Happy Holidays!
OOTP 15 and FHM 2014 are 25% off on Steam!
And You Could Win a $100 Gift Card and Free Games in Our Tagline Contest!

It's that time of year again: The winter meetings are over (were those guys clicking the "Make this trade work now!" button or what?), the NHL season is in full swing, and Steam is having its annual holiday sale.

That's right: From now through Jan. 2, OOTP 15 and FHM 2014 are just $14.99, 25% off their regular price. How's that for an early Christmas present? You'll have enough baseball and hockey managing to last you through the New Year and beyond.

Purchase OOTP 15 on Steam		Purchase FHM 2014 on Steam

Come Up With OOTP Development's Tagline and Win a Great Prize!

A short, punchy tagline gets people excited, and we know OOTP Developments needs one. But what should it be? "We Make the Best Sports Management Games on the Planet" just doesn't have the right ring, and Markus' suggestion, "Bow Down Before Us," isn't quite right either.

So we thought we'd turn to you, our loyal customers, and make our tagline search a contest. Send your suggestions to tagline@ootpdevelopments.com by midnight Eastern time on January 11, 2015 and we'll announce our favorite in that month's newsletter.

Remember: The tagline needs to work across all our games, not just one or two of them, so think about ways to encapsulate the overall excitement of sports management games. Any entry with a specific sports reference won't work.

The winner will receive a $100 gift card, along with free copies of FHM 2015, OOTP 16, iOOTP Baseball 2015, and BTS Football.

How About the Official BTS Football Logo Too?

Since we're in a gift giving mood, and the NFL season is heading toward an exciting final couple weeks before the playoffs, we thought we'd also share the Beyond the Sideline Football logo and start screen. Lead developer Francis Cole remains hard at work on the game and we're still planning to release it sometime in 2015.

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Tolkien Baseball: One League to Rule Them All

When Lester Norton and his friends were trying to come up with the name for an online OOTP league, someone jokingly suggested "Shire vs. Mordor," and the idea stuck. Solonor's Groovy Computer Baseball League, also known simply as Tolkien Baseball, was born, with such teams as the Dead Marshes Uruk-Hai and the Lake Town Archers occupying the Mordor and Shire conferences.

Soon Norton was using OOTP's impressive customization features to ensure player names were of the "Firbal the Nasty" and "Isilborn Imrilron" variety, and that they could hit the DL because of a bad case of "Brandywine River Fever." He even tweaked Facegen to create player image templates based on orcs, hobbits, elves, humans, and dwarves.

"I really liked the way you could customize everything about the game in OOTP," he says in the latest article on our blog.

OOTP Tips and Tricks: Draft Strategies and Spreadsheets

What's your draft strategy in OOTP? Reddit user AbsurdDoctor has created a spreadsheet that lets you analyze batters and pitchers in more detail. It could come in handy the next time you're looking to plug a few holes in your organization.

Happy Holidays

We wish you and your loved ones peaceful and happy holidays. Enjoy the time and have a Happy New Year! See you next month, when we'll announce the winner of the OOTP Developments tagline contest and debut the new features in OOTP 16!

The OOTP Developments Team