Enter to Win a Copy of Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2016

Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2016 has been called the best text-based college hoops simulation game on the market. You can win a copy from Wolverine Studios, in conjunction with FanSided and BustingBrackets.

College sports simulation video games are not dead, and the sports text sims can are the next big thing in sports video gaming. Gary Gorski of Wolverine Studios has recently released the newest college basketball sim, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2016.

Busting Brackets.com and FanSided, in conjunction with Wolverine Studios, are giving away two copies of the game. Instructions on the giveaway appear at the end of this article.

By Tim Moungey, Wolverine Studios

College Basketball Video Gaming Isn’t Dead

This is the second article of a two part series discussing sports text sims. To read the first article, and learn more about sports text sims, click here.

The thunderbolt of the plaintiff’s’ victory in O’Bannon v. NCAA boomed throughout the country, and destroyed college sports console gaming. But college sports gaming is still very much alive, at least in basketball, due to the sports text sim genre, which doesn’t run afoul of the licensing issues that the console games did. And as with pro basketball, the immersion and strategy is deeper, richer.

Just like pro hoops, Wolverine Studios dominates the college basketball text sim market with their latest release, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2016. Similar to the first article, I’ll be touching on the most critical parts of the sport, and how text sims are a more complete experience, even if console gaming does come back.

Recruiting

In any college sports game, one of the most important aspects is recruiting. While EA Sports’ NCAA Football caught on to the multiple variables that influence recruits, it was sports text sims that first devised the more authentic approach to representing recruiting. DDS:CB 16 continues this tradition by having seven factors that influence an individual recruit including facilities, playing time, academics, distance from home, etc.

More from NCAA Basketball News

• NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 4 teams for PF Jaxon Johnson
• NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 5 teams for top-100 SG Larry Johnson
• NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 5 teams for 4-star PG Jeremiah Johnson
• NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 8 teams for 5-star SF Annor Boateng
• NCAA Basketball: 4 head coaches who needs to win big in 2023-24 season

But that’s not at all ­ there’s also going to be some recruits whose parents have major input on where their son is going to play college ball, and they have their own priorities. The parental impact is something we often see in the real world (Cam Newton, anyone?), but it’s something I haven’t seen represented anywhere other than the DDS:CB series.

You can also channel your inner Ed Martin and try to outright bribe recruits with gifts of dirty money.. I don’t need to tell you how many recruiting scandals have populated college sports over the years ­ you’ve heard of them yourself. Again, not something I’ve ever seen in console video games.

Oh, and if your program gets caught, you can get banned from postseason play, just like in real life. The same applies to the AI as well, so if Kentucky’s missing from the tournament, well, you know who to blame.

Speaking of money, just like the pro basketball version, you have to pay attention to your finances. You have a budget, and need to carefully balance your expenditures, because everything comes out of that. Spend all your money building a star coaching staff, and you might not have enough left over to bring in the players that staff can build a contender out of. There’s also the regional and national basketball camps, which can give you more valuable insight into players, but again, that costs cold, hard cash.

Oh, one more thing. Academics matter for both the school and the recruit. Every school has a minimum SAT score that recruits need to reach in order to be able to play for that institution. Fail to meet the minimum, and he’s playing somewhere else. So, good luck getting that 2.3 GPA 5 star recruit to Princeton, unless he’s one of those amazingly brilliant but lazy dudes who just doesn’t do his homework.

The Coaching Experience

In the real world, assistant coaches can toil away for years before finally getting that shot at the brass ring, and an actual head coaching job. But in most college video games, you’re the head coach, and don’t get to replicate that experience. In DDS:CB 16, you can ­ working your way from the very bottom as a third assistant of a school like The Citadel (hi, Frank Underwood!) to hopefully one day get a top gig of your own. It can be frustrating, waiting for the right opportunity and trying to rise up the ranks, but it’s oh so accurate.

More from Busting Brackets

• NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 4 teams for PF Jaxon Johnson
• NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing top 5 teams for top-100 SG Larry Johnson
• Oregon Basketball: Projected starting lineup and depth chart for 2023-24
• Big East Basketball: Ranking all head coaches going into 2023-24 season
• Florida State Basketball: Is Seminoles roster good enough to win in 2023-24?

You’re also limited in the jobs you’ll be offered on league start, based on what you set your coach attributes. Don’t give a damn about academics? Ivy League ain’t calling you. Rate yourself as a scrub right now, but with legendary potential? Don’t expect to be replacing Coach K at Duke your first season.

This isn’t at all like console gaming, where you can be the head coach at any school you want right off the bat (unless you make your starting attributes already a coaching rockstar).

I’ve never paid attention to systems in console college basketball games. They didn’t matter much. In text sims, the offensive and defensive systems you run are a huge deal. The same is true whether you’re talking about basketball or Football Manager. More to the point ­ it’s not just choosing the right setup for your team ­ say, the High Post offense with a 2­3 zone defense, or say a 4­4­2 vs a 4­4­2 Diamond in the respective sims. How well your players *know* the system plays a big role in your success (or lack thereof) on the court and/or pitch.

So when you take over a program or a team, there’s the old Catch­22: Do you go with what the current players are comfortable with already, or do you force them to learn your style of play, knowing that it might take years you may not have to bring them up to speed?

This also applies to recruits as well. Just like in real life, they’ve played in certain systems growing up. And that’s one of the elements you have to consider when you’re figuring out who to offer your scholarships to. Do you go for the studly player who has no idea how to play your beloved Triangle, or do you take the somewhat less talented kid who played high school ball that used it?

These are the kind of choices you have to make in a text sim, whereas consoles it was all about talent, talent, talent, and damn everything else.

Community (Again)

Why mention community again? Because while there’s not a huge demand for multiplayer leagues in college basketball video games due to the over 320 schools (though a few do exist), there’s other important aspects to the college sports text sim experience. For example, the beta­testing experience. DDS:CB 16’s beta testing wasn’t done by company employees ­ it was carried out by genuine college basketball diehards, and included a few actual basketball coaches. No superlative joystick jockeys or fanboys here. They hammered the game to make it as close a reflection of reality as possible.

Want real names, logos, and courts? Wolverine Studios forum member bloomington put together an all­in­one installer that does that for you. And the quality is incredible ­ I feel a hot wave of pride whenever I see the shark fin on Jerry Tarkanian Court.

But what’s perhaps most important about the sports text sim community is the help you can get. There’s no question that both text sims I’ve mentioned here ­ DDS:CB 16 and FM ­ are difficult to learn. In fact, brutally so, at times. Yet, there’s also whole entire forums dedicated to the games, and strategy guides available to help you sort through the complex puzzles and situations that these text sims present. For DDS:CB 16, there’s a group of dedicated people who have played the series for years, and they’re always available to help newcomers on the company forums.

So to cap it all off, everything I said in the previous article about sports text sims is just as true for the college level as it is the pros. But the difference is, here you once more have the opportunity to play a video game of a sport you love, rather than pine away for the lost console college sports games, which won’t be back for a long time, if ever.

So take the plunge. Go to the Wolverine Studios website. Try the college basketball demo. Fall in love with the pageantry, the madness, the sheer joy of college hoops all over again.

So how do you win one of these fantastic games? Just by going here to enter in a Rafflecopter giveaway.

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