Game Points - What They're For

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 12 years 2 weeks ago

So, you’ve been in SIM a short time, or maybe a while longer than that, and you keep hearing about game points, and perhaps even heard of Game Point and a Half Day. So, just what are game points and why should you care?

SIM is a free game. But The Steward and company spend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and effort in managing it – and constantly improving it – and they have to pay bills just like everyone else. So, the game has various perks that can only be bought with game points, and game points have to be purchased with real money.

On most days, you can buy 1000 game points for each US dollar spent. On Game Point and A Half Day, you get 1500 game points for each dollar spent. I’ve written another article specifically about this savings, so won’t address it further here.

So, just what exactly can you do with game points, now that you’ve spent real money for them? Here’s a detailed listing.

Purchase a SIMperior Listing – costs 2,000 GP for a one-week trial, or 15,000 GP for ten weeks, 20,000 GP for 20 weeks, or 45,000 GP for a full year. I’ve written an entire article on SIMperior, so will only say here that being a SIMperior member is one of the best favors you can do for yourself in SIM.


Create a Race (aka sponsoring a race) – costs from 1,000 GP to create a claiming race up to 15,000 GP to create a Grade 1 stakes. Over time, this is what I’ve most often used GPs for. If you’ve ever been frustrated that you can’t find an ideal race for your horse (something that mixed breed players in particular have dealt with), then it’s a wonderful feeling to know that you can create the ideal race yourself. Say, for example, you have a sprinter that prefers the shorter sprints, like 5 furlongs and under. Those races are hard to find. If the horse has won two races, you can pay 2,000 GP and create a 5f allowance sprint for NW3. It’ll have a 25k purse, which is much higher than most conditioned allowance purses. What’s more, you can choose to have the race run at a nearby track, so you don’t have to ship far. Or, if your horse has a preference for, say, sloppy tracks, you can choose to have the race run at the closest track with bad weather.

Create a Race is also a nice feature when you have a struggling horse, and want to insure it can race in a softer spot. If, say, the horse is an Ohio-bred, you can sponsor a race for its age and gender, and restrict the race to horses bred in Ohio. The race will have to be run in Ohio to do so, so be aware that you can sponsor an OH-bred race only in weeks when an Ohio track is running. (You can check that from the Circuits page under the Racing heading of your home office.)

You can also sponsor races that are only for new players, only for junior players, only for intermediate players, or only for SIMperior players. Of course, you can also have the race be open to all players.


Create a Horse (CAH) – This costs 3,000 GP. You can create a horse for most any breed, or distance/surface type within the breed, by paying attention to the stallion names that are available to sire the horses. (Eg, Early Endings would be a sprinter.) The advantages of CAH is that you can make the horse any age from 1yo to 4yo (be aware that a 2yo will need two workouts before it can race, and that Arabians don’t start racing until 3yo), and you can choose the color and gender. With CAH you don’t have to worry about buying somebody else’s culls, or over-spending for a horse that has a nice record, but is starting to take a nosedive in form. On the other hand, you’ll have to be quite fortunate to get a CAH that is a quality horse. As a gross generalization, I’d say most CAH are good for a maiden win, and some placings. Some are a little better, some a little worse, but that’s what I would go in expecting.

A perk to a CAH is that you will be the official breeder of that horse. For any race the horse wins (even if it’s later owned by another player), you will receive 9% of the purse as a breeder’s award. So, even newbie players can earn breeder’s awards if they create some horses.


Create a Mare (CAM) – For 6000 GP you can create a 6yo unraced broodmare of any breed, from a choice of sire and maternal grandsires, which are “real life” horses. (Though, in SIM, those real life horses sometimes throw different types of SIM runners than they did, or would be expected to, in real life.) Some of these mares can be stellar producers, some average, and some have poor foals. For the Thoroughbreds in particular, it can be quite confusing to know which of the many, many sires and grandsires one should select to create a particular type of mare. Thankfully, the player Kya Matsumoto has created a wonderfully detailed, unofficial website strictly about the CAM sires. You might be the type of player that just wants to pick a particular sire/grandsire combination, pick a SIM stallion to breed the resulting mare to, and see what happens. But if you’d like more information to work from, I strongly recommend Kya’s site. The URL is http://simgatewayfarms.webplus.net/home.html

Note If you’ve decided on a particular sire/grandsire combination, but are hesitant about spending the 6000 GP to create your own mare, you might first want to do a Search on the SIM and see if you can find any CAM mares by the same sire/grandsire that are for sale by other players. Granted, such mares might have already proven themselves to be poor producers and that’s why they’re for sale, but you can find some that are for sale that have been ranked “good” or even “formidable” by the bloodstock agent and are affordable.


Breeding Nicks – For 250 GP, a player can take a hypomate of a particular stallion and mare, and click to ask the bloodstock agent, Anna Liza Doolittle, to give a grade of A+ down to C pertaining to how well the sire and dam pedigrees nick together. As many avid breeders in SIM have found, testing various stallion nicks for a particular mare can be downright addicting. Most especially if, eg, you’ve paid $10,000 in SIM money to have Ms. Doolittle tell you your mare is a “star”, and yet every stud you nick her with only results in a B- grade, and you keep searching for something higher. In any case, the nick grades are probably the most fun aspect to come along in SIM in recent memory. (They’ve been available for only a couple of game years.)


Equipment Check – For 500 GP, a player can check in with assistant trainer Mary Weather and see what she says about equipment. Roughly 80% of the time (by my estimation), she’ll mention one piece of equipment the horse needs, and say that he also needs a second piece (which you’ll have to figure out yourself). Perhaps 15% of the time, she’ll say that the equipment she mentions is the only piece the horse needs. Perhaps 5% of the time, she’ll say the horse doesn’t need any equipment at all.


SIMcards – These colorful, creative electronic greeting cards are available on your private message page. (You have to click the little box at the bottom.) For 500 GP, you can send a card along with your message to another player. I love using them for things like welcoming a new player, complimenting someone on an article they wrote, or congratulating a SIM friend on a big win by an exciting youngster. There are cards for many other types of occasions, and some are rotated in and out, per the season.


SIM Silks – For 5000 GP, you can have a graphic artist create your SIM silks. You can use these as an avatar for the Forum, and they also show up in various other places (such as race results when your horse wins). Of course, if you buy silks, you only need to pay for them once – unless you decide to change them down the line.


Headshots – For 30,000 GP, you can have a graphic artist create a headshot for one of your horses. Usually, players only by headshots for their most successful horses, or ones that they have particular sentimental feelings toward. If you haven’t been in SIM long, and aren’t that familiar with headshots, you can see the entire gallery of nearly 1500 horses (to date), by selecting Gallery under the Community heading of your office page. While the headshots are entirely cosmetic in purpose, players have been known to say that they chose one stallion over another for their mare, because of the former’s headshot, or even voted for SIMMY award champions based upon headshots. The headshots show up on the horse’s main page when a signed-in player clicks on that horse, and also show up on a stallion’s Stud Book page. In addition, if the horse is an active racehorse, players see a mini version of the headshot whenever they click on the training page for that horse.

To read an interesting article on the process of creating a headshot, please see Kimberly Jean’s excellent piece here:
http://www.simhorseracing.com/featurerace/article.php?ArticleID=10346


Reserve a Name – Finally, you can spend 1000 GP to reserve a name. If you think of a really clever name for a horse, but don’t have an unnamed foal available to give it to, you can reserve the name so that no one else uses it.


Once purchased, GPs can be gifted or transferred to other players.

It’s always a nice feeling to have game points in one’s GP bank in order to, on the spur of the moment, send a SIMcard to wish a fellow SIMster Happy Birthday, sponsor a race for a horse that badly needs a softer spot, or try a few stallion nicks for that new broodmare you just purchased that you’re so excited about.

Game points make SIM a whole lot more fun and entertaining, and gives players more strategic freedom as they strive to be successful.

Take advantage of the upcoming Game Point and a Half Day on February 7th, and buy yourself some game points.

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