Your Chance To Participate In A New Football Phenomenon (Sandbox Simulations)

[Rain Man]

I apologize if the mods think this is soliciting, and I guess it is, but at the same time it's beta testing a new product developed by long-time planeteers, and it's free.

cdcox and I have been developing a new football game for the thoughtful fan, where players build franchises and compete against each other. A description is below.

If you're interested, we're offering the game for free in Year 1 to Chiefsplanet members, with the goal of both giving the system a dry run and also hooking you like Phillip Morris. You can go to www.sandboxsimulations.com to sign up, and use the access code 6Lanier3.

Here's the overview:

Build and manage a full 53-player roster over multiple seasons, as an offseason activity to give you year-round football

Select your personnel to match your offensive and defensive scheme. Every position matters – even your blocking tight end.

Realistic and accurate simulations of league games based on head-to-head matchups against other teams in your league.


This is essentially a new concept in fantasy football that attempts to simulate as closely as possible the management of a real NFL franchise over a multi-year period. Unlike regular fantasy football, every position on the offense and defense contributes to your success or failure. On special teams, the punter, kicker, and kick returners matter.

In Sandbox Football you will build a team – an entire 53-man football team – via an initial draft, and will maintain it year after year in annual rookie drafts, trading periods, and free agency. You compete against teams in your league. In the first year of the game, before the start of the NFL season, you will build your roster by drafting veterans and rookies through separate drafts, and through trades with other teams in the league. Your roster is frozen at the beginning of the NFL season. During the real regular NFL season, you can focus on your traditional fantasy games and perhaps keep on eye on your Sandbox roster as our statistical models build the data on player performances. At the end of the regular NFL season, the Sandbox season begins. There will be 16 games in the season. In real time, the season will run about 8 weeks (2 alternate reality games per week).

Game outcomes will be simulated based on the performance of individual players during the just-completed NFL regular season. The simulations, developed by a PhD statistical expert, estimate how individual players will perform in the context of your alternate reality team competing head-to-head against other teams in the league and with the specific team that you have built. The simulations will consider the offensive and defensive schemes that you select. So you can build your roster to support a power running game or a high-flying passing attack. You can run a 3-4 or 4-3 base defense. You can run nickel formations or four-wide receiver sets. You can rotate your DL to keep them fresh.

The game is more about building a team than playing video games. So this isn't Madden, but you will have the ability to tweak your game plan to take the best advantage of your roster and the weaknesses of your opponent. Injuries are a factor in the game. If a player is unavailable during weeks 3 through 6 in the NFL, he is also unavailable during the same weeks in the alternate reality season. So roster depth matters. The game simulations are based on the most advanced statistics and the latest research regarding what matters in winning an NFL game. But, the outcomes of the games have a random component, just like real NFL games.

The calendar for the alternate reality league year will look something like this:
• Jan to Mid March: Alternate Reality regular season and playoffs.
• Mid-March to the beginning of NFL season: Roster building through trades, veteran draft (first year), free agent drafts (2nd year and beyond), and rookie draft.
• Beginning of NFL season to end of regular NFL season: Alternate reality league is dormant, but the NFL players are generating their performance stats for the up-coming AR league.
• Rinse and repeat.

Copyright Sandbox Simulations, all rights reserved.

We're still finalizing the cost structure, but this won't be an expensive game to play at all. It might range from a few bucks a year to $50 per year, depending on a few factors.

Year 1 will require a couple of days of drafting with rather high intensity, but we've got it set up where you can put your draft list together and do customized and automated drafting if you like.

So...go! Now! Time to get ready for the draft!

[Rain Man]

Reminder that everyone needs to be ready for both the veteran and rookie drafts in this startup phase. The Wichita Potheads are #1 in the rookie draft.

[rageeumr]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Not at present, but I can make that an opt in. I don't want to bomb people with unwanted email. On the list.

I would love this. I would also like the option to be notified via email when I get a message sent through the Sandbox site.

Do you want us to continue to post suggestions here? Should we send them through the site? Do these pants make my ass look fat?

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by rageeumr

I would love this. I would also like the option to be notified via email when I get a message sent through the Sandbox site.

Do you want us to continue to post suggestions here? Should we send them through the site? Do these pants make my ass look fat?

Yes, no (here is fine), and not if you stand at an angle.

[rageeumr]

Anybody else having script errors when you try to fill out your draft board? Every time I search, move a guy to the board, etc there's a ~10-15 second delay. And once every 10 times or so I get a script error:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

Script: http://sandboxsimulations.com/javascript/jquery.js:5396

[shorman22]

9 more teams for league 2

[DMAC]

Ok, just to be clear...

I have tonight and tomorrow to prepare for the draft, which is at 4:49pm cst?

[rageeumr]

Originally Posted by DMAC

Ok, just to be clear...

I have tonight and tomorrow to prepare for the draft, which is at 4:49pm cst?

Close. 4:49 CDT

[DMAC]

Originally Posted by rageeumr

Close. 4:49 CDT

Haha thanks.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by DMAC

Ok, just to be clear...

I have tonight and tomorrow to prepare for the draft, which is at 4:49pm cst?

For the first couple rounds, that is probably a good idea.

I don't plan to have more than 50 players on my draft board at any given time. That would get me through two rounds. So you can likely spread your draft planning over several days.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by rageeumr

I would love this. I would also like the option to be notified via email when I get a message sent through the Sandbox site.

On the to do list for tonight, but I'm not sure I'll get to it.

Right now I'm trying to solve the IE issue, which looks like it might take a while.

[Branden Albert's Huge Balls]

Will we receive emails when we are on the clock?

[Old Dog]

Will try one more again, but hope this diesn't end up being as big of a waste of time as the Alternate Reality games where we drafted 30 rounds plus a rookie draft for nothing to ever be done with them.
Need Six more in the second league it looks like

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by truebigdog

Will try one more again, but hope this diesn't end up being as big of a waste of time as the Alternate Reality games where we drafted 30 rounds plus a rookie draft for nothing to ever be done with them.
Need Six more in the second league it looks like

That game was basically the motivation for this. The drafting/trading process should be much better than the manual system we used in that game. And I will definitely follow through on the team evaluation. This has been cooking for well over a year. We both have a lot of resources invested in this project to get it this far.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by rageeumr

Anybody else having script errors when you try to fill out your draft board? Every time I search, move a guy to the board, etc there's a ~10-15 second delay. And once every 10 times or so I get a script error:

Hmm, I had no problems and I put roughly 60 people on my board. What browser are you using?

(I have no idea how to fix it, but whenever I hear people who know what they're doing, they ask what browser you have. Maybe it'll help cdcox fix it.)

[lostcause]

Is all player performance based upon their season statistics or is it projections?

i.e. If I want to run a spread offense with Chase Daniels at QB, will I get a rating for Chase? Or if he has 0 snaps, does he have a 0 rating?