MLB 2K10 Million Dollar Winner Revealed

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
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MLB 2K10 Million Dollar Winner Revealed


2K Sports has forked over $1 million to Wade McGilberry for pitching the first perfect game in Major League Baseball 2K10 [http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=76505] - on the very first day of the contest.

In January, million bucks [http://2ksports.com/] to the first person who could throw a verified perfect game. Perfect games are rare beasts in the real world (only 18 since 1880) but not so much in the videogame arena, where predictable systems and "gaming" make them far more common. Of course, even with MLB 2K10's upgraded systems it was inevitable that someone would pull it off sooner or later; as it turns out, it happened sooner, probably much sooner, than anyone expected.

Wade McGilberry, a 24-year-old gamer from Alabama with a pitcher-perfect name (oh yes, I went there) managed to toss a perfect nine on the very first day of the competition. "I never thought I'd actually win a million dollars playing a video game, it's all still sinking in for me," he said. "The game itself was fantastic - I'm glad I bought it either way - but I have to say, this is a nice return on my investment."

If 2K Sports was annoyed about the entire basis for its contest being blown out of the water within 24 hours, it did a good job of covering it up. "This competition was an amazing ride for us," Jason Argent, 2K Sports' vice president of marketing, said in a statement. "We honestly had no idea what to expect. But the incredible response from the fans and the buzz surrounding the competition was nothing that we could have ever predicted. Throwing a perfect game in Major League Baseball 2K10 is anything but easy. We congratulate Wade on his successful pursuit of perfection."

"Amazing ride" it may have been, but I wouldn't hold my breath for another one when MLB 2K11 comes out.


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Discord

Monk of Tranquility
Nov 1, 2009
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Good job, My hat's off to him I really can't say anything negative about that, He got a million for playing a game quite well. I tried and failed... BADLY!

Makes me wonder... Will they do that for other games comeing out besides sport games?
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
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Haha, I love how they said "this has been an amazing ride" as if it had gone on forever.
And it didn't last a day.

Yeah. I bet it was an amazing ride.
Good for that guy, though!
 

Cherry Cola

Your daddy, your Rock'n'Rolla
Jun 26, 2009
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And now someone just got put off from buying it.

Not saying that it will sell bad, but if someone was going to buy it with because of the competition, they wont anymore.
 

TheRealGoochman

New member
Apr 7, 2010
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That is really cool.....big grats to him.
Not many people can say I pitched a perfect game while playing the video game.....oh and I got 1Mil for doing so.

That must have been a hell of an achievement......*Blip*PerfectGame/unhitable*Blip*-Reward 10points and $1,000,000
 

NeoAC

Zombie Nation #LetsRise
Jun 9, 2008
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I'm waiting to see how Wade actually did it. If he used Roy Halladay against the Athletics, not too impressed. If he used Charlie Morton against the Yankees, then I will salute him as the greatest baseball game player ever.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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Let me get this straight...

A guy gets a million dollars for pressing the button a few times?

Or is there more to it than that?
 

Calatar

New member
May 13, 2009
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
Let me get this straight...

A guy gets a million dollars for pressing the button a few times?

Or is there more to it than that?
Couldn't ALL games be oversimplified to "pressing buttons a few times"? That doesn't mean there's no level of skill involved.
Remember, lotteries don't have any skill requirements.
 

pneuma08

Gaming Connoisseur
Sep 10, 2008
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Makes sense.

There's what, two, three thousand baseball games played in a season, which means that there's been much less than a half million total professional baseball games played in the history of ever. So if MLB 2k10 is true to life and a half-million buy it, and every one of those tries to pitch a perfect game once on day one, it should be expected that a few perfect games should pop up on day one.

This is of course assuming that half-mil plays at pro level. Nevertheless, expecting a perfect game on day 1 is well within reason.

Not to diminish the achievement, of course. Pitching a perfect game is an elite club - nearly everyone who purchases the game will never pitch a perfect game - and doing it first is even more impressive.
 

nezroy

New member
Oct 3, 2008
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Apparently statistics are, um, surprising?

There are 30 teams in MLB currently, each playing 162 regular season games. Since one game involves two teams, that works out to 2430 match-ups per season. Let's keep it simple and assume those numbers haven't changed much in the "modern era", which began in 1900, and say that there have been a total of 267300 MLB match-ups since 1900, give or take. There have been 16 perfect games in the modern era, or roughly about 1 in every 16700 match-ups.

So statistically speaking, if MLB 2K10 had a perfect, non-exploitable, non-"gameable" simulation of MLB pitching, you would still expect 1 out of every 16700 games played to result in a perfect game. Let's assume for the sake of profit that they expected to sell at least 16700 copies of MLB 2K10, considering MLB 2K9 sold 205,000 copies, or ~17k/month (according to PastaPadre [http://www.pastapadre.com/2010/04/15/march-sales-analysis-the-show-rises-again-while-2k10-falls-out-of-sight]). Probably a lot of those sales are going to be bunched up around release so it's not unreasonable to think they hit 4 or 5k units or more on opening day. Assuming that each of those buyers are probably taking it home to play at least 2 or 3 games as soon as they open the shrinkwrap, you are quickly passing 17k games played on opening day. And I won't even get into the expectations of a statistical event occurring beyond pointing out that you start to get a significant chance of seeing a "1 in x" event happening well before actually hitting x trials, so even if only 6k or 7k "games" were played on release day, it's still good odds you'd see a perfect game.

So in short, no, it's not that surprising at all that someone pitched a perfect game on day 1, even IF their pitching system is a 100% accurate simulation of MLB pitching.
 

Emlyn

New member
Sep 21, 2009
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What a wonderful example of what happens when people don't look at statistics. Congrats to the guy for his win, and congrats to 2K Sports for ignoring basic stats.
 

NeoAC

Zombie Nation #LetsRise
Jun 9, 2008
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OK, I did some checking. According to Yahoo's article Wade used Atlanta's Kenshin Kawakami against the Mets. So Opponent difficulty is a 4 out of 10, but pitcher difficulty is a 8 out of 10. Kawakami does not have good stuff. So I can safely say, I am impressed he pulled it off. He deserves the million.
 

Brotherofwill

New member
Jan 25, 2009
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nezroy said:
Apparently statistics are, um, surprising?

There are 30 teams in MLB currently, each playing 162 regular season games. Since one game involves two teams, that works out to 2430 match-ups per season. Let's keep it simple and assume those numbers haven't changed much in the "modern era", which began in 1900, and say that there have been a total of 267300 MLB match-ups since 1900, give or take. There have been 16 perfect games in the modern era, or roughly about 1 in every 16700 match-ups.

So statistically speaking, if MLB 2K10 had a perfect, non-exploitable, non-"gameable" simulation of MLB pitching, you would still expect 1 out of every 16700 games played to result in a perfect game. Let's assume for the sake of profit that they expected to sell at least 16700 copies of MLB 2K10, considering MLB 2K9 sold 205,000 copies, or ~17k/month (according to PastaPadre [http://www.pastapadre.com/2010/04/15/march-sales-analysis-the-show-rises-again-while-2k10-falls-out-of-sight]). Probably a lot of those sales are going to be bunched up around release so it's not unreasonable to think they hit 4 or 5k units or more on opening day. Assuming that each of those buyers are probably taking it home to play at least 2 or 3 games as soon as they open the shrinkwrap, you are quickly passing 17k games played on opening day. And I won't even get into the expectations of a statistical event occurring beyond pointing out that you start to get a significant chance of seeing a "1 in x" event happening well before actually hitting x trials, so even if only 6k or 7k "games" were played on release day, it's still good odds you'd see a perfect game.

So in short, no, it's not that surprising at all that someone pitched a perfect game on day 1, even IF their pitching system is a 100% accurate simulation of MLB pitching.
Exactly, that's what I thought. According to VGChartz, MLB: The Show 10 sold 150 000 copies in the first week. It's realistic to expect that around 50 000 were bought on the opening day. So if every day 1 buyer plays only 3 full games (and the crazy fans probably stay up all night) then we already have 150 000 games played, which should result in a few perfect games.

It's cool to see such a competition but they can only blame themselves for losing their wager. But yeah, it is pretty imposible for a single player to get a perfect score, most people will probably only play around 200 games or so.