How the Out of the Park Baseball team plans to expand with live services

Baseball is math. It’s all about counting hits, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and everything else a team needs to score more runs than their opponents. The numbers-based nature of the MLB has made it an ideal fit for the Out of the Park management sim, which debuted almost two decades ago. The OOTP Developments has grown its game’s appeal over the years by refining the simulation to the point that statisticians on MLB Network and FiveThirtyEight regularly use it to make predictions. That has led to a regular and reliable following of loyal fans who buy the new Out of the Park every year.

That core group of players enabled OOTP to go reach out and acquire the official MLB and MLB Players’ Association licenses to add real teams and players. That has attracted even more fans, but it has also cut into the companies bottom line — and that has the studio looking for ways to build more live services into its games.