Fan Misery is an odd little app. The thing it supposedly measures in its title, the misery of sports fans based on their team’s ineptitude, is the thing it does the least well. Meanwhile, its auxiliary features provide a much more interesting look at your favorite team.
But first, let’s discuss the fan misery portion of the Fan Misery app. Within the app, there is a terrific explanation of what it is to be a miserable fan, and how the app measures this feeling using a Fan Misery Index. Suffice it to say it’s what it sounds like – a collection of factors from team play to ticket prices that determine how lousy you feel because of a lousy sports team.
Although this is measured in a number (0 being the least miserable, 10 being the most miserable), there is an accompanying weather graphic that’s supposed to make it more clear how miserable you are. As if using weather to measure misery (why not smiley faces?) made any sense, the problem is compounded in that the weather graphics available are hardly discernable from one another.
While the full sunny day of 0-1 FMI makes sense, there are three levels of clouds, from 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5 that are barely discernable. After the 5-9 ranges, all deal with some levels of rain and thunderstorms, level 9-10 actually ends with just a completely cloudy evening graphic. In whose world are clouds more miserable than a rotten storm? Why would someone use weather at all to depict misery?
What’s worse is that although the app is free, you’ll have to shell out some serious dough to actually see your team’s FMI. Fan Misery does come with one preview team, but additional teams are $1.99 a piece. If you’d like to see all of one sport, it’s $9.99. If you’d like all of sports, you’re looking at a $19.99 investment. $20 for an index that seems half-baked, at best, is way too much.
As mentioned above, the app does recover from these terrible false starts. The statistics tab is one of the more interesting data tables I’ve seen. It packs most of the usual stats, like record, home record, road record, division record, along with total points for and against, average ticket price and more specific per-game statistics, dependent on the sport. The average ticket price stat is quite interesting – talk about your fan misery.
Additionally, there is a tab that collects several relevant team-specific web sites and blogs. Again, this feature seems to go above and beyond the call of duty, giving quite a list of possible ways to waste your time when discussing your favorite team.
Unfortunately, you’d probably be better off with that blogroll than anything you could find in the Fan Misery app. Unless you’re truly concerned with figuring out how miserable you should allow yourself to be, this is an app you can skip.
