With the help of our readers and SCEA, we had an opportunity to interview Eddy Cramm, Senior Designer of MLB '07: The Show. 

Operation Sports: Does the PS3 version also have Manage Only mode?

Eddy Cramm: Yes, Manage Only Mode, or as we affectionately call it, “MOM” will make the jump to the PS3. We can’t just forget about MOM.

Operation Sports: Have there been any improvements made to the pitcher fatigue/confidence/substitution engine?

Eddy Cramm: One of the key focus points this year in general was the overall balance of the game. We are fortunate that we are building on a pretty strong gameplay foundation, and because of it, it allows us to focus more on these balance and polish issues. The pitcher fatigue and confidence has been a very big focal point. Not just is the durability of starting pitchers, but in the difference between short relievers, long relievers and closers. Substitutions go hand in hand with the fatigue. As the fatigue becomes more accurate, so does the substitution logic.

As for confidence, one of our new features this year creates realism with confidence that hasn’t existed before in a baseball game. A pitcher’s confidence isn’t a blanket that covers all aspects of his game. It is possible that a pitcher loses confidence in his curveball and starts to rely on his fastball too much. That lack of confidence could be from him being unable to locate the pitch, getting the pitch hammered, or because he just isn’t throwing it enough to be comfortable with it. All of these aspects exist in our new Pitch Command System. Your confidence grows as you have success with a specific pitch.

This system not only rewards you for good pitching and penalizes you for poor performance, it also keeps you using all your pitches. Never again will you be able to go 8 innings without throwing that slider and then decide to break it out and paint the corner with it. Substitution logic is also tied to confidence. The A.I. will do a very accurate job of knowing when it is time to take a pitcher out that is getting lit up like a Christmas tree.

Operation Sports: Is there going to be any sort of dynamic lighting? Are the shadows going to move across the field as they do in real life as the game progresses?

Eddy Cramm: This is one of the features that will make its debut on the PS3. Dynamic lighting and self-shadowing are both on the plate for the first title.

Operation Sports: Will the sliders have more of an impact on the gameplay this year?

Eddy Cramm: Most definitely!  We’ve been getting a lot of requests to add more sliders to the options…and we did.  Now you’ll be able to tune the game even more to your liking with dozens of these.  We’ve broken down the sliders to include every aspect of the game like pitching, batting, fielding and base running, so now the game tuning is in the consumer’s hands.

Operation Sports: Will there be more "Hit Variety" for all difficulty levels this year?

Eddy Cramm: This is probably my favorite improvement to this year’s game. Although last year’s title played very well and got a lot of great feedback, I still felt that the game resulted in a lot of “hit it hard, or don’t hit it at all” game play. As a result of this, it felt like the only way a pitcher could feel like he has success is with the strike out. But what about the Maddux’s of the world? What about the ground ball pitchers? How do we represent THEIR effectiveness? 

This year that has all changed. We have improved ball reactions to more truly depict what would happen on the field. Now if you swing ahead of that change up on the outside edge, instead of missing, you will probably roll over the ball and bounce out weakly to the left side. Now that the system reacts better to the ball/bat impact, you can fight pitches off and try to work deep into the counts. But personally, my favorite thing is what it does for the pitcher. I can now feel that I beat a batter by making him my pitch. I can try to induce that ground ball for the double play. I can jam him. I can dominate a game without ever striking someone out.

Operation Sports: Will the 40 man rosters be used in spring training and in September?

Eddy Cramm: Unfortunately, this will not happen this year, but it’s definitely toward the top of our list for next year.

Operation Sports: What have you done to enhance offseason options? Specifically, does the amateur draft occur at the right time? Are draft picks forfeited and gained based on free agency? Could we ever see arbitration and other specifics that make baseball so unique?

Eddy Cramm: The off-season flow is largely the same as last year’s version.  We’ve improved the sign/resign logic, improved player interaction and vastly improved negotiation logic.  For the future, we are definitely looking to get the draft happening at the right time, arbitration, the Rule 5 draft, as well as continuing to improve the contract negotiation and options system.

Operation Sports: How has fielding been improved?

Eddy Cramm: Put simply, our biggest improvements made to fielding were in making the fielders less “super-human”. Last year, for the most part everything was clean, but maybe too clean. The look and feel of a diving stop to a throw from the knees was great, but it was pretty much always successful. In our game the great plays seemed a little too routine. So this year, we have done a lot to make these great plays seem great. You will see a lot more times where a great diving stop may get a piece of the ball, but trickle away. You may see a hard smash right at an infielder bounce off his chest. 

All of this is balanced based on the difficulty of the play, the reaction time and the ability of the fielder. You will see less highlight plays, but when you do see them, they will actually feel like you did something special now.

Other than that, we have made a lot of improvements to animations so that you seeing more appropriate catches. The best example I can think of is last year’s blind overhead catches in the outfield. You will now see players get to position, turn and make the catch or turn appropriately if they have to make the catch on the run. These may not be considered “huge” things, but it is just more polish that makes the game seem more complete.

Operation Sports: Will there be in game saves?

Eddy Cramm: No. We did not introduce in game saves. It was discussed but we felt there were better ways to improve the game and it didn’t make the final cut of additions. On average, our game takes just over 35 minutes to finish so it didn’t seem like there was a big need for this. Of course, if this is something that we continue to hear about from Operation Sports readers, we will definitely consider it again for the upcoming cycle.

Operation Sports: Is there a number system instead of a bar to adjust player attributes?

Eddy Cramm: Judging talent in "real" baseball isn’t an exact science, the same can be said about judging talent in The Show.  To put simply, no you wont see a number system in The Show.  This is a conscious choice to remove the “This guy’s a 97 overall, and that guy’s a 96 overall – so guy #1 is better syndrome”.  We want the user to look at all attributes, see how they compare in all areas.  Is your team looking for speed – maybe you need to take the 90 overall to get the good leadoff guy vs. the power hitter for your 3 and 4 spots.

Operation Sports: Does the user have more control on the manual setting when fielding? There were too many automatic animations for my taste.

Eddy Cramm: Absolutely….In sports games there is definitely a trade off for realistic animations and the feel of total control of your players.  We understand that the user really wants both.  So we’ve worked extremely hard to give it to them.  At some point the player must to go in to an animation to make a catch, so of course at that point you obviously don’t have control of your player.  But, up until that animation starts and immediately after the catch you will have complete control.  We feel we’ve created the best system possible were control and responsiveness were the focus (and that includes great looking animations!!!).

Operation Sports: Is there any collision detection, between players?

Eddy Cramm: We did not make the changes to include collision detection this year. It is something we are looking to do in the future but to do this correctly on interaction around the bases, it is going to dedicate a lot of time and with all the additions that we have made this year, along with the PS3 development, we will have to look at this again next year.

Operation Sports: Can we see the pitch history for all at bats?

Eddy Cramm: You can see pitch history for the last at bat of each player when he’s at the plate.  Last year we could only display the last 6 pitches – this year we show however many you’ve had in this or the last at bat.  Going forward, we are looking into adding pitch history for each batter for the entire game.

Operation Sports: Will struggling starting pitchers for the CPU, still be replaced by long relievers way too often? Anytime I'd face a team who's ace was like 8-10 with a 4.00 ERA...I'd never get to face him because a long reliever would always start in his place, sometimes even two or three days in a row.

Eddy Cramm: We worked a lot this year on Pitcher stamina and confidence and how they tie into the substitution logic.  While logic like this can always be improved It’s MUCH better than its ever been.  Our two key guys, Brian Ma and Jeff Ullman worked closely together to make sure that realistic pitch counts and strategic decisions are being made.  This is an area that will be changed, improved, and scrutinized every year.

Operation Sports: How has crowd atmosphere been changed?

Eddy Cramm: Capturing the complexities of how crowds behave is a difficult task, and one that we have spent a good amount of time and energy with. In addition to recording more audio source from MLB games, we have focused also on crowd behavior. We have added to the crowd excitement logic so it keeps track of changes in the game state, so it will gain excitement not only when the bases are loaded, increasing in the late innings, but also when the home team has just recently scored. Also, a high excitement crowd can have the rug pulled out from under them with one swing of the bat, and we have new mechanisms in place to do just that.

Crowd reactions have been refined and built upon to better capture how crowds behave.  For example, the crowd now reacts to the ball being hit off the bat, as a real crowd does, so there will be a reaction if the ball is perceived to be a base hit, even though the end result may turn out differently.

Lastly, crowd is a combination of large cheers of thousands of people but also smaller claps and reactions. These “micro” crowd reactions are layered in with the larger scale reactions for a more realistic atmosphere.

Operation Sports: Are there any improvements to free agency? It was way too easy to sign an entire team of superstars.

Eddy Cramm: As stated above, yes – quite a few changes have been made to free agency, contract logic, and budgets.

Operation Sports: Will we be able to control all 30+ teams in Season mode, so I can jump into any game at any time on the MLB schedule and play or watch that game?

Eddy Cramm: You can control all 30 teams (with Roster Control).  You can view the SportsCast of these games, but you cannot play them.

Operation Sports: Last year the umps called fair/foul balls and out/safe calls on the bases w/out error. Will the umps make "bad" calls from time to time in '07?

Eddy Cramm: The ump error/variability behind the plate is great and it would be good to see this in other (umpire) areas as well. Personally I think this is one of those things that balances really well in our game.  If a base umpire misses a call, it is an unforgivable sin, but when a home plate umpire misses a pitch, we forgive him and just say, “As long as he calls it both ways” or “he just has a wide strike zone’. As you know, we have those variable calls behind the plate and we have expanded on it with our new “Umpire personalities” which I will go more into in the Operation Sports Developer Diary. But what is LESS noticeable is that we do have those variable calls in the field as well. The reason that these are not as noticeable is because they just do not happen as often, and it isn’t graphically displayed like balls and strikes. There is a fine line between being variable and being buggy, so we want to make sure we stay on the right side of that line. But if you look for it, you will see it.

Operation Sports: What improvements have been made in the audio department?

Eddy Cramm: Well, two years ago, we scrapped our ENTIRE commentary database and started completely from scratch.  The first year had a few rough edges, but in last year’s game (MLB 06: The Show), things really came together…to the point where one reviewer on this very web site called it “the best commentary in the history of sports gaming.”  That’s a lot to live up to, but we’d anticipate that the new version of the game should make just as big a leap as it has in each of the last two years.

Of the last three years, this year required by FAR more recording hours than we’ve ever used in the past, so that should equate to the game basically overflowing with content.  Right now, we have space limitations on the PS2.  Last year’s disk was basically busting at the seams; so much so that I think if we tried to squeeze an extra line of Matt saying “ahem,” we wouldn’t have fit on the disk.  We were able to get some space back and jiggle a few things around so that there still is a lot of new commentary on the PS2, but I think the results are going to be even MORE striking on the PS3.

For play-by-play, things are just going to continue to get deeper and deeper and deeper.  We’ve always placed a high priority on making as many lines player-specific and team-specific as possible…even on innocuous lines like “a flip to the pitcher covering for the out.”  We’ll let Matt read that line 100 different times with 100 different pitchers using 100 different versions of the line.  We even have lines that are now DOUBLE player-specific AND pitch-specific all in one (“good sinker by Lowe as this is on the ground for Furcal at short”).  So, expect to hear much more of that.

Just as a barometer of our progress, take a look at something like a routine fly ball to right field.  Two years ago, we might’ve just played a simple line like, well,  “here’s a fly ball to right field.”  Then last year, we might’ve added the batter’s handedness to the equation to say, “he goes the other way with one as this is hit in the air out to right field.” Now this year, we might take into account the pitch type, the swing type and the count…”ahhh and he gets under the first pitch here as he lifts a curveball the other way out to right field.”  In and of itself, it’s not the kind of line that’s really gonna knock you over because it sounds so natural, but that’s really the point.  We want this to sound like you’re watching a game on TV.

And, due to popular demand, we’re planning to add a names database to the PS3 version of the game, and we’ve stocked it with around 3,000 last names. Poor Matt was dying reading page after page after page of “Aaron…Abbott…Abernathy…” but he worked his way through it.  We were even able to add a good chunk of names from Operation Sports readers who sent forms in, so that was pretty cool.

Operation Sports: Will we be able to edit all features regardless of whether the player is a real MLB player, fictitious (Bonds), or AAA/AA player, making it a true 100% roster editor?

Eddy Cramm: Just like last year, if the player is real, you will not be able to edit his basic info (Name, Age, etc).  If the player is generated or a replacement player you will be able to edit all info.

Operation Sports: In season mode, will we be able to easily manipulate trades/cuts/call ups that occur during the real season and be able to set lineups/rotations for all teams?

Eddy Cramm: It works largely like last year.  You have to edit all CPU teams through the CPU Roster Control menu.

Operation Sports: Will we be able to view player stats when preparing our lineups?

Eddy Cramm: You have always been able to view player stats.  We offer a limited set on many of  the screens, but you’ve *always* been able to hit the [circle] button and bring up the player card.

Operation Sports: Will pitchers throw fewer strikes resulting in more walks?

Eddy Cramm: As part of the improvements to the pitch command system, which also works for the A.I., you will see pitchers going deeper into counts, missing with command and as a result, giving up more walks that you did last year. This year, you can not assume that you are always going to see strikes. Those days are gone.

Operation Sports: Will arm strength be toned down so that we can feel a difference between Vlad and Juan Pierre?

Eddy Cramm: There have been two changes to throwing. We have adjusted strength and accuracy to throws based on attribute. You cannot rely on throwing the ball all the way home from the deep outfield anymore. As in the real game, if you don’t hit your cutoff men, you will be in trouble.

Operation Sports: Will switch hitters change to the appropriate side when a reliever is brought in? And, will we be able to select the side a switch hitter bats from?

Eddy Cramm: Switch hitters do adjust according to the handedness of the pitcher, but we do not have the ability to switch at the consumer’s discretion. Personally, I don’t remember the last time that saw a switch hitter hit from the same side of the plate as the pitcher was throwing. The only reason I could see this is if he just was terrible from one side compared to the other. To be honest, if he did, shouldn’t we just stop calling him a switch hitter? JT Snow comes to mind.

Operation Sports: Will we be able to control slides manually? Last version, all slides were automatic, even if "Auto Slides" were off.

Eddy Cramm: Yes, yes yes. Manual slides work. Ok, I just tried them again to make sure I am not lying. They work and they look great. Some really cool looking slides kick off depending on which way you direct them with the stick.

Operation Sports: Any chance the legend players have their signature batting styles and stances (Stan Musial's coiled stance, etc.)?

Eddy Cramm: Absolutely.  With hundreds of personalized batting styles and stances in the game, we could not forget the forefathers of the game.  You’ll see familiar signature styles like Joe Morgan’s left elbow twitch, Willie Stargell’s windmill timing mechanism and dozens of others. A lot of the legends had a lot more interesting stances that today’s guys. We had to include them!

Operation Sports: Are there any new camera angles?

Eddy Cramm: From the gameplay standpoint all that you have to do is check out our Road to the Show mode. The camera perspective is totally unique and gives you the feeling of seeing what your player sees without putting you through something awful like “helmet cam”. There will be more to come on Road to the Show in the Operation Sports Developer’s Diary.

Operation Sports: Have you looked into or addressed the scoring error problems?

Eddy Cramm: It has always been policy to address bugs from our previous year (that we find out about post release) first thing. When problems are things as crucial as scoring, those are dealt with the highest priority. Will we ever have an error-free game? Will anyone? The honest answer is probably not. 

But we can assure you we are doing the best to address these problems.

Operation Sports: Have the stadiums been updated?

Eddy Cramm: Stadiums are updated every year to most accurately replicate their real counterparts. In some cases, there are legal reason where we are restricted but we always get as close as we can to 100% accurate. I think people will find in most cases we are pretty dead on.

Operation Sports: How many sliders will be in the game? Could you give us some examples of the customization found in the game?

Eddy Cramm: There are over two-dozen sliders in the game.  All of which are unique to the different aspects of the game.  For example, when fielding, you will be able to tune the strength of the fielder's throw and accuracy.  You can also tune the fielder's range and how fast he gets to a ball that's hit in his direction.

Operation Sports: Will friction be in the game, i.e. grass, infield different from the outfield? Is the wind density much different from the bay area as oppose to Denver?

Eddy Cramm: We actually had a very interesting discussion about the effects the air if Coors has on the ball compared to the other parks. I think two years ago, they started keeping the game balls in humidors to try and cancel out the “Coors Field effect” which was estimated to be as much as 9% more travel on the ball than sea-level. The use of the humidor actually seems to have worked. Last season they ranked 3rd in HR’s allowed in the National League, only behind the Dodgers and Giants. So it seemed unnecessary to make that difference for Coors. I guess “humidor mode” would have been another way of going, but I think that idea would get shot down pretty fast. As for grass and dirt, we absolutely have different frictions applied. We also have a completely different set of numbers for turf. The differences are definitely noticeable.

Operation Sports: Will create a team or an expansion team mode be in this year? If so, will you be able to use them in franchise mode?

Eddy Cramm: No create team or expansion mode this year, but something we will look at in the future.

Operation Sports: Are there any significant differences, other than graphics, between the PS3 and PS2 versions? Were certain features cut out of the PS3 version?

Eddy Cramm: The only features that were removed from the PS3 that exist in the PS2 are Home Run Derby and King of the Diamond. With all the upgrades that we have planned for the PS3, we are using those extra man-hours to polish the main game and really push the graphics. Home Run Derby and King of the Diamond are great fun but our focus is on making a great first impression with our PS3 title and it just seemed to make more sense to keep that focus. You will see these modes again in the future (or something similar).

The only other big changes from PS2 to PS3 are features that are controller related. We have made some changes to the game to support the SIXAXIS controller. These will be discussed in more detail in the Operation Sports Developer Diary in the near future.

But from a non-specific standpoint, the PS3 is just going to allow us to do so much more in every way, from graphic detail to animation and audio individualization. It will also open up new avenues when it comes to online options and crowd interaction. I hate myself for saying this, but it really is a “whole new ball game.”

Operation Sports: Can you talk a little about online league implementation?

Eddy Cramm: Through our SportsConnect technology, MLB 07 The Show will offer Online leagues on all three platforms.  You will be able to create a league to your specification.  Choose teams, lengths, rules and more.  Whether you want 6 or 30 players in a league, all stats, invitations, Bulletin Board posts, standings and schedules will be specific to their league.

The creator of the league will fittingly be called the commissioner.  As a commissioner you can create your schedule (1, 3 or 5 game series), the name of your league and the name of it’s divisions.  You can also choose to create a divisional or round robin league.  A commissioner can even choose the number of teams/players that make it to the playoffs from each division.

Although the commissioner does have a lot of control over the league, members of the league will have a chance to rate their commissioner. Manage your league well and a good rating will follow.  Manage your league poorly and your commissioner rating follows you throughout your MLB 07 The Show SportsConnect career!

Let’s face it, stat tracking is what online is all about.  What’s really cool about the stat tracking, is not only do you see how you stack up against the players in your specific league, but also players in all leagues.  There are league specific leaderboards, as well as an Overall League leaderboard.  And don’t worry about your league games not counting towards your overall SportsConnet points.  All time spent playing rated games goes towards your player account stats.  The main league view will always post the current week leader, current month leader and the champion for the past week and month.  There’s always incentive to be on top of the leaderboards and get recognized by the entire community.  Jump online, join a league and see if you’re good enough to make the champion list.

Operation Sports: We would like to thank you for your time with this interview, is there anything else you would like to add?

Eddy Cramm: Thanks for all the questions. I hope this helps everyone get an idea of what to expect from MLB 07 The Show. Below is a list of the key features that we will be discussing in more detail in the Operation Sports Developer Diary. So look for that.

* Adaptive Pitching Intelligence

* Pitch Command System

* Online League Play / My Sliders

* Road to The Show

* Umpire personalities 

But that is all I have time for now. Since MLB has given it TV package exclusivity, it is time for me to go explain to my wife why we have to go and get satellite TV now. Sucks to be me.