but for the most part I kicked myself and then paid up.

After having to fork over those extra dollars a few times, I finally sat down at the computer and made a complete, thorough check of every product I'd bought from SOM, and matched it to the product code. That wasn't an insignificant effort. Each of my more than eighty team rosters and other products had to be installed on the computer and tested to see if the product code could be activated. If activation failed, the game would crash, and I'd have to restart it for the next test.

I made a stunning find. I had no product codes for the seasons 1996 through 2005. At first, I could not understand why. I know that I bought them, but I could not find the slips of paper verifying that I'd bought them, and without those codes I did not have access to those seasons. The reason I didn't have product codes for those years turned out to be a simple one. Those were the years when the annual computer game upgrade came on CD instead of floppy disk. I always bought the annual upgrade along with the latest season roster. For some reason, I stupidly didn't consider mailing in those CDs. I thought of them as "game disks." I never put two and two together; ie, that I couldn't get a product code for those season rosters unless I mailed in those CDs.

I never thought about that, though. Literally, for years it didn't matter. I had those seasons already installed with the key from the CDs and I could play those seasons - as long as I didn't have to re-install them. Which, of course, I eventually had to do when I finally replaced the drive they were on and tried to use those seasons.

Now, you may be thinking that I've thrown away those old CDs. Nope, I have every one. So it's only a matter of mailing in those CDs and getting product codes, right? No again. SOM's offer to replace floppy disks/CDs with a paper product code was in place for two years, but it expired in 2010.

I asked SOM if they could make an exception. After all, I've purchased more than a $1000 in SOM products over the years, and I'm a very, very loyal customer. In addition, they know that I purchased those teams. The answer was a curt No. The offer had expired. There were no exceptions.

With no product code I cannot use those seasons anymore. Buying them a second time would cost me over $200. It's certainly a lesson learned for me. But I'm stubborn, and SOM's intransigent position angers me. I'm working around those seasons right now. There are about a dozen other season rosters besides these contested ones that I want to buy in order to complete the set of more than a hundred years of baseball seasons.

Even more irritating is that SOM has finally entered the 21st century (ok, so maybe they've only dipped one toe into the water so far). Floppies and slips of paper are no longer needed. Product codes are maintained by SOM now, instead of by each individual, and installing a purchased product requires nothing more than access to the internet. SOM still won't authorize those lost seasons.

I refuse to buy another SOM product until SOM relents on this. That includes the new SOM Online game, which I dearly want to play. But I won't.

PS - SOM reported on Friday that TSN and SOM have delayed the release of SOM Online until "later in June."