When it comes to video games, I like a good strategy game or simulation where I can tinker with things and see the effects. Back when I was younger and time was more abundant, I played baseball simulation games. These were games where I could act as the owner of a baseball team and draft new players, trade players, and make decisions on who gets to play on the team and who gets cut.
However, one thing that is missing are all the random one-off events that happen in real life. In real life, rules change, players get in trouble with the law, coaches are hospitalized, and there are public relations disasters. As we all saw in 2020, sometimes there are even pandemics. I would find a game that has one or two random “Black Swan” events per season intensely satisfying. It would make the game feel a lot more real and add a lot to the replayability of the game.
In implementation, I think there should be at least a thousand possible black swan events in the game. When a black swan event does happen, it should be removed from the list of possibilities in future black swan events (a black swan event is not supposed to happen more than once in a lifetime!).
Here are a few black swan events that have happened in baseball:
- Obviously, the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic
- The 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike
- The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that happened during a World Series game
- Various airplane, boating, and car accidents have killed players, usually during the offseason
- A first round draft pick got injured in a bar fight that ended his career (Brien Taylor)
- A player survived a suicide attempt and went back to playing baseball with one eye (Drew Robinson)
- …and many more random events
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