A New Way Forward: Busting out of the rut - RaychelSnr's Blog

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RaychelSnr's Blog

A New Way Forward: Busting out of the rut Stuck

Posted on February 23, 2010 at 03:54 PM.

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Many could make the argument that sports games have been stuck in a rut for awhile. My blog on this not to long ago, seemed to jive with everyone on the simple premise something is wrong with our sports games.

Sports games can bust out of their rut of incremental increases in quality year over year and become more dynamic both on and off the field.

On the field, sports games simply need to get away from scripted animations and predetermined rock-paper-scissors outcomes when it comes to the ultimate success of the play on the field. Ratings need to matter, animations have to become more free and lifelike, and the experience of each game has to become unpredictable and different.

Making your current actions impact future events and having announce teams which are more situation specific and even talk about YOU the Coach/GM would be quite alright as well thank you.

If gamers are playing the same game over and over again with the same animations and the same commentary, they are going to get bored and they're going to quit buying. Don't believe me? Just look how much less sports games are selling now compared to the middle of the last decade.

To take the gameplay experience to the next level, you need to have on the field and off the field events relate to one another. What if you have a player who is a cancer in the clubhouse? Fans -- or former players -- who have been unfortunate to have someone like T.O. on their team know exactly what I'm talking about.

Your decisions have to have consequences, good or bad. Why can't we get an offensive line who hates their QB so much that they purposefully forget to block a play or two? Why aren't we being faced with the decision of benching that QB or fining/benching the offensive linemen?

Sure, as you add details you could make a game a complicated mess, but you could also allow these details onto our consoles with simplicity in mind. The hallmark of great game design is to appear simple on the surface so anyone can play the game but to be increasingly deep as you continue to play. What I'm suggesting, with a more dynamic approach to the whole sports world, would require that type of design mastery.

We may yet be a generation away from this sort of a dynamic world, but I honestly feel we have been saying that very thing since the launch of the PS2 in 2001. I've seen this sort of dynamic world at play in other genres, so to say it isn't possible is simply an excuse at this point. The time is now for developers to step up and make it happen.

What do you think? Can you imagine the possibilities? Sound off!

Comments

# 1 jyoung @ Feb 23

I dunno if I'm the only one who thought this, but you really shouldn't use "bust" and "rut" in the same sentence, much less as the tag line for an article.

Reason being, "rut" is only one letter away from "nut."

The mind doth wander...

# 2 laforr77 @ Feb 23

The idea sound excellent, but in order to implement the deep, risk-reward type of decision based system would require more than the current development cycles of games allows for (to really do that type of decision making system justice, and not have it feel tacked on).

# 3 SHAKYR @ Feb 23

I like this alot, I'm surprised you don't have more responses.

# 4 RaychelSnr @ Feb 23

In all honesty, when you start relating off the field characteristics to the on the field performance of teams, you end up with a plethora of possibilities which sports games don't yet explore. For instance, in college football, if you have a team with no clear leadership...playing on the road would be a lot tougher than playing at home. In the NBA, if you have a bunch of young but talented players, you can expect inconsistent play but in NBA 2K or NBA Live, those talented players are going to play like veterans. There's a lot more to sports than a bunch of overall ratings...and sports games are static because of that.

# 5 RaychelSnr @ Feb 23

BTW I'm going to award Jayson for the "Mind in the Gutter at OS" Award of the Week