Many of you have had good questions about what has been going on these last few months. Today is the day we can finally, definitively answer those questions.

First, please read http://www.baseballboss.com/pages/announcement.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the news those of us who have played, supported and worked on the game since its launch in July of 2008 were hoping for.

A number of issues completely out of our control made 2009 a very challenging year for the game. As players and customers, I know that made it difficult for you as well and for that we are sorry. As to the nature of those challenges, I’ll only say that those of you who know baseball history know that labor and management have infrequently seen eye to eye on a number of issues. We also hope you understand that any lack of communication or clarity about the future was not out of apathy or indifference, it was us trying to make sense of a changing licensing landscape and trying to run a game at the same time.

Our current plan is to leave the game up through March 10th, but we will keep you posted on any date changes. Earlier today, we closed the store immediately upon making the decision to wind down the game, and have set active Memberships not to renew. If you have specific concerns related to your account, please contact support@baseballboss.com.

We certainly had our share of ups and downs along the way. I believe we did the first interesting thing with the baseball game genre in many years. We made some cool virtual cards. Through it all, the one constant has been our players. We want to thank everyone who has supported the game and actively created and participated in the strong community that formed.  We wouldn’t have made it as far or as long as we did without the support of all of you.

As many of you know, Baseball Boss is a little over a year old. As Gussie Busch said about his 1982 St. Louis Cardinals, it’s been “a heckuva year.”

The fun part (and the challenging part) about building games for the web is that the web evolves incredibly rapidly. A great example of this is what has happened to gaming over the past year. It’s impossible not to notice the impact social networks - and especially Facebook - have had on how people play games. After a great deal of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided the best way to build games that large numbers of people play and love is to focus our energies on developing games for social networks. To be clear, we are still extremely committed and very passionate about building fun social games.

Gridiron Live (http://apps.facebook.com/gridironlive/) is our first game on that path. Even though it is in beta and we still are doing much to improve it, it is a first-of-its-kind intersection of sports gaming and social gaming. We are very encouraged by what we’ve seen in GridIron Live in just its first 2 weeks. In the coming weeks, we will release another new Facebook game. We are proud of these two games and believe they will add significantly to the next generation of games people play on social networks.

As a current player of Baseball Boss, it’s natural to wonder what this means. The answer is twofold. First, we are not planning to take this game - or any of our existing games - down. We will continue to maintain and support them, although perhaps not at the level that the most passionate of our players would like. Second, we will launch new versions of some (and possibly all) of our web games on Facebook. We will do our best to make the transition from web game to Facebook game as smooth as possible, and do what’s right by the people who have helped make our web games what they are.

Two things are evidence of this strategy. First, Warstorm has a new card expansion coming out today. Second, we will roll out a new generation of one our current games to Facebook in November. We’ll be announcing more details in a few weeks, but the introduction of that game is close and we think it looks great. We’ve found that Facebook provides a number of opportunities to make games even more fun to play, and we’re looking forward to doing innovative things on that platform, just as we have done on the web.

Know that this is not a decision we made lightly. We recognize that not everyone will be satisfied. But it is an exciting time for Challenge Games. Our goal has always been to make Baseball Boss the greatest baseball game ever, and that has not changed. We believe this transition to social gaming will bring all our games to an entirely new audience while doing what is best for our players, our company, our employees, and our investors.

Another great Sports Illustrated story…this one a conversation with Bill James about the “perfect” start to Albert Pujols’ career. We featured this same thing in a card of Mr. Pujols months ago in the Baseball Boss Friends + Rivals Series 1 cards. And don’t forget the corresponding card of Joe D. from that set.

As we wrote here, this is the second strange coincidence…and we think it’s a pretty cool one.

A few facts from the story that caught my eye in the story:

• Pujols’ career low on-base percentage is .394—that’s his low—and to give you an idea about that, Cal Ripken Jr., Ryne Sandberg, Ernie Banks, Lou Brock and Jim Rice never once had an on-base percentage that high.
• His worst season? Maybe 2002, when he hit only .314 with 34 homers, 127 RBIs and 118 runs. “By my math,” Bill says, “Albert would have to repeat his weakest season 11 times to make the Hall of Fame.”

We were battling 2 separate technical issues today.  The first was with the Class play system, the second with the amount of data that accumulated around Challenges.  Both of the fixes we made should help improve site performance.

More details in these forum posts by Isao & Savage.  Sorry for any trouble this caused…