On the surface, being the general manager of a basketball team seems like a sweet gig. There are only 15 players on a roster, eight players that actually matter, and five on the floor at any given time. Find a superstar to lead your team, surround him with a few key role players and you should be set for the next decade.

Well, it is not quite that simple. A GM’s job has gotten tougher thanks to an influx of foreign talent, the NBA Draft and a salary-cap system that requires a Ph.D. to understand. On top of that, general managers also have to worry about their $100 million star player pulling a gun in the locker room or dogging it after cashing those first couple of paychecks.

With that in mind, Gary Gorski and the staff at Wolverine Studios want to give you a taste of what it is like to run a professional basketball team with Draft Day Sports Pro Basketball (DDSPB). The sequel is due out in the near future and expands on the success of the first version. DDSPB 2 makes you the GM of a basketball franchise. You are responsible for drafting, free agency, trades, lineups, team chemistry, the salary cap and any other tasks that come with building a success team.

New Features

There are several new features in DDSPB 2 to look forward to. Perhaps the biggest is the addition of playable foreign leagues. If you do not care for the NBA style of basketball, you can choose to run one of 72 European clubs, guiding your squad through dual-season play and interacting with American leagues. If you would rather just stick to NBA mode, the foreign-league option can be turned off.

The other major addition is the ability to expand the league with an expansion draft. Text simmers often like to create the most challenging environment possible. Well, it does not get more challenging than trying to build an expansion franchise into a perennial contender. If you start with a league model smaller than the current NBA, the game will automatically expand to current NBA cities at the appropriate time. There is also an option to take the current 30-team NBA and expand it to 32 teams.

Other new features include progressive injury healing, an improved financial model, restricted free agency, a simplified financial model for players that do not want to deal with the ins and outs of the current system and overall enhancements to game presentation and functionality. Gorski’s titles are also known for having exceptional graphics and interfaces for text sims. Judging from early screenshots, DDSPB 2 also appears to be easy on the eyes and simple to navigate.

"The theme of the game development was really to not only make the game more enjoyable for the die-hard hoops fans, but also to find ways to open up the game to casual fans as well," Gorski said.

Player Personalities

One aspect of basketball that all of Draft Day Sports’ titles attempts to replicate is player personalities. Player personalities in sports games, text sims or otherwise, can be a touchy subject. How can developers realistically attempt to simulate the many personality quirks, both positive and negative, of the modern-day athlete in a video game?

Does a player-personality option add to the game’s level of realism or increase the level of frustration? Gorski said that he has made the player-personality feature deeper in DDSPB 2, making the game deeper than just finding the highest-rated players. He also feels that the game’s player-personality feature works well because general managers are given opportunities to try and fix problems through in-game methods of communicating with players.

"Negative interactions can affect just the players involved or even spill over into bringing down the morale of the entire locker room if the problem goes unchanged," Gorski said. "It’s very much like real life in the aspect that not everyone can get along."

First-Access Beta Testing

The first version of DDSPB was released in 2005, and the sequel is currently in first-access beta testing. First-access beta testing allows people to purchase an early version of the game, play it and send bugs and game-enhancement ideas to the developers before the final version is released.

"The first-access beta process has been working out well," Gorski said. "It’s allowed us to get a much larger pool of beta testers than we normally would, and it allows all of the people who pre-ordered an opportunity to see the game ahead of release."

Gorski said the game will be released when all of the bugs discovered in testing have been addressed.

"I don’t anticipate it to be too much longer," he said.

To preorder and learn more about DDSPB 2, visit www.wolverinestudios.com.