Player Profiles: Revelation
Last week I interviewed Sabbath, the captain of Sim World Cup Team Europe. This week, we’ve been graced with the presence of Revelation, another long-time player who will head up Team Americas.
Revelation joined the game in May of 1999, which would have put the Sim calendar right in the neighborhood of week 299. He had tried a racing simulation that “offered no challenge whatsoever,” and stumbled upon the sim in the search for something more interesting. “I was hooked immediately,” he says, adding that finding the game in the first place was the high point of his Sim experience.
With over 8 years of playing experience, Revelation has seen many changes in the game. Although he has seen major changes like the introduction of breeding (a favorite for him), the most important changes to him these center around the people who have come and gone. He says that “Back when I started there was a very small community of players (a lot of them have left, and for that I’m sad).” Despite the small number of players, the chatroom was almost always occupied and would sometimes “whiteout” for a while when overloaded. He adds that in the early days of the chatroom, “Mike usually was there every day. Iago was a regular and had his own forum in which he’d help all of us newbies place our horses correctly. Sal, Sabbath, Drfager, Socal, Tiz, Roys, TS, WW, and many others, too many to mention, would chat for hours. As the sim progressed into what it is today, many old-time sim friends left for various reasons. Through the years I’ve been fortunate to make new friends and that’s really cool.”
Revelation runs the lively DelPenn residency, which once upon a time was a “sister track of the New York residency.” It was originally called Delaware links. When Flstables announced that Delaware was available for a new track manager, Revelation took it on. “Many residents have come and gone over the years. Residencies IMO survive because of the residents that abide in them. Of course as a manager it helps to stick it out in the lean times. I’ve been fortunate to have some long time players like theavenger, randyraide, and sal join up during the lean years. As the sim changed, DelPenn became a hostel for longtime players. We now have an excellent mix of residents that have made it their home. Super and ARSE are the big inter-resident rivals and keep the message board filled with interesting topics 🙂 AFC has contributed much to the residency and the sim with his generosity.” According to Revelation the best stories he has about the game have all come about through the DelPenn boards. In addition to running the residency (despite an admitted lack of computer knowledge), Revelation provides Delaware stakes coverage for the Black Type Bugler.
When he’s running his own stables, Revelation focuses on “practising patience and commitment.” Any horse that wins is a favorite for him, but he is particularly fond of his one and only Grade I winner, DC SAVAGE, who won the Equinics’ Albertville Rendezvous by a whopping 6 ¾ lengths in 2004, earning a 109 figure going 16 furlongs. He urges new players to ask plenty of questions as they are learning the ropes.
His greatest disappointments come when friends leave the game, but he has never thought seriously about quitting himself. In terms of improvements, he would love to see stable notes available at the top of the screen for each stable. He is eager to see what Mike brings to thte game with the big rewrite.
Revelation considers breeding to be his greatest weakness in the game. He wryly notes that his favorite sires are “all the ones that are gone before I can afford them.” For an underused sire, though, he likes Urban Ocean (Fr) who has “produced everything from claimers to stakes for me.”
In real life, Revelation is a 64-year-old retired man living in southeast Pennsylvania. He has been married for 42 years to “a beautiful woman” and has three children and two grandchildren. He likes to golf and fish. He has never been involved in real-life racing, but favorite horses include “Damascus, Buckpasser, Dr. Fager.” For a theme song, he chose Always and Forever by Heatwave.