> I've added some accessors because I don't know if they are needed by ActiveRecord, but nothing changes.

Think of ActiveRecord as magic. It constructs the class and all
attributes from the DB at runtime. When working with ActiveRecord
never use attr_accessor and its like for DB attributes. Also, always
use the automatically created ActiveRecord accessors, eg name = "1234"
rather than @name = "1234".

I suspect that player might be used by ActiveRecord, try using
new_player as the variable name instead.
-- 
Phillip Hutchings
http://www.sitharus.com/