Build your own morality

I finally finished Dragon Age II last night, after exactly three weeks of on-again/off-again play.

I’ve had a couple of gamers, whose opinions I trust, tell me that they find the Mass Effect series to be far superior to the Dragon Age series – both Bioware RPGs. I like both, but I connect with Dragon Age more for some reason that I’m not particularly concerned with understanding.

For the purposes of this blog, the important thing to note is that the story of Dragon Age II had a real significance for me. That’s not always the case with games I play.

Video games are increasingly about choice. Typically those choices are couched in narrative: if you choose path X over path Y, the narrative will proceed in an X-like manner. But in a lot of games, those decisions have gameplay consequences as well: if you choose path X over path Y, you get to play with the Flaming Sword of Insulting Fire rather than the Icy Sword of Frostbitten Stares.

In some cases, those consequences aren’t necessarily 1/2 but, rather, 1/0, where a particular choice either leads to some sort of new gameplay experience or it doesn’t. In those cases, being the completionist that I am, I almost always pick the 1. I’d rather add that resulting experience than not.

But, by the end of Dragon Age II, I was actively making 0 decisions – not because I was ready to get the game over with, which I wasn’t, but because those 0 gameplay results also lead to narrative results that I found meaningful, preferable, and – in a couple of different ways – right. They seemed not only the right decisions for the character that I’d been cultivating but also the right moral decisions.

(In short, one group was trying to restrict the freedom of another group, something I’m ordinarily against, and my character had the ability to echo my stance.)

Many modern RPGs have some sort of morality system, but they’re usually just another game to play to me: a set of strategic choices made to win the most good. But in Dragon Age II – and a select few other games – I felt like my own personal morality was in play. I think that's a good direction for games to take.

Question of the Week:

How much do the stories of video games matter to you? And/or what’s the best video game story you’ve ever heard/played/watched?

My take: It would seem like they matter a lot to me, but most are forgettable, so the average is probably something more like six of ten. And the first Bioshock provided a story that really stuck out to me.

Fantasy Tuesday

So, I got it in my head that it might be a good idea to write a blog predicting my fantasy baseball league standings based on ESPN’s fantasy projections. (As three other people in the universe might recall, I made some fairly prophetic fantasy basketball predictions at the beginning of the season.) I imagine in an hour or so, I’ll regret this decision.

To begin, a number of caveats are necessary:

1. ESPN’s projections have a number of flaws. In this particular case, the most glaring may be that ESPN refuses, and rightly so, to predict some of the more uncommon statistics that Bryan’s league-manager brain decided to count. Namely, game-winning RBI, intentional walks, cycles, grand slams, outfield assists, and errors for batters; no-hitters and perfect games for pitchers.
2. Our league is a weekly head-to-head league, where the final standings will be determined by overall W/L record, not total F-points scored. While these two numbers should show a strong correlation, there is no guarantee that the highest-scoring fantasy team will necessarily have the best record, and so forth.
3. Teams’ lineups will undoubtedly change between draft day and the championship champagne bath. In fact, they already have, as Jair Jurrjens has already been picked up and dropped in the roughly two weeks since our draft. Free agency, trades, and injuries will absolutely disprove or at least complicate any possible projections.
4. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, different fantasy teams have different roster make-ups, specifically different ratios of batters-to-pitchers, and even SPs-to-closers. These different roster compositions will likely lead to significant variation in the number of the other, less desirable F-points, the type of points that fuck you while sitting on your bench. To break it down a little further:

a. Let’s begin with starting pitchers. All MLB teams play 162 games. The season begins on March 31 (Thursday!) and ends on September 28, covering a total of 182 days (exactly 26 weeks). So, each team will play roughly 6.23 games per week. Considering every team now uses a 5-man rotation, that means an average starting pitcher will pitch roughly 1.25 games per week, meaning that every fantasy pitcher should make two starts roughly one week per month (or roughly 6.5 times during the season’s 26 weeks). This is important primarily because each weekly matchup has a games started cap of 10, so any starts beyond that number are, again, wasted bench points. Bryan and I have the most SPs in the league with 9 each, which means – on any given week – we should both have about 11.22 games started per week, or roughly 1.22 starts wasted per week. A team with 8 SPs (Byron and Holly) would statistically have almost the exact number of games started per week allowed, but that’s not a very likely scenario, and I would expect all teams with 7+ SPs to waste some starts during the season. However, those wasted starts do not necessarily need to be applied uniformly. I might for example, start Roy Halladay 2 times in one week, while starting Jaime Garcia 0 times in that same week, thus having 1 start per pitcher. So, for the sake of my time and sanity, I’ll assume that 1 SP for every team with more than 8 is statistically unlikely to start in any given week. Presumably, that would be the SP with the lowest projection.

b. Closer may be the easiest position to quantify maximum potential. Byron has the most closers in our league at 5. With Byron’s 8 SPs, spread over a 7-day period, he would presumably need to start at least two SPs on any given day. As shown above, that’s statistically probable on 3 days per week, since he should average around 10 games started in a 7-day period. Even so, on those three days, he would still have the 5 pitching spots necessary to start all 5 closers. But that's unlikely to happen all 182 days this season. So, he’s likely to lose some of his closers’ points during the season. However, the likelihood of this is way too complicated for me to want to calculate, and every other team is less likely to need to sit a closer, considering nobody else has more than 4, and the league average is 3.375 per team. So, for the sake of this blog, I’m assuming all closer points will be accumulated during the progression of the season, even for Byron.

c. Batters may be the most complicated. Three owners in our league have the exact number of batters that would be able to play on any given day (10): Byron, Bryan, and me. Those three teams should expect to receive the exact number of points that each batter scores throughout the season; however, they would also potentially lose 0.77 starts per position per week due to off days (or a possible 7.7 starts per week per team). Bench players, for teams that have them, could potentially recoup some of that loss, but their owners can never receive the full value of every batter on their team. For example, a 13-batter team could potentially have 2,106 starts over a 162-game season, but only 1,820 possible starts over a 182-day season. This is, of course, complicated even further by positional availability. Based on team composition, no team is currently able to recoup the 0.77 starts lost to catchers per week, only Matthew and Stephen can recoup the 0.77 starts lost to 2B per week and only Bucky, Holly, and Stephen would be able to recoup the 0.77 starts lost to SS per week. Regardless, any bench is likely to be worth only 7.7 starts per week or 200 recouped starts per year. Rookie beyotch Stephen has the most bench batters at 5 (league average is 2.13), which means each of those players could potentially make 40 starts and be worth roughly 25% of his total value. Again, like SPs, this loss in value does not necessarily need to be applied uniformly, but again, it is much more complicated by positional availability. So, for the sake of my time, my sanity, and, in this case, the league median, let’s assume that those 200 recouped starts will be dispersed over the top 3 bench players on any team with more than 10 batters, and that Stephen’s lesser bench players will net him 0 points (sorry Stephen). In this case, each bench batter will be worth 66.67 starts over the course of the season or 41.1% of their total projected value.

And, so finally, some numbers that matter (numbers in red don’t count, numbers in blue have been edited to represent bench-batter production):

Sherwood Forest Sherricks

C	Brian McCann	676
1B	Mark Teixeira	955
2B	Dan Uggla	775
3B	Jose Bautista	913
SS	Stephen Drew	696
OF	Carlos Gonzalez	875
OF	Andre Ethier	775
OF	Delmon Young	769
1B	Justin Morneau	768
DH	Adam Lind	706
SP	Roy Halladay	983
SP	Tommy Hanson	658
SP	Max Scherzer	565
SP	Jonathan Sanchez	557
SP	Colby Lewis	588
SP	Brandon Morrow	582
SP	James Shields	513
SP	Jaime Garcia	475
SP	Jeremy Hellickson	473
CL	Carlos Marmol	466
CL	JJ Putz	470
CL	Craig Kimbrel	427
CL	Joel Hanrahan	383
	Total:	14575

BS’s THE BENIS

C	Victor Martinez	784
1B	Ryan Howard	778
2B	Chase Utley	616
3B	Alex Rodriguez	859
SS	Troy Tulowitzki	914
OF	Curtis Granderson	752
OF	Carlos Lee	775
OF	Ichiro Suzuki	616
1B	Adam Dunn	824
DH	David Ortiz	674
SP	Chris Carpenter	617
SP	Dan Haren	702
SP	Zack Greinke	642
SP	Phil Hughes	543
SP	Felix Hernandez	799
SP	Daniel Hudson	547
SP	Brian Matusz	547
SP	Jhoulys Chacin	509
SP	John Lackey	467
CL	Brandon Lyon	309
CL	Huston Street	408
CL	Chris Perez	328
CL	Ryan Franklin	321
	Total:	13864

Byron’s Wang

C	Geovany Soto	496
1B	Joey Votto	929
2B	Rickie Weeks	630
3B	Ryan Zimmerman	820
SS	Hanley Ramirez	934
OF	Shin-Shoo Choo	785
OF	Andrew McCutchen	808
OF	Alex Rios	679
OF/DH	Carlos Quentin	705
OF	Drew Stubbs	575
SP	Clayton Kershaw	745
SP	Mat Latos	698
SP	Matt Cain	622
SP	Matt Garza	469
SP	CJ Wilson	494
SP	Ted Lilly	542
SP	Hiroki Kuroda	419
SP	Jordan Zimmerman	389
CL	John Axford	412
CL	Brian Wilson	535
CL	Heath Bell	533
CL	Joakim Soria	450
CL	Drew Storen	357
	Total:	14026

What?What? In the butt….

C	Carlos Santana	670
1B	Miguel Cabrera	1021
2B	Gordon Beckham	629
3B	Aramis Ramirez	685
SS	Jose Reyes	736
OF	Carl Crawford	904
OF	Mike Stanton	651
OF	Jacoby Ellsbury	649
1B	Kevin Youkilis	926
OF	Colby Rasmus	243.2099
3B	Pedro Alvarez	638
1B	Carlos Pena	258.0247
OF	Travis Snider	259.2593
SP	CC Sabathia	794
SP	Ubaldo Jimenez	685
SP	Yovani Gallardo	731
SP	Brett Anderson	359
SP	Shaun Marcum	521
SP	Ricky Romero	540
SP	Jake Peavy	407
CL	Andrew Bailey	332
CL	Joe Nathan	349
CL	Matt Thornton	470
	Total:	13457.49

Dallas RoughRiders

C	Kurt Suzuki	581
1B	Adrian Gonzalez	1065
2B	Dustin Pedroia	873
3B	David Wright	827
SS	Juan Uribe	555
OF	Ryan Braun	942
OF	Jayson Werth	763
OF	Hunter Pence	754
1B	Paul Konerko	738
OF	Chris Young	279.4239
2B/3B	Martin Prado	301.2346
DH	Vladimir Guerrero	260.4938
1B	Gaby Sanchez	740
SP	Justin Verlander	766
SP	Jered Weaver	673
SP	Brett Myers	542
SP	Tim Hudson	455
SP	Gio Gonzalez	508
SP	Johan Santana	321
CL	Francisco Cordero	371
CL	Rafael Soriano	235
CL	Leo Nunez	328
CL	David Aardsma	197
	Total:	13075.15

Saratoga Redsox

C	Joe Mauer	775
1B	Kendrys Morales	722
2B	Robinson Cano	974
3B	Casey McGehee	717
SS	Starlin Castro	214.4033
OF	Josh Hamilton	754
OF	Jay Bruce	694
OF	Adam Jones	238.6831
1B	Billy Butler	751
OF	Vernon Wells	740
OF	Nick Swisher	664
3B	Pablo Sandoval	272.8395
SS	Elvis Andrus	563
SP	Jon Lester	817
SP	Josh Johnson	670
SP	David Price	698
SP	Cole Hamels	734
SP	Clay Buchholz	501
SP	Madison Bumgarner	467
SP	Edinson Volquez	523
CL	Neftali Feliz	506
CL	Jonathan Broxton	451
CL	Jose Valverde	326
	Total:	13772.93

Take On Me, Suck it MacKlin

C	Chris Iannetta	501
1B	Prince Fielder	903
2B	Ian Kinsler	706
3B	Jhonny Peralta	604
SS	Derek Jeter	246.0905
OF	Matt Kemp	720
OF	Justin Upton	729
OF	Corey Hart	690
1B	Adam Laroche	253.0864
OF	Torii Hunter	645
OF	BJ Upton	259.6708
3B	Evan Longoria	946
3B	Michael Young	658
SP	Tim Lincecum	874
SP	Francisco Liriano	637
SP	Roy Oswalt	755
SP	John Danks	510
SP	Trevor Cahill	468
SP	Bronson Arroyo	428
SP	Ian Kennedy	445
SP	Ryan Dempster	490
CL	Jonathan Papelbon	460
CL	Brad Lidge	336
	Total:	13263.85

Jerkin’ Shirks

C	Buster Posey	656
1B	Albert Pujols	1206
2B	Brandon Phillips	711
3B	Adrian Beltre	806
SS	Jimmy Rollins	701
OF	Matt Holliday	933
OF	Nelson Cruz	836
OF	Jason Heyward	785
1B/OF	Aubrey Huff	755
1B	Freddie Freeman	553
OF	Shane Victorino	798
2B/OF	Ben Zobrist	300.4115
SS	Alexei Ramirez	272.0165
2B	Brian Roberts	274.4856
3B	Mark Reynolds	489
SP	Cliff Lee	830
SP	Chad Billingsley	586
SP	Wandy Rodriguez	529
SP	Ricky Nolasco	580
SP	Carl Pavano	348
SP	Josh Beckett	559
CL	Mariano Rivera	404
CL	Francisco Rodriguez	412
	Total:	14323.91

I’ll take my trophy now, please.