[QuikSand]

I've gotten more deeply into the NFL offseason in recent years, for multiple reasons.

I can't help, as a long time sim gamer (FOF especially), but see how dramatically different the team front offices behave in the real world, in contrast to what nearly all of us do playing sim games.

In FOF, we generally award flat contracts, right? Certainly it's the norm in the serious MP leagues, sometimes base salaries escalate maybe 15-20-25 or something like that, but as often as not they are effectively flat. I hardly ever make an offer to a player that is structured so I will expect to release him after the first 2 years of a 4 year deal, and accept a load of dead cap money afterward. I just don't do it. hardly anyone does.

In the NFL, it's... completely routine. It's just expected. If my team has $10m to spend under the cap, as a plugged-in fan I fully expect that means we can afford three guys, on backloaded deals with staggered guarantees, all to minimize the first year cap effect and delay the pain of the contract as much as possible. We see that sort of analysis all the time, right? Contract is for 4/52 but is effectively 2/24. OBJ signed a one year deal last season that the Ravens will pay on for something like 5 seasons ahead. The Dolphins are trying to finish a deal with Tua in part because re-signing him will free up cap spaced right away. Geez, that's the exact opposite of what I face in FOF when I need to extend a young guy... I'll be paying out a ton of new money this year to do that.

So, in FOF... sure, part of it is the simplifed contract systems, with just base salary and a single prorated bonus. We cannot create the sort of tiering that is common i the real NFL.

But I think it's more than that. It's more subtle.

In FOF, what is the purpose of "going all in to win now?" Why don't we all do it aggressively all the time? I think it's because the game just doesn't create urgency the way real sports do, right? Playing solo FOF I can just get to the next season in a couple hours. Even in a slow MP league it will be a few weeks. No angry fans calling in to radio stations calling for my head, no pressure arising from the lack of season tickets... it's just absent. Why push to win now, I can afford to be thinking about two or five seasons down the road, because I don't depreciate the future the way real human beings, living and deciding things in real time, instinctively do.


So... with all that... how might a computer sports sim introduce more of that element of "urgency" into the experience?