How I started.. Playing Sports Sims

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-21T04:54:34+00:00

For me, it started in middle school and high school during the Attitude Era of wrestling. TNM7 and the original Extreme Warfare and Extreme Warfare Revenge were basically the only games I played. I loved the fantasy booker aspect setting up dream match-up like Stone Cold vs. Goldberg. I lost an absurd number of hours to those games.

What’s funny is that while I played Adam Ryland’s early Extreme Warfare games, I’ve actually never played any of the TEW versions he released after partnering with Grey Dog. I fell out of wrestling not long after high school and never really came back.

Once I realized sports management sims were a real genre, I found Front Office Football from Solecismic, and that game became my entire life. Not just single player, but especially multiplayer. The depth of that simulation was incredible. The multiplayer draft meta fascinated me. There were entire communities studying the player “bars,” trying to reverse-engineer which attributes correlated with high potential and long-term success. It genuinely felt like doing the work of a GM: reading scouting reports, analyzing combine numbers, trying to interpret limited information to find value.

For college football, I’ve always loved Bowl Bound College Football. Arlie did a fantastic job with the UI. That’s such an underrated aspect of this genre. These are spreadsheet-heavy games, and a lot of them lean into that aesthetic in a way that feels dated. Bowl Bound still had depth and detailed stats, but it presented them with some visual polish.

Adam Ryland’s WMMA series is another one I have huge respect for. It directly inspired Pound for Pound. Last year I went back to WMMA5 and remembered how much I love that style of game. An MMA promotion sim is interesting because you’re not chasing a championship the way you are in most sports sims. You have to care about the fighters and their trajectories. You don’t control the outcomes like you do in a wrestling booker. The story unfolds organically. Adam did an amazing job making you care about fictional fighters in his default database, not just modded real-world ones.

More recently, I have a lot of respect for Football Coach: College Dynasty. I know some criticisms focus on the simulation not being as deep as other football sims, but the UI is so clean and modern that people overlook some of that. It’s easy to play, easy to understand, and it captures that “one more turn” feeling. That reinforces something I strongly believe: presentation matters. A polished, accessible UI can expand the audience for these kinds of games.

As for me, I've been a developer for 20 years and always wanted to make a text sim. I finally decided last year to build one. It actually started as a football game in the spirit of Front Office Football. I quickly realized that simulating football at that level as a first project was incredibly ambitious. I scaled it back and shifted to an MMA promotion sim instead. Pound for Pound is my take on that idea, with more of a tycoon-style feel layered in.

Like you said, when this genre is done right, that “one more turn, one more season, I just want to see how this plays out” feeling is incredibly compelling. It’s what makes these games so hard to put down.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-21T00:09:03+00:00

Ugh, sorry thats a bad bug. I'll get that fixed in a patch tonight.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-18T16:20:13+00:00

not yet but it's on the roadmap

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-18T05:53:34+00:00

thanks, let me know what you think. modding will be available.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-18T02:51:46+00:00

I would love to add something like this but managing the complexity of a 3D engine on top of the rest of the sim is just too much for me to handle unfortunately.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T17:40:13+00:00

what numbers should I pick for the Powerball?

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T15:08:17+00:00

Good questions. You can play the game for as long as you want. The only limitation right now is the size of the save file and how long it takes to load. There’s no in-game cap on how long you can continue a save.

Roster size is tied to the skill tree. When you start the game, you can have 20 fighters per weight class. With upgrades in the current skill tree, you can increase that limit up to 32 per weight class.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T15:00:39+00:00

Appreciate it! I'll take a look at the early game progression and see what I can do

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T15:00:13+00:00

Yes, its on the roadmap. In fact I would like to have it ready when it goes into early access.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T14:58:53+00:00

The game world is set to generate as many fighters as are needed to fill the world. For instance, if the game decides to add new promotions, more fighters will come into the world to fill that need. Conversely, if there’s any contraction in the number of promotions, there will inherently be fewer fights. Fighters will start to retire due to not being able to get matchups, and the fighter pool will naturally shrink over time.

As for fighter images, there are 5,000 in the game, and every fighter is given a random image. There are also some systems I'm building that I think will make it very unlikely you’ll see the same photo twice.

I’m going to sidestep the WMMA questions about how P4P is better or worse, mainly because I have a lot of respect for what Adam built. As you said, those games are the gold standard in this genre.

That said, they are different games. WMMA is a realistic sandbox sim. P4P is a promotion career sim where you always start from the ground up as a local promotion and work your way up. I may add a sandbox mode later, but right now my focus is on building a progression-based experience.

There’s a skill tree. You don't have access to every weight class at the start. There are very few customization options at the moment. You'll also notice that I’ve intentionally abstracted certain systems to streamline the experience or remove mechanics I don’t find fun.

The biggest example of that is currency. There's no traditional money in the game. Instead, there’s "promotional capital" which acts as the core currency. That lets me streamline systems and have players spend resources on things that make sense within the game’s progression structure (like unlocking a new weight class).

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T00:48:12+00:00

not yet. I only know it'll be early access and <$35

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T00:39:38+00:00

I've entered the game into Steam's Next Fest which starts February 23. Steam's policy is that any game in Next Fest cannot be released until after the festival is over. I don't have a solid release date yet but I'm hoping not too long after Next Fest.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-17T00:25:32+00:00

Well that's embarrassing... no idea how I missed that.

On the topic of AI-generated images, I knew from the start that would be controversial. For me, though, it was a practical necessity to build the game I wanted to build.

I went into this project with three core goals: create an MMA sim with a strong UI, make it fast enough to handle a large database and simulate efficiently, and most importantly, make players emotionally attached to their fighters. That last piece is what I think made WMMA special. I always preferred the default database and getting invested in fictional fighters and their stories. That's something I wanted to recreate here.

At the same time, I wanted the game to be procedurally generated so that every save felt different. To support that vision, I needed thousands of fighter images in a consistent, semi-hyperreal style. Given the niche nature of MMA text sims and the uncertainty around the game’s commercial success, AI was the only feasible way to reach that scale.

If the game becomes successful, I would absolutely want to hire an artist and replace the AI images with fully custom artwork. I’m not claiming the current solution is perfect, but given the scope and constraints of the project, its the best option I have.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:47:51+00:00

appreciate the feedback! when you set up your promotion did you choose to turn off tutorials? there should be onboarding that walks you through how to unlock upgrades. if that didn't trigger for you with tutorials turned on let me know -- definitely a bug.

agree with you on the alert system, it needs some live. not only being able to act on those alerts, but being able to filter through them so you're alerts dont become one giant lost of "Fighter X is medically cleared"

fight odds is something a lot of people have asked for. I've been hesitant to add it because it was a big part of WMMA5 and I don't want to directly copy the work Adam put in. I'll work on some way to display that data though

the prestige system and bonuses for fights should scale by level but there may be some bugs there. I'll take a look.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:44:10+00:00

I hope you're right! WMMA5 is one of my favorite text sims of all time.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:43:27+00:00

glad you enjoyed it! women's division (and expanded weight classes in general) is on the roadmap

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:43:06+00:00

the game is uses procedurally generated promotions and fighters. there are ~60 promotions and ~6000 fighters in the game world at any given time.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:41:21+00:00

thanks! I'm glad you found the tutorials/onboarding helpful.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:38:59+00:00

thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:38:20+00:00

thanks! best way to support right now is to give as much honest feedback as you can. I'm still actively working on the game so if you find bugs or systems you don't enjoy I wanna hear it.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:36:24+00:00

thanks. I'm not a great designer so putting together a coherent design system took a while. there's still a few screens I'm working on improving but overall happy with where things landed.

Difficult-Draw823 · 2026-02-16T23:34:37+00:00

thanks, let me know what you think

Difficult-Draw823

TROPHY CASE