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One of my favorite PC sports sim developers, Wolverine Studios, has been in an open, public beta on their next game, Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2, for a while now; I must say that the game is progressing nicely.

The most recent beta, 0.9, was released December 13 and includes some feature implementations that, if they make it to the final build, will certainly set a new standard for pro basketball sims. And I appreciate that the developer is taking their time with this title, rather than rushing it to a flawed final release.

I’d love to share what some of these new features are, but since they aren’t locked in for the final release, I’d rather not hurt the title by talking about them just yet… in case they don’t make the final cut.

As far as I know, anyone wanting to save money on the final release, though, can still sign up, pay up-front for the in-progress software, and have a license that will last for the lifetime of the product, even after it’s out of beta and in final release form! That’s more value than the average Nordic Track coupon code!

Now that they are offering the ability to pay for free, I’ve finally downloaded, installed and started playing a game I’ve long been interested in: Dungeons and Dragons Online.

How does the game make money if the download is free and so is the ability to play? Well, you can buy some expansions and special in-game items at the DDO Store; it’s a business model used in strategy games like Evony, but a bit more ambitious than anything tried by an MMO prior to this.

After all, even one of the most notable pioneers of free monthly play MMOs, Guild Wars, charged for the software, at least; DDO isn’t even doing that – at least not for the main game.

Here’s the down-low: While I haven’t yet played deeply into the game, I will say it sizzles smoothly along on my nVidia 1GB 9800GT-powered system, and looks great doing so. And with a nice enough opening movie, character creation system and an opening sequence that matches up well with Dragon Age: Origins, Dungeons and Dragons Online is worth far more than its price of, well… free. It might even feature free directory submissions for all I know!

I’ll get more specific as I play more deeply into the game, but for now, it’s all positive.