Long before sports games became one of the biggest pillars of the video game industry, before annual franchises, Ultimate Team modes, and billion-dollar brands, there were only a handful of developers trying to figure out how to translate real-world sports into something that worked on a computer screen.

For veteran game designer Don Daglow, that challenge became one of the defining parts of his career. Speaking during a recent visit to the Video Game History Museum in Zagreb, Daglow reflected on his years at Electronic Arts and the role he played in helping shape the company’s sports division years before it became the global powerhouse now known as EA Sports.

Daglow’s interest in sports games began long before EA. One of his earliest projects was a baseball simulation inspired by tabletop games he played as a kid. “I was a huge baseball fan,” he recalled. While still in college he became fascinated with the idea of using a computer to recreate an entire season, and that curiosity produced one of the earliest computer baseball simulations.

In fact, these games were built at a time when limited hardware and primitive graphics forced designers to focus on systems and simulation rather than presentation. “The challenge wasn’t making it look like baseball,” Daglow explained. “The challenge was making it behave like baseball.”

Earl Weaver Baseball 

When Daglow joined Electronic Arts in the 1980s, sports were only one small category among many. Teams were small and decisions were collaborative: Daglow described pitch meetings where senior managers and producers collectively debated which projects to publish.

“We weren’t sitting there saying we’re creating this giant sports empire,” he said. “We were just trying to make great games.” That attitude pushed him to aim for innovation rather than incremental rehashes: “We are not here to do another version of what’s old. We are here to do something new.”

One of his notable projects was Earl Weaver Baseball, which paired Daglow’s simulation focus with the strategic sensibilities of the legendary manager.

Daglow saw Weaver as the perfect partner because he understood that baseball was fundamentally a game of probabilities and decision-making.

“Earl Weaver was basically doing analytics before analytics became popular,” Daglow said, and the game reflected that emphasis on probabilities and decision-making over mere spectacle.

Earl Weaver Baseball 

Daglow also recounted the long road toward a formal sports line at EA. Early proposals for an “EA Sports” brand were rebuffed because the company wanted to be known for varied, novel games rather than a single category.

He remembers pitching a Macintosh baseball game only to be told “nobody can make money on the Macintosh,” and that the machine “is not fast enough.” It wasn’t until more capable hardware like the Amiga arrived that he finally got approval to pursue a standout baseball title.

Underlying Daglow’s work is a persistent belief that games should create connections. “You have to connect with the audience,” he said.

For sports games that connection often begins before players sit down: fans bring loyalties, rivalries and memories that a successful game must recreate, not just the rules but the feeling of making decisions and being part of the sport.