Let's Pause and Reflect for a Moment - Heroiczero13's Blog

Heroiczero13's Blog

Let's Pause and Reflect for a Moment

Posted on June 25, 2012 at 12:00 PM.

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As boredom set in at just about midnight I decided to try something I had yet to give a shot too. Normally I avoid 'My Player' modes like the plague because they are routinely terrible. However with NBA 2K11 in my possession I figured if there was one game to try it in, I had it. Let the records show that I'm pretty terrible at actually playing this game. So as my frustration mounted at missing every shot and losing the ball if a hummingbird landed on it, I responded as I often do in such circumstances, with a long-winded chain of profanity and food items.

With my Xbox freshly turned off and my face quite red I asked myself a few questions: How was that bad shot selection? Are you freaking kidding me? Why do I play this game? That stuck with me for a moment because I didn't really have an answer for it. There was something compelling me to play more into this frustration and it was somewhat frightening.

This brings to be the main point of this rambling concoction of words. Why do I play sports games? I could ask this of games in general, but I'll focus it for the sake of this article, though I'm sure some points will be overlapping. Firstly I must say that 90% of the time I do not enjoy playing the games themselves. There are only two circumstances where I find myself enthralled by it: when I am playing on the lowest difficulty setting and enjoy the power trip that follows it or when I am playing against my brother on the same console, which usually results in a tightly contested high-scoring game.Otherwise I just become frustrated and bored.

So where I find I spend the vast majority of my time is with offline franchise modes. Thus any sort of announcements of improvements to any other part of the game are white noise to me. Again I find myself dealing with so many issues, so many bugs and logic issues, and ways to break the game. More often than not, it is tedious for me playing sports games, but I play them for hours on end, year round. So why?

Starting with the basic before delving in deeper, I like numbers. Statistics always hook me, comparing and contrasting, building them up, using them as a basis of measurement, what have you. Having said that, I hate math, it was my least favorite subject in school although I was quite good at it for a long time. Seeing all the different ratings in Madden, and keeping the same players to see their career stats build up is such a key part of the experience for me. At times when I was bored in school I would mock up a fake career stats page in my notebook just writing down stats for players that I made up on the spot. I dream about ways to design franchises and limitations to put down and what stats those will bring.

Another way I play the games is to create a situation where I am a terrible team for as long as I possibly can be. When the cupcake option for create a team is not enough, I do a fantasy draft and take the absolute worst players at each position. I feel like this is a variation on a power trip. I am basking in this power I possess over this team and the knowledge that they are so terrible, that without me they would be hopeless. It is at times like this where I realize I would be a terrible monarch.

Sports games allow me a sense of power over the people that I will never be and have always envied. Billionaires and millionaires, highly talented individuals who I could never measure up to. It's one gangly young adults ability to yell at Blaine Gabbert for not being good enough....[insert Blaine Gabbert joke here].

Thank you for your time. Let me know if you have a different viewpoint. Have a pleasant day.