Computer-generated fans fail to erase that empty feeling

Leave it to Fox Sports to put a scifi twist on MLB's skeletal 2020 season.

Two days after the 60-game pandemic-shortened season started on July 23, Fox debuted a feature that few wanted to see: virtual fans.

With no crowds to boo, applaud, or trade kisses on giant stadium scoreboards, the network, in partnership with SportsMedia Technology and Silver Spoon Animation, started inserting grainy images of shrieking fans onto home TV screens across North America.

Of course, it's nothing new to viewers in Asia.

When the Chinese Professional Baseball League restarted its season in April, the bleachers at Taiwan's Taoyuan Baseball Stadium were filled with mannequins, cardboard cutouts and drum-playing robots. According to the New York Post: "The faux fans were dolled up in real hats and shirts of the home Rakuten Monkeys, some pointing toward the field and others holding signs over their heads via zip ties around their plastic wrists."

When Japan rebooted baseball in mid-June, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks unveiled a new kind of cheerleader: an army of 20 Teletubby-like robots that dance, sing, and shout praise from TV screens embedded in their bellies.

Fox's announcement was accompanied by a splashy trailer juxtaposing live-action players and the animated torsos of their fake fans. As the stadium fills, the fans pop into place before cheering, booing, and doing the wave under a jarring musical score highlighted by a shredding guitar riff.

"The original concept sounds like something that would never happen," Fox Sports executive vice-president Brad Zager told the New York Post. "We were dead set on trying to make the broadcast with no crowd feel as authentic and organic as possible. We want to give people an escape."

Laura Herzing, executive producer at Silver Spoon, the motion-capture and augmented-reality company commissioned to execute the plan, said it took months to work out the details. They began with a high-quality scan of each MLB ballpark, taking stock of each seat to overlay a fan into later.

"We drew the bodies of faceless non-player characters wearing generic outfits in their team colors. The fans are not drawn from real people, but they get their movements from a few models," said Herzing.

"We have a pool of talent in New York that we pull from."

The simulation operator determines how dense or light to make the crowd, and can change it as the game goes on. Each virtual fan has about 500 actions that it rotates through randomly.

"If it's a blowout and you want to thin the crowd, the director has the ability to make that call," Herzing said.

"We have everything from an idle state of sitting and watching to a whole menu of natural movements. We can control what percent are standing. They can cheer. They can boo. They can do the wave. You can control how many fans are reacting－positive and negative－and how intense that reaction is.

"We haven't really built in anything too off the wall or odd. One of the biggest points of discussion was what percentage of the crowd should be looking at their cellphone."

Welcome to MLB 2020, pandemic style. The only thing missing is virtual hot dogs.