Before I introduce MLB 11 The Show’s new co-op mode, I want to remind everyone that the MLB 11 The Show demo is now available for download on the PlayStation Store! Play four innings in beautiful AT&T Park in this World Series rematch as the San Francisco Giants take on the Texas Rangers. I hope you enjoy.

Now on to co-op! For those of you that follow us closely, you know that we spend a lot of time reading feedback from all of our fans out there. One of the features that many of you have been pushing for is the desire to play The Show with someone as a teammate, instead of just as an opponent. So, this year we created a co-op mode that gives you and a buddy the ability to play on the same team against the CPU, against 1 player, or against 2 other players.

Here’s how it works…you’re able to customize who will be responsible for the different offensive and defensive areas of the game. When you’re at bat, you can choose to allow one person to do all of the batting or choose to alternate batters. The base running works in the opposite way so if you’re batting, your teammate will be responsible for the base running allowing you to work together for sacrifices and hit and runs. I promise you, if you’re playing a 2v2 co-op offline, you’ll start to develop hand signals with your teammate for these situations. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s going to happen.

When you’re in the field, there are four different controllable areas—pitcher, catcher, infield, and outfield. Again, you have the ability to customize who is responsible for different areas. The pitcher, like the batter, can alternate between the teammates (per inning).

To help avoid the confusion of who is doing what, we created some graphics that use your player’s color to indicate what responsibilities you have at any given moment. You’ll see the description as you load into a co-op game, and the dynamic icons will drop down from the scorebar at the beginning of each at bat.

Co-op is also available online allowing two systems and four players maximum (two users per team) to play a head-to-head game. The PlayStation Network user logged in will receive the game stats and points on their profile. The other user is their copilot, so to speak. Users can also play an unranked co-op game—two users, on two different systems, on the same team, versus the CPU.

Now, typically when you think of sports video games, you think of the competitiveness (and trash talking) that comes with trying to beat down your buddy, humiliating him, and making him cry, which is always fun. With that said, the first reaction to playing as a teammate might be that you would lose some of that enjoyment, at least that was always my impression. Boy was I wrong. While playing with another member of the team here in San Diego, by the second inning into our first game you started hearing…”You are killing me,” “I’m going to have to do all of this myself, aren’t I?,” “Man, you’re awful,” etc…(quotes edited and censored of course). Co-op brings a whole new way to enjoy MLB 11 The Show so we hope you have as much fun with it as we do, and that you don’t lose too many friends from the experience. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to pre-order your copy MLB 11 The Show on PS3 to get 30 days FREE MLB.TV! We were able to get a few test codes to check out last year’s games and this really is a cool app. Follow your favorite team home or away on your PS3 with MLB.TV.

Welcome to The Show!

In MLB 09: The Show, the catcher had the same basic responsibilities as any other fielder: Field balls in your area, cover your base. The only thing unique to the catcher was the task of throwing out base stealers. But as “baseball guys,” we know that the catcher is a lot more involved than that. The catcher is a key part of every single pitch in the game. He is arguably just as responsible for the outcome of a pitch as the pitcher. So when making MLB 10: The Show, we kept that in mind.

This year, we have added “calling pitch selection” and “calling pitch location” to your RttS catcher’s responsibilities. When you are in the game defensively as a catcher, you will be responsible to select the pitch that you want thrown. The system works just like it does for selecting pitches as the pitcher does. The pitcher might shake you off, or he might accept that pitch. If he does shake you off, you choose a pitch again. If you choose the same pitch, he will figure it’s really what you want and will accept it, at this point. Once you have selected the pitch, you will be responsible to select where you want the ball thrown. You can choose any of the nine zones within the strike zone, or you can choose eight areas outside of the zone if you want the ball off the plate (four outside edges and four outside corners). Now just like in real life, this doesn’t mean the pitcher will hit his spot. It just means this is where he is aiming. The better the pitcher you have throwing to you, the more effective your location calling will be.

Adding this has really made the Road to the Show catcher more involved in the game like you would expect him to be in real life. I hope you enjoy the new Catcher Calling the Game feature when it, and the rest of MLB 10 The Show hits shelves, March 2.

Hey everybody. My name is Eddy Cramm (Senior Designer), and it’s my turn to bring you MLB 09 The Show blog #3…or #4…maybe #5. Not really sure which one we are on. Bear with me, we are all working some long hours right now getting this game polished and out the door!

I am here to talk about the new features in Road to the Show. When all of this RTTS stuff started 3 years ago, the whole idea behind it was to give a unique career mode experience that focused exclusively on you. Initially that meant that we would fast-forward you to your events so that you only dealt with your fielding plays and your plate appearances, etc. Because lets be honest, who wants to sit out in RF during a career mode and watch three groundballs to the infield. It sucked in little league and it sucks in a career mode, too. But as RTTS progressed, our focus grew to be more than that. It became more about giving the user more control of his path to the majors.

Last year really took a huge step in the goals and points system. The guys on the front-end team like Aaron Luke, Kolbe Launchbaugh, and Jeff Ullman have built a pretty nifty system. That’s right…“nifty.” And from a gameplay standpoint, we have always wanted RTTS to feel like you are doing exactly what you would be doing, from going to Spring training, to working up through the minor leagues, etc. But success isn’t just about what you do in that game situation. Success comes from being prepared when that game moment arises. And contrary to what Allen Iverson thinks, that means practice. That thought process is what brought us to our main new feature this year. Training mode.

Training Mode
In RTTS this year, you will be given opportunities throughout the season to participate in training sessions as selected by your coach. There are two types of training sessions this year. Batting training and Base Stealing training. When we first started designing the batting portion of our training, we kept it a lot like the way the goals system worked. You would be asked to do a specific thing in training and you would be judged on your performance. So when a training session came up, you would be told, “Go practice bunting,” or “Work on your plate discipline.” That is all well and good, but it sucks if you have no interest in practicing your bunting, or could care less about laying off bad pitches. Maybe you just want to get in there and try to mash home runs.

It was one of our A.I. programmers, Brian Ma, that suggested a slight change of focus. He suggested that we just create one type of batting training and just judge it based on what the user does in there. To which I said, “Screw off Brian, I am the designer here! Get back in your office and write some code!!” Ok, maybe I didn’t say that. It was actually a really great idea and is basically the approach we ended up taking. It satisfied one major thing that I thought we were lacking with the original design. It gives the user control of the type of player he can create. So if you take your guy in there and you want to build up his bunting attributes, you can focus on that. If you want to work on your discipline, contact, power, vision, it is all based on what YOU decide to do and how well you do it in the 20 pitch training session.

Base Stealing
Base Stealing training is something that I have wanted to do for the last couple of years now. This year we have done that. In this training, you will have full control of how far you take a lead and when you decide to take off. You have free reign to get a great jump or totally screw it up and get picked off. But that is only half of it. The pitcher should have something to say about how comfortable you are with your lead and your jump. We have introduced new A.I. and animations for the pitcher so that he will do his best to keep you off-balance, like mix up his pickoff moves to give you different looks or even slide-step to the plate to try to get an advantage.

But just like in real life, some guys have better moves than others, or MORE moves than others. So we have different here as well too. So if you are facing a guy like Pettitte, you will have to be a little more cautious. In this training mode, you will be judged on your aggressiveness, your reaction time and your success. The better you do, the more attributes you will gain in Base Running Ability, Base Running Aggressiveness, and Speed.

For realism purposes, we created a training facility where you will do your training when you are in the Majors. But also for realism, if you are in Spring Training, or in the Minors, you will do your training at your home field. During the season, your training sessions will be offered at the beginning of the homestand. Both the Batting and the Base Stealing training are also available in the Main Menu as practice options. These practice options are the same structure except you get to choose who you want to hit or run with, which pitcher you want to face, AND you can choose which pitches he will throw at you from his repertoire. So if you just want to face Santana’s slider, or Zito’s curve, or mix in a combo like Hoffman’s change/fastball, go for it. You can also choose any stadium in case you want to try to hit it over the Green Monster.

I think that about covers it. I think that everyone will really like the new additions to RTTS and I look forward to the feedback. I will answer one question right now that I know will be asked. “Why is there no Pitching or Fielding training??” Valid question. I am glad you asked. Basically it comes down to a question of quality. We have designs for Pitching and for Fielding, but doing all 4 this year would mean that we would have had to do a little less with each mode just to get them all in. So we made the decision to focus on the two and make them as polished and fun as we could. And yes, plans are already underway to bring Pitching and Fielding training to 2010.

If you have made it all the way to the end of this blog, props to you. Hope you got some interesting info out of it and go out and pick up MLB 09 The Show. You are going to love it.

This year’s edition boasts enhancements to nearly every aspect of the mode, so much so that we’ve dubbed it Road To The Show 2.0. Starting with the front-end aspects, the PS3 Create Player system has received a major overhaul to include modifiable geometry of nearly every aspect of the head and face. If that weren’t enough, we’ve also added several new batting stance and pitching style animations, along with a handful of new player accessories to aide in the customization of your created player.

RTTS 2.0 features an all-new Advancement System that acts as a road map for the player’s career progression, featuring advancement goals given by the team’s manager. The RTTS player is evaluated based on the player’s current skill set (attribute levels) and the player’s statistical performance; to decide what role within the organization the player will be given, as well as what skills are lacking and need attention. Advancement goals are then given, which encompass both attribute improvements and statistical goals, for the sole purpose of improving the player’s skill set to reach the next level. The goal durations will range based on the type of player you are. Starters will have longer durations, with higher expectations, whereas bench/bullpen players might have shorter durations and slightly lower expectations. Once you have achieved enough goals, or your player is simply too good statistically to be ignored, you will then become qualified for the next step in your career.

We spent a lot of time dealing with the balance of this mode. In order for a mode like this to feel right, there has to be a sense of realism as to how you progress. If we push you through too quickly, you don’t feel rewarded and if we hold you back you will feel helpless. So when we started balancing things the first question we asked was, “When does a player hit their peak?” With some research we found that most Major Leaguers start hitting their prime around 28 years old. So using that as a point of reference we started looking at how many years does a ballplayer play to get to this point. We determined that it is 9 years into a professional career on average for a player to work their way up from the minors to that peak level. So using that information, and knowing how many attribute points the player has available to him before he maxes out, we adjusted the criteria so that you will progress and regress at a very realistic pace. Knowing that you can relate your performance directly to how it happens in the pros is totally satisfying and makes the mode that much more enjoyable.

The manager messaging system has been revamped as well to provide the user with career progression specific messages including: organizational changes, advancement goal progress and results, and promotion/demotion related messages. The previous “good game” style messages are a thing of the past, so you’ll need to pay more attention to your messages in order to keep up with the organization. Statistically speaking, we’ve gone and added a new Game Stats tab within the RTTS Locker Room screen that displays all of your player’s stats for every game within the current season. This new screen will display every game the RTTS player participated in – whether you actually played the game or simulated through it – for the entire current season. For position players, you’ll have an at-bat-by-at-bat display of your stats including how you reached base and where you ended up, or how you recorded an out. Pitchers will have inning-by-inning stats that show your pitch count based on the strikes vs. balls totals along with the hits allowed, earned runs allowed, walks allowed, and strike outs recorded within each inning.

The in game situational goals have received several improvements including broadening the goal result types, the addition of training points to the varied results, and an on-screen display of the result and the points earned/deducted. This year you will be rewarded for positively performing towards your goal, so even though you may not have achieved the goal entirely, if you aided the club in your efforts, you’ll still be rewarded. Achieving and failing goals will net training points that will vary based on the goal type and the current game situation. A simple goal of reaching base safely will reward fewer points in the beginning of the game, than it would in a leadoff slot in the 9th inning. Upon completion of the game and returning to the front-end, you’ll be presented with the Career Update screen where you’ll notice we’ve added an entire breakdown of every training point your earned (or lost) based on the type of stat or goal they apply to.

Within the gameplay, we wanted to add goals and situations that really detail what it is like to play the game. Last year we focused on the basic events: hitting, baserunning, and fielding the ball; but there is a lot more that a ballplayer needs to know to be successful. So this year we added fielding situations where you may have to position yourself correctly for a double play or be in the right spot for a cutoff. You will have to make sure that you cover the base on a steal, or on the back end of a double play. Personally, my favorite feature is an element in baseball that has existed forever, but is never utilized in games – 3rd base coaching signs. This year, one of your goals might be “Check your 3rd base coach for a sign.” If you get that, your goal is to know what that sign means and act accordingly in game. Your base coach may also ask you to sacrifice, hit and run, steal, or just swing away. As you progress through RTTS, you will have different levels of help to learn the signs. In AA, we will pretty much spoon-feed you the correct answer, but once you get to the majors, you will be expected to know what the signs mean. This is by far my favorite addition to RTTS because it adds a level of authenticity that baseball video games have lacked.

Overall, RTTS 2.0 has a lot more depth, balance and logic than the inaugural version and will really give you the sense of what it’s like to work your way up the professional ladder like no career mode ever before. If you liked Road to the Show last year, you will love it this year. And if you didn’t like it last year… you will probably STILL love it this year! And if for some reason, you still don’t like it this year? We have a lot more in the works for next year.

Thanks for your time and we will see you in The Show!