Most modern gamers probably associate the name Don Daglow with the popular Neverwinter Nights series, but to a sports geek like me, Daglow means one thing: computer baseball.

This past weekend I had a chance to talk to Daglow. For those unaware, he is the creator of the first mainframe computer baseball simulator. He was a pioneer in the world of console baseball and helped to create titles such as Intellivision's World Series Baseball. Other titles of his include the seminal PC baseball titles Earl Weaver Baseball, Tony La Russa Baseball and Old-Time Baseball.

When I spoke with him, he had some interesting thoughts on the state of the current baseball video games. We also discussed some ways these games could be improved, as well as why they most likely will not get those improvements.

Let's Turn the Clock Back

From a youth spent playing Cadaco-Ellis' All-Star Baseball to years of refining his mainframe baseball game in the 1970s, Don Daglow has always been a baseball fan.

Though he's also made a name for himself in the MMORPG and role-playing world, Daglow’s creations with Eddie Dombrower and Stormfront Studios in the late '80s and early '90s have helped make the current generation of console baseball games what they are today.

The Earl Weaver and Tony La Russa Baseball series were both made for the most rabid of baseball fans. Combining arcade-style action with real simulation, the games were unequivocally the forefathers of modern series such as MLB: The Show and Major League Baseball 2K.

And, while the current titles are obviously graphically superior in both play and presentation, there are some things that those older games got right and the newer games did not.

The number one thing missing from the current titles is customization.

Customization

In both of the aforementioned series, the customization that was available was incredible.

On top of conducting fantasy drafts, which are still available today, you could create completely new teams -- all the way down to their uniform colors -- before stacking them into custom leagues imagined into existence by you, the fan.

In Earl Weaver Baseball, you could even build custom stadiums, which is something that could be mind-blowing on a system like the PS3.

"When we started talking about custom stadiums, most people would have done something pretty basic," Daglow said. "One reason why the Weaver stadium customization was so aggressive was Eddie Dombrower's commitment to that. He was driving for something great."

In EWB, stadiums could be built with varying fence distances, not just to left, right and center, but to the power alleys as well. What resulted were unbelievably fun situations where you could face a team loaded with pitching in a cavernous ballpark, or you could see a lineup of power-hitting lefties with a park suited just for them. It was awesome, and what's more, it really helped immerse you in your own baseball world.

An Entire Universe of Players To Choose From

While you can create players in the current generation of baseball games and even play with a select group of legends, nothing on the console market today can compare with the universe of players available in Old-Time Baseball.

The game was released just before the 1994 baseball strike, and it allowed you to basically use any team from 1871 to 1981, which was essentially 12,000 real former Major Leaguers. If you wanted to see Sandy Koufax face the Yankees' Murderer's Row, then you could make it happen in Old-Time Baseball.

And in games like Weaver and La Russa, you could add individual players or even entire leagues of created players. You entered their stats and boom, the game calculated their ratings and made them perform true-to-life in future simulations.

"Picture that 15-year-old kid writing down every play from a baseball board game and keeping every stat," Daglow said. "And then think what that kid would love to have a computer do. That's what Earl Weaver Baseball was.

"It took care of the stats for you. You could simulate a complete season, you could add your own players and create your own leagues. It was everything I had wanted when I was 15 on my paper game."

Legal wrangling between baseball, the players' union and various old-time players might make a game such as Old-Time Baseball tough today, but text-based games like Baseball Mogul and Out of the Park Baseball make it easy to toy around with all the old players and teams, so why wouldn't it be possible today?

"There are two factors at work," Daglow said. "Now that the games business is a big business, and the budgets that go into baseball games have become so huge, you can't please smaller audiences. Guys publishing baseball games have to go for big audiences.

"Baseball sim fans who drove the popularity of Weaver and La Russa -- and that market is still there, but it's simply not a big enough market to dominate the thinking of the publishers. So we get smaller games that don't have as large budgets from secondary publishers that are trying to address those issues.

"It really is a matter of scale," he continued, moving back to the big-market developers. "The designers of those games try to get good simulation elements in there, it just can't be the center of the game -- they're forced to focus on other things."

But, for those of us who hold out hope for an all-encompassing console or game with both action and true sim baseball characteristics, Daglow said it could eventually happen.

"Every so often you're working on a game that's aimed at the mass market, [but then] you get a little bit extra time, and you're able to add some feature that is for a specialized market just because you have the time," Daglow said. "It could happen."


So come now, tell us what elements from bygone times need to be put back into baseball games of the future?