One More (albiet longwinded) look at Same-Sport Competition - RaychelSnr's Blog

RaychelSnr's Blog

One More (albiet longwinded) look at Same-Sport Competition

Posted on July 27, 2010 at 01:04 PM.

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I sometimes feel like a round-earth proponent in a room full of flat-earth ascribers -- or was it a Climatologist trying to explain Global Warming to a room full of Republicans?

One thing that's always brought up is that my argument doesn't ascribe to basic capitalistic principles, I ask why don't they? Someone who says it doesn't certainly doesn't understand economics if games on a store shelf aren't competing against one another for the consumers dollar. Let's take a game which gets a lot of flak for a lack of competition in the same sport -- Madden.

The majority of sales of Madden come from people who are most likely just as likely to buy the new Call of Duty or even another sports game. This basically means that the Madden team has to develop a game of sufficient quality to be a viable purchasing option for the majority of their potential sales against the other games on the shelf: regardless of what sport, planet or genre that game represents. Every game faces marketplace competition like this, and in a marketplace with constrained dollars to be spent, you are fighting to a piece of the bigger pie because that's your mission in business. So needless to say, capitalistic tenets are completely followed despite all claims to the contrary.

And just remember: my argument is based upon my finding that same-sport competition is completely overstated when it comes to why a game is the quality of game it is. I'm not saying it doesn't contribute to end-game quality, because there are good examples of where a new feature helped a game which originated from another. But from year to year, a game's quality is pretty much set already due to corporate decisions before a single line of code is written. Investment into the product, developmental talent and imagination, overall marketplace conditions, and most of all -- the existing base of code developers are working off of all determine the quality of a game before another game in the same genre enters the picture.

Indeed, we see good examples all throughout history of two games in a sport where one succeeds in quality and the other one fails. We even see that same example in this current crop of games. So let's take a look through a few examples and ask a few questions along the way.

First on our tour is NCAA Football. NCAA has been free of same sport competition for nearly 8 years and the latest NCAA release was the best playing football game ever in this writers humble opinion. If same-sport competition was the SINGLE GREATEST factor in game quality which many argue, how did Tiburon ever create a game so good with a lack of same-sport competition to drive developers onwards?

Again, another anecdotal example: NBA 2K. The game has been stuck in a rut and not innovating much at all the past couple of years to the point the game was getting really stale -- even though EA Sports' product has been fast approaching 2K. If single-sports competition was the single greatest factor in overall game quality, why was 2K meandering sideways in quality for a couple of years with same-sport competition fast approaching their product in quality? I'd argue that a lack of developmental talent/imagination along with a lack of new investment into the product had far bigger impacts on the game's quality than anything Live was doing.

I can also point to Soccer, where FIFA has soared while PES hasn't. If same sport competition was the single biggest factor in sports gaming quality, why didn't both games continue an upwards tick in quality?

What about Hockey? Why has one game (EA's NHL) become one of the best playing games on the market while another (NHL 2K) hasn't even come close to producing anything nearly of the same quality for several years? If same sport competition was the single greatest factor in why games succeed or fail, both games would have improved to keep up with one another over time, correct?

We can also point to baseball, where our two current games have been on different paths at times. MLB 2K's quality was down or sideways at best until recently beginning an upwards movement. MLB: The Show's quality was good to great and now sideways at best. In a lot of ways, The Show and 2K's battle is mirroring the basketball genre where one game was of high quality but not improving and the other took awhile but rapidly began to catch it. It makes you wonder if perhaps there is something bigger than same sports competition driving why sports games are the way they are?

I know it's hard to let go of old and tired ways of thinking, but if you just look at the evidence sport by sport, you see compelling signs that same-sport competition is merely a crutch for people to somehow justify why a game wasn't getting better during a few years period. In this day and age, the more simple-minded and blame-giving against the system an argument is, the more readily accepted it becomes: despite any evidence (oftentimes overwhelming) to the contrary.

Even though the evidence is compelling that factors well beyond same-sports competition have a far greater impact on game quality, I fear we'll be hearing the same old tired arguments on same-sport competition as we head towards a future where the market can only support one game per sport (and on a rare occasion two). I think the above real world cases overwhelmingly show that same sport competition's impact on game quality is highly overstated.

As I said yesterday, for the consumer: same-sport competition is good. The variety two games gives to the purchasing decision at the store is just excellent and can make even two stale games seem fresh much longer. However, when it comes to the actual game quality -- same-sport competition is best left at the door. It doesn't begin to scratch the surface of factors which determine the quality of a game once it hits store shelves.

Perhaps this debate will be brought up again in the future, but until next time OSers: remember the world is indeed round (and despite all claims to the contrary by big oil companies, the earth is indeed getting warmer each year).