Lawrence Ingraham’s Blog

My friend Sean Zimmerman is getting married in August. He’s a great guy, so I didn’t mind spending the money and time flying across the country for a weekend with the guys to celebrate. I can’t call it a bachelor party, since there were no strippers or over intoxication, but the spirit there. We all met up in Seattle for a few days, a city I’ve never visited but always wanted to.

In between a visit to the Space Needle and a viewing of Batman, we caught up with a Seattle Mariners game. Now, I’m not a baseball fan, so I really couldn’t care less about the game. I was just happy to have a beer with the guys, and they love baseball, so it worked out. I heard Safeco field had an agreement with Nintendo which lets you use the DS along with the game over their wireless. They used to charge fans $5 for this, but now it’s free and I was dying to check it out.

First off, you need to find a Nintendo station at the stadium to download the Nintendo Fan Network game. There’s one every 20 sections or so, flip open the DS and download it, couple minutes setup max. After you first launch the game, you need to pick a username and where you’re sitting. Then you’re connected to the network and can access all the features available.

The main menu has 6 sections you can explore:

• Food and Beverages – Order food to your seat, the single reason you need a DS. More on this later.
• Fan Network Audio and Video – Tune into the closed circuit tv for instant replays and listen to the play by play announcers, kinda cool but delayed a few seconds from the jumbotron.
• MLB Stats and Standings – As you’d expect, live stats and division standings. Probably great for those baseball fans without an iPhone.
• MLB in Action – I think this was the Pitch Tracking page, shows you approximately where the last pitch was in relation to the strike zone with related speed. Kinda cool.
• Fan Network Games – Things to do when you’re really bored, puzzles and crosswords, etc.
• Fan Network Messaging – The app with the most promise that sadly under delivers. More on this later as well.
• Log Out and your Profile – As you’d expect.

I’m sure if I were a hardcore baseball fan, I’d be loving this stuff. The fact that you can be at a baseball game and be immersed with baseball near and far is great. Extremely progressive compared to the days of buying a program and keeping score with a pencil like I did when growing up (yes I was a fan back then, Bash Brothers baby!).

The biggest selling point is the food ordering system. They have a fairly full menu of foods available to purchase; drinks, appetizers, entrees. You put in your credit card information, place your order, and within 5 minutes it’s delivered to your seat. The people sitting around me were all curious how it worked after a couple beers were magically delivered.

There’s a charge of 15% for the delivery, on top of the already crazy prices, so I can see this adding up fast. For 2 beers it was $18 compared to $15, a small price to avoid getting out of my seat and standing in line for who knows how long. It’s really amazing how smoothly this process went, literally 5 minutes from start to finish, cold beer in hand and I never left my seat. My friend Grant left a few minutes before I ordered, and we were halfway done with our beers before he got back.

Then there’s the Fan Network Messaging. You can see a list of everyone with a DS at the stadium, and send them messages. They get the message, and can reply. Sounds great right, a no brainer right? Well, it’s completely worthless.

There is no way to send customized messages to people you don’t already know, so you’re stuck with the canned messages they provide. “Great game isn’t it” – “Doesn’t that traffic suck” – “I love Nintendo” etc. Even if someone sends you a message, you have to respond in a canned message. “Yes, baseball is fun” – “I like the Mariners too” – “Agreed, the umpire is blind” etc.

The only way to send a custom message is by being someone’s “friend” and entering a code to confirm. Of course, you can’t send this code to anyone over the network, has to be face to face. But how do you meet up with someone you’ve never met? No clue. There’s no option to “friend me” through the system, or to send your seat location or anything. Sending a message with “Where are you sitting” gives the responses “In a green seat” or “In better seats than you” etc.

So we’ve got potential to make a cool, friend making system of like minded people, but it’s shackled. Only people who already know each other can really use it, and odds are good they’re sitting next to each other anyway, typing back and forth making fun of the friendless people. “Where are you sitting” – “Right next to you, hee hee”

Sure there’s kids here who might be offended or tricked into meeting up with some strangers, but you’d think they could figure out a way to make it work. Credit card authentication for age verification, something like that. They’re sitting on a gold mine here and they’re just rubbing up against it.

So if you’re heading up to Seattle anytime soon and get the chance to check out a Mariners game, make sure you bring your DS. The message system is a “swing and a miss” but the food ordering “knocks it our of the park” so to say. I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for them to web-base this stuff though, my iPhone could handle just about everything this offers and then some. Maybe at Cisco field…

Here’s a few more pics in case you were curious.

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