High-level stats and a flair for the flavor of the game — that's the way designer Brian Haferkamp addresses big-league sports in his baseball, basketball and football games.  

Brian, a web developer who grew up in the video era and counts Out of the Park baseball among his inspirations, just released his latest game, Uptempo Basketball, this summer. Beginning with 1985-86 NBA season, he quickly added 1982-83 and 1989-90.   

However, despite recapturing those classic NBA seasons, Brian cautions that there was no "golden age" for many contemporary sports fans — and sports game designers — and that perspective likely will fuel the development of more experience-driven sports sims.  

Previously unavailable stats are another major influence on sports designers like Brian. Sabermetrics are at the core of his On Base Baseball game, released in April 2021; more granular data also figures in to his upcoming football game, aptly titled Advanced Stats Football.  

"Technology is not the enemy," he asserts, as VR and AR are poised to dramatically alter the way sports games are designed and used. Couple technology with the waning appeal of nostalgia among contemporary sports fans, and major changes are on the horizon, he added. Underpinning this new vision of sports game design is a highly "open source" mindset of collaboration and transparency between designer and player.  

Brian played football as a youth in Texas. As athletics took a less prominent role in his life during his 20s, he turned to sports sims — ultimately favoring the franchise and GM modes built in to video sims beginning in the '90s.   

Fueled by those experiences, Brian offers dramatically different games covering baseball, basketball and American football, providing short-, medium- and long-playing games.   

On Base Baseball (16:04) comes in three flavors: Basic, advanced and quick play. The advanced version is particularly notable in that it is a pitch-by-pitch sim based on Statcast data, taking players throughout an entire on-bat point by point, from pitch selection to other variables. While it might take three or even seven rolls to resolve the at-bat, a game might be finished in about an hour and 15 minutes. However, Brian notes he is creating primarily World Series and All-Star teams — roughly 75 player cards vs. the 900 required to card the entire league. He also has another baseball game, Dog Days Baseball, in the works.  

Advanced Stats Football (22:47) , still in development, is driven by contemporary stats like run or pass tendencies by play direction. Brian likens the experience to the "special boost" scoring runs of a game like Super Mario Carts on Nintendo 64.  

Uptempo Basketball (25:16), his most recent creation, will soon see the addition of some NCAA teams. First up: 1990 UNLV and Loyola Marymount and 1992 Duke.  

Buy Uptempo Basketball: https://uptempobasketballgame.com/

Try On Base Baseball with a free demo kit: https://onbasebaseball.com/b/PmGB

Advanced Stats Football downloadable demo and tutorial videos: https://brianhaferkamp.github.io/tabletopfootballgame/

Brian’s 2021 On Baseball livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRBLUGeHJDs&ab_channel=BrianHaferkamp

Video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/5JsD-Hwv-ZM