Inspired by the early versions of ESPN.com, the emergence of more in-depth dynasty modes in sports video games, and an inspiration to create a community where sports gamers could discuss the ups and downs of their seasons, Dynasty Manager was born.
When online gaming came on the scene for sports gamers, I gave it a try but was pretty horrible. I would get my butt kicked — so, I was the guy that helped your team’s record improve in the league. Eventually, I fell back to the “me versus the CPU” style of competition. Still, there was something missing in just playing the CPU, there was no “community” — no place to discuss your team, your trades, your losses, your rise to the top. You could try posting in so-called “dynasty threads” at Sega Sports or when the EA Sports boards had a less corporate feel. Being a visual person, I wasn’t going to settle for that option.
I was a huge Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan around 2001, and I wanted to add another level of realism to my football season I was running on Madden, so I thought, why not make a web page, throw up my schedule, add reults, write stories about the game outcomes and create reports on what was happening within the virtual Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization (signings, trades, injuries, rumors, etc…).
Once I got my Bucc’s web page functional, my Madden-experience took on a whole new life. While the Madden franchise inched towards becoming next-gen, I was adding my own layer of “realism” to my sports gaming experience. I actually began to take winning and losing more serious because when writing about the games and posting updates, I sort of felt like a sports journalist reporting on my team.
The web page, with real pictures of the players representing their virtual Madden counterparts, made the season come alive! See the Buccaneers pages before there was ever a Dynasty Manager:
Somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that other sports gamers would love to have the same type of web page to track their successes and failures. Only problem, nothing legitimate existed — and so for a whole year, I taught myself how to write programming code, understood what web servers were and did, and how to store content in online databases and how to create a web page out of that data on the fly — basically, I was creating a social media network for sports gamers (and not realizing it).
I finally launched Dynasty Manager in 2003 (click here for what it looked like back then) with much anticipation. Finally, a site for the rest of us — the gamers who wanted to talk about what was happening (and most importantly show what happened) in their “me vs the computer” world.
Dynasty Manager was created to be the place where those “solo” gamers could come, set up a page, learn a little HTML and go all out with team page design, become wannabe sports writers, team owners, and friends — all in one place.
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