Operation Sports is proud to present our interview with Chris Gill, Producer of MLB 2004.

GAMEPLAY
Operation Sports: Tell us a bit about the 12 different modes of play. What are they and maybe pick 1 or 2 of your favorites and explain them in detail.

Chris Gill:
Exhibition
Season

• player 1 season
• player 2 season
• Career Mode
• Franchise Mode
• Manager Mode

All Star Game
Spring Training
Playoffs
World Series
Home Run Derby

Career Mode: Two Options
Option One: In career Mode you have the ability to play up to 10 seasons following your favorite teams and players to see how they fare in the majors throughout a whole career. You will be able to view off season transactions after each season. Contracts will expire; players will become free agents, off season trades by you and the CPU, retirements and inductees in to the 989 Hall of Greats. You will be put in the position of General Manager and you will have to make serious team decisions such as releasing, trading, acquiring free agents, and promoting potential superstars from your farm system (there are superstars to be found). At the end of your career, you (if you created yourself and played through a whole career) or your favorite player/s have a chance to make it in to the 989 Hall of Greats.

Option Two: If you think you’re good enough to have a career in the big leagues, we give you the opportunity to 'create a player', place him on a team and lead him through a career. If you meet the stat criteria by the end of your career and get enough votes from the committee, you may just make the 989 Hall of Greats.

Spring Training:
In Spring Training you have the option to create a position player or a pitcher (or both), go through a spring training and try and break camp with the Big League Club. At the beginning you are given a certain amount of points to create your player (boosting up certain attributes). You will then be put through a 6 game spring training and you MUST meet the criteria, stat wise, to break camp with the team. It does not end here. In order to stay on the Big League Club you must continue to perform well or it's back to the minors.

Operation Sports: Will there be sliders to customize gameplay to our liking?

Chris Gill: In the options menu before you go in to the game is where we give you the ability to customize your game. Three different levels of game play. Rookie, Veteran and All-Star. In a two player game you can set the difficulty level different from your opponent. So if there is an advanced player playing a rookie you can handicap the game. Batting Cursor on or off. This is another way to handicap the game. User one may be a rookie so he will choose to have the batting cursor OFF. User two is a veteran so he can choose to default the cursor on. For user one, with the cursor off, it becomes a timing issue at the plate. For user two, the veteran, he will have to place the cursor on the ball to hit. With the batting cursor OFF, you can also influence the direction and incline of your hits by using the D-Pad. UP for fly balls and gappers, down for ground balls (good for Hit and Runs). Alternate Uniforms. You can choose to where default Home and Away uni's (White and Gray) or Alternate tops or one team alternate and one team default. Any combination. CPU Trading: for season mode. Innings 1-9. DH, on or off. Auto Replay, on or off. Auto Fielding, Auto Base Running, Fielding Aid, Time of Day, Errors, Injuries (season mode), Wind, Radar Gun, Distance Meter, Call text, Yibration, Catcher in View, Batting View (5 views), Fielding View (3 views), Sliders for Crowd Volume, Sound FX, Announcer Volume, Music Volume.

Operation Sports: Do injuries occur realistically?

Chris Gill: They do in the season simulator.

Operation Sports: What are the improvements in gameplay this year?

Chris Gill: Animations: Brand new robust Animation Engine. We have created an animation engine that supports seamless transitions from animation to animation (interpolation). You will see strings of 8 animations in a batter walk up that look seamless, like one animation. We captured every gameplay animation possible from all the fielding moves (all directions) to all the possible throwing moves and directions.

Standing throws, on the run throws, jump throws, barehands, dives, jumps, double play take outs, scoops and jump catches at first, running over the catcher, hit by pitches, HR trots, animated coaches and umpires, Personalized batting stances and pitchers. Personalized batter fluff moves (Ichiro, Garciapara). Also animated faces! A.I.: The AI was written from scratch. Situational AI. The game will know when it should bunt, hit and run, pick off, pitch out,Back picks from the catcher, pitch around a batter, Double play situation's. You will not see the AI attempting to throw out runners at first base on base hits like you do in other games. The CPU baserunning is intelligent as well. It will run straight through the bag at first on plays in the infield but if the ball happens to get through the infield the baserunner will take a turn at first. If he gets a base hit out of the box or hits a fly ball to the outfield the batter will make a wide turn at first looking to stretch a single in to a double.

Pitcher Batter interface: We give the user the ability to Guess Pitch Type and Location. Just as in real life if you are facing Randy Johnson, you'd better have a plan. There is no way you can look slider and hit his fast ball and vice-versa. So,If you are batting, you simply hold down the L2 button and with the Dpad select a location (there are more locations you have to choose from if the pitcher has an overall ranking on 95 and higher) and by using the icons, select a pitch type. You have the option of choosing one or the other or both. The consequences will vary depending on what you guess. If you just guess the pitch type, and you guess wrong, your cursor will decrease a certain percentage. If you guess correctly, your cursor size will increase. If you guess them both wrong your cursor size will decrease two fold and if you guess them both correctly your batting cursor will get a "lock on". If you get a lock on, What ever pitch the pitcher is throwing will go right down the middle of the plate and your cursor size and power will increase.

Hot Streaks: The game will track if you got at least two hits in a row and if you have you will be given a red flashing cursor. This indicates you are on a hot streak and we increase your cursor size a certain percentage. It will stay on until you get out two times in a row.

Pitcher Batter Matchup: The game will change your batting cursor size depending on how good the batter is and how good the pitcher is. Example: If Barry Bonds is hitting and Randy Johnson is pitching the cursor size will probably stay default. If Randy Johnson is facing J.T. Snow his batting cursor will decrease. If Barry Bonds is facing Steve Trachsel, his cursor size will increase.

Total Control Fielding: If you hold L2 on defense when the ball is put in play, you will control your fielder only up until he gets to his catch point. This is when the CPU takes over and selects the appropriate base to throw to. You can always override the throw by pressing any other base you want the ball to go to.

Bull Pen: We have a more robust bull pen this year. You will have the ability to warm up two pitchers at the same time. If you leave them in there too long they will get tired and loose stamina. If they are not in long enough, they will come in to the game cold and they will not have there best stuff. We also give the user the ability to perform a Double Switch.

GENERAL
Operation Sports: Can you tell us about the "Total Control Pitching/Hitting" in the game?

Chris Gill: We give the user the ability to Guess Pitch Type and Location. Just as in real life if you are facing Randy Johnson, you'd better have a plan. There is no way you can look slider and hit his fast ball and vice-versa. So, If you are batting, you simply hold down the L2 button and with the D-pad select a location (there are more locations you have to choose from if the pitcher has an overall ranking on 95 and higher) and by using the icons, select a pitch type. You have the option of choosing one or the other or both. The consequences will vary depending on what you guess. If you just guess the pitch type, and you guess wrong, your cursor will decrease a certain percentage. If you guess correctly, your cursor size will increase. If you guess them both wrong your cursor size will decrease two fold and if you guess them both correctly your batting cursor will get a "lock on". If you get a lock on, What ever pitch the pitcher is throwing will go right down the middle of the plate and your cursor size and power will increase.

Operation Sports: How deep will career, franchise modes be? What type of customizations will we have?

Chris Gill: Career I discussed up above. Franchise Mode: In franchise mode all the teams will start with the lower attributed players in the league on there default teams. The higher attributed players are all in the Free Agent Pool. Each team will be given a certain amount of points. With those points you will attempt to acquire the best players possible (with the best players costing the most). You will run out of points quickly so you must win some games in order to collect more points. You can also earn more points by reaching certain criteria. Win 5 games in a row, 10 games in a row, Triples, Doubles, HR's etc... You can also have points deducted from your pool if you loose 5 games in a row, 10 games in a row etc...

Operation Sports: Will there be multi player trades?

Chris Gill: Yes.

Operation Sports: In Career or franchise mode can you play less then 162 games, many games force you to play 162 games so you never get to use the franchise mode without simming 80% of your season.

Chris Gill: We give you three options. 14, 29, 162.

Operation Sports: Is fielding faster and easy to use?

Chris Gill: Yes. I feel this is one of the areas that separate us from the competition. Our game play is not necessarily fast it's a true simulation. I think you will find that unlike other baseball games the speed of the animations (fielders and runners) and the feel of the controls simulate a true representation of major League baseball. One of our main goals this year was to make sure we treated the consumer to a not only fun game but a true sim. Control wise, we wanted the user to feel totally connected to the game (where it feels like you are actually making the plays and hitting the ball) and have the buttons fully responsive.

Operation Sports: For the Franchise Mode, do you have a minor league system that we can use to call up/demote players?

Chris Gill: As part of our default rosters (in every mode) each team has three minor leaguers. You have the ability to put these prospects up on your big league club and move someone down if you choose. In Franchise Mode you are starting with the lowest ranked players in the league. So yes, they will be part of the default rosters.

GRAPHICS
Operation Sports: About how many stances and pitching styles do you have for this year's game?

Chris Gill: All of them.

Operation Sports: What are the graphical improvements you've made this year?

Chris Gill: The player model was completely re-done.

The stadiums have all been re-done and are a true representation of the actual ball parks (Plus 5 spring training stadiums)

New robust particle system. (fire works, water, fountains, animated stadium objects, dust clumps and clouds, real time wear and tear on the dirt.

Head Scans: For every player on the rosters. They look awesome and are a true representation of the players.

Transparent Catcher

New and improved lighting (model and stadium)

Shadows

MISCELLANEOUS
Operation Sports: Will there be online play?

Chris Gill: Next Revision.

Operation Sports: Will there be in game saves?

Chris Gill: We have User Records.

Operation Sports: Can you save a replay?

Chris Gill: No, but we do have a "play of the game", and you can look at it again in the post game menu.

Operation Sports: On average, how long will it take to play a game?

Chris Gill: In fast play mode you can play a 9 inning game in no time. With fast play turned off we still give the user the ability to X through most of the fluff stuff so you can play a 9 inning game in around 20 min. It all depends on how many runs your scoring etc, etc...

Operation Sports: Do you plan on having such rookies as Jose Contreras and Matsui in the game?

Chris Gill: Absolutely. Our rosters will be current up until about a week before we ship.

Operation Sports: Will you have a list of free agents in the game?

Chris Gill: In our Draft you will always have access to a free agent pool.