@Tjuz Oh yeah! Count me in! I’ve never heard of this before but I have a little experience with fantasy football. I was bad at it because I didn’t know all the players very well, but I’m pretty sure I know my games better!

@Th3solution Well, it seems like we might be able to play out A League of Their Own. I was thinking @Ravix or @Werehog might be interested? Just tagging you in case you missed the thread and are interested, but no pressure if not! Otherwise, I'd be fine going ahead with just the two of us if no one else shows interest if you are. Which of our behemoths would come out on top?!

@Tjuz sure, if all I have to do is remember to pick some games and perform occasional banter as to why I shall win all the awards etc, and leave all the actual work up to you.

Anyway, as I was reading your main post and the words 'name your publisher' crossed my eyeballs my primitive brain shouted "BoobySoft" so I guess we're commited now 😭😂 if the word booby is too offensive i'm sure 'BubiSoft' will suffice.

@Ravix Does BoobySoft exclusely release erotic visual novels by any chance? Kidding, I shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I'm sure you have a lot of award-winning fare under your belt! Maybe even some 3D RPGs with incredible plot if you catch my drift. You'll be the most beloved publisher by gaming bros across the world, no doubt!

@Tjuz Oi, Oi! You should have seen the '3D RPGs' on her, mate.

I do actually think your game is a good way to have us engage with what is coming out and could be good for discovery. I've already discovered a game I hadn't heard of but think will be charming and popular on release. But of course I won't say what it is yet in case I need to pick it for the fantasy league 👀

I guess even if just a few of us get involved it will be worth doing for that alone. Plus the banter

@Ravix Making good use of BoobySoft's graphical advancements, I see! The amount of pixels you can use nowadays for some accurate simulation. Truly something to behold.

But yeah, I agree it's a fun way to interact with the release schedule. Like I said in the main post, I'd always wanted to try doing it, but I lack people who care enough about games in my regular life! This seemed as safe a bet as any to find some fellow nerds who will equally enjoy obsessing about upcoming releases and have some friendly competition. Or in your case, maybe the occasional unfriendly competition. All are welcome as long as you don't get your posts censored!

I will now have to start thinking about which game you could possibly be talking about to steal it from right under you... is HuniePop 3 coming out by any chance?

@Tjuz @Ravix

Ah, blast I didn’t name my publisher yet. Um… how can I top Booby(Bubi)soft?

Some of my ideas have included —

• HackyurVision Gizzard
• Fartari
• EF Projekt Blue
• Do Nod
• Electronic Farts
• To and From Software
• Pukas Arts
• Mo’ Jank Studios
• Not Rare but Well-done
• Take-Three
• ZeniSmacks
• Spike MyPunchOft
• NetSleaze
• Square-Hallucinogenics

Despite some of these being decent, I think I’ll go with a classic. My publisher shall be called: Pretendo. I think it fits the assignment.

Hopefully some other users have interest in joining in. If TJ is going to do all the work, what have we got to lose?

@Th3solution what's left to lose other than our collective minds.

@Tjuz when were you hoping to finalise it to get people picking? I will still play with you two even if the other people can't see the potential wonders of your idea. Although doing it in public may paint us as the nerdiest nerds of the nerdy forum, but I will happily fight anyone that tries to make fun of you for wanting to get people engaged with a little forum fun 😁

@Th3solution These are some great names you've come up with. Each and every one fills me with confidence that you'll put out nothing but the highest quality of games. What could Pukas Arts mean otherwise?!

@Ravix I planned to keep it open 'til tomorrow, so... not long until you'll catch me tagging you for your attention and then harrassing you to make your pick every time it's your turn! I hope you're excited! I'll explain the whats and hows in more detail as we go. Only then may people see the nerdy fun they missed out on. It's hard to be pioneer folk like us!

@Tjuz Count me in, please! And with apologies for being late to the party. I can't promise that I'll be able to meet every deadline, but I'll try my best. I should also mention that, while I have heard of Fantasy Football before, I have absolutely no idea how it works and so, while your opening post does a decent job of explaining what I'm signing up for, I may ask to have my hand held at certain points.

As for my fictional publisher / developer name, I can't decide between "BioWerehog" or "iDoss" and since there's a good chance you might be considering a BioWare pun for yourself, I'll let you pick whichever fits best with the others. Thanks in advance!

@Tjuz Is there a Youtube video that explains this? I read your first post twice and don't get it at all. I thought fantasy football was that game the UAE were making that had Zeus as a footballer etc on the trailer and everyone on chat here (State of Play) met the announcement with absolute disgust. Also Werehog mentioned deadlines, I'm more curious than committed.

@Werehog @GirlVersusGame (+ also anyone else passing by who is curious what this is about)
Not to butt in and supercede our fearless leader @Tjuz , but I can try to do a simple fantasy sports 101 education and perhaps this will seem less daunting. I’ll simplify it to the bare bones, just for clarity—

The concept of fantasy sports (fantasy football being the most popular version, but this is done with baseball, basketball, hockey,… just about any sport) is basically a bunch of buddies get together before the season begins and each picks their own virtual fictional team made up from players in the league. Then, as the season rolls on, each of those players stats on the real-world field are attributed to your virtual team. When the players you’ve picked play well, you do well!

So if you have a player on your team, like for example Lionel Messi, and he scores a goal in a game, he earns you virtual points for your virtual team. The basic idea is that you choose a team filled with the players who you think will have good individual performances that year.

The hard part comes where someone (TJ in our case) has to come up with a scoring and tracking system to attribute and translate real-world performance metrics to create points to the virtual teams. This is where it may get a little confusing, but we don’t have to worry about that as TJ will track and score everything. For now, just ignore the stuff in the first post about “sleeper picks” and “counter picks” until you understand the basics. Which is that the basic idea is our job would be just to pick a “team” of games that we think will perform well. Then when we are at the end of the season we’ll see who prognosticated the best.

So basically instead of running a virtual sports team, we’re running a virtual gaming production company.

The other confusing thing if you’ve never done fantasy sports is the “draft”. Drafting a player simply means choosing them for your team. A player can only be on one team; multiple teams can’t have the same player. So in our case, we may all think Wolverine is going to do well and we all want it for our personal fictional production company, but only one of us gets to have it. Who gets it? Well, that’s the “draft” process. “Drafting” is the concept of taking turns picking so that everyone gets an even shot at picking good players for their team. (That’s stuff up there about the “snake order” draft process is one popular way to make things fair)

I’ll pause here for questions.

@Th3solution Your explanation makes it sound like dynamic trading in the stock market. With stock validation and statistics and how it relates to real-world metrics, the idea being you simulate the future reaction and their reaction before any earning report. It's how a lot of insider trading goes undiscovered too, it leaves room to gamble with assets you don't technically have. At least it sounds like that to me, I'm not sure how to explain shifts in market sentiment but it sounds very similar to exit positions which you could apply to both what you and Tjuz said. In that context I get it but I don't follow particular studio earnings only a number of specific funds and investment branches, it would give me an unfair advantage if I was aware of something before it was made public like what happened a couple of months ago.

But the word fantasy is there so you mean publishers that aren't real? It also sounds like managing sleeper stocks and Tjuz's description made it sound like the shuffling of a portfolio to diversify and anticipate, which would also give someone the advantage. I literally just got messaged from Tjuz when I was typing this, I'll probably just quietly watch the thread. I'm not going to pretend to follow studios or their newest releases, if it was the business side then perhaps but I think the business side of the gaming industry currently is quite negative.

So basically instead of running a virtual sports team, we’re running a virtual gaming production company.

• So virtual (simulated) performance optimization through shell companies but in a virtual setting? straight away my mind went to wash trading to increase fake volume. This is why I shouldn't play that game. I wish I had other words to explain what I'm gathering from both posts, and it would be cheating if I bribed Tjuz outside of the site with jelly-beans. I believe in playing fair, I'm just not sure how. I definitely think I'll just watch, but thank you for explaining.

@GirlVersusGame you pick some games that are yet to release when Tjuz asks, and then you score points based on the review scores it garners. I know we are all kind of overthinkers here, but sometimes simplification is best 😄

@Tjuz @Th3Solution @Werehog I think that is all we really need to know to actually play this, right? And Tjuz will be in charge of the actual complexities that if there are any.

I did want to check was it based on just critic reviews? I'm not familar with open critic and if it combines user reviews or not.

@Ravix If they are real games why is the publisher not? do you mean if someone says 'Grand Theft Auto 6 all on black' then spins the wheel if the game performs well they get points? It's basically predicting review scores through industry metrics but you get to pick a not real publisher, or if the games aren't real then is there some kind of random generator program which gives the scores? which people then guess, I'll look into it again later, but dibs on PocketPet, like Palworlds Developer Pocketpair.

@GirlVersusGame Yeah Ravix says it succinctly. This is going to be much simpler and I don’t think TJ plans on factoring in all the finances. I think most of that data is hard to get anyways. And we all know whoever picks GTA6 would win hands down if we included a game’s financial performance. So it will just be how the game scores on reviews, I think.

@Ravix @Tjuz One wrinkle that could be done is that the Push Square review score be weighted more as an extra bonus outside of the OpenCritic score. Would make for a fun homage to the site. Of course then that’s where we could get into ‘insider trading’ types of machinations where I could bribe Liam to inflate his review score for my games. 😂

@GirlVersusGame The games are real. And the points we get are based on the real review scores. The game’s real publisher is not a factor and is insignificant. We are the “make-believe” pretend publisher in this game. My company will be called “Pretendo” and I will draft a stable of games that I will be the make-believe fantasy publisher for. There won’t be a wheel spinning, we will actively choose the games we want in our portfolio through the draft.

edit: it might make sense to realize this game will take months… as the review scores for the upcoming game releases will be trickling in for the rest of the year.

@Tjuz Also, when it comes time to do the draft, are you going to give us a large list of upcoming 2026 releases to choose from, or is it up to us to know what’s coming out?

Also #2 — if we pick a game and it ends up being delayed into 2027, do we get to pick another, or does that mean we’re just out of luck. Personally I think if a game is delayed then we should have to suffer the consequences of not getting credit for one slot of our portfolio, kind of like if I drafted a fantasy football player and then if they get injured then it’s just too bad as that’s the risk we take and I get a big fat zero for their contribution.