We recently had a chance to interview David Littman, creative director at EA Canada for NHL Slapshot, NBA Elite and the NHL series. He helped to oversee the re-imagining of the NHL series when the current-generation consoles were released, and he is now filling a similar role for NBA Elite 11. We wanted this interview to focus on the differences between the rebuilds of NHL and Elite, and we also wanted to get a bit deeper into why NBA Elite is going in a different direction this year.

Operation Sports: When I look back at how the NHL franchise was rebooted on the current-gen consoles, it almost seems like the same blueprint is being used to reboot the Live/Elite series. What I mean is that it seems like there is a heavy focus on physics, controls and graphics. Is this a fair and mostly accurate comparison?

David Littman: It is the same blueprint. But, it isn’t about physics, controls and graphics.

• It is about giving the gamer the exact same tools that a pro athlete has and letting gamers create their own brilliance.
  
• It is about giving you the feeling that you are on the ice/court in front of 20,000 fans.
  
• It is about making the gamer the star online and becoming the best virtual athlete in the world.
  
• It is about making a shot with no time left to win a game for your team, knowing that it was YOUR skill that did it.

Before doing anything we ask ourselves: “What makes playing real life basketball fun? What makes playing real life hockey fun?” It is fun in real life to run around on a basketball court and shoot a basketball all by yourself. It is fun in real life to skate around on a hockey rink and shoot a hockey puck all by yourself. So before we do anything, we have to get this right. How can we make dribbling, stick handling, and shooting in our sports games MIMIC real life? Because if we do, then it will be fun also.

It is fun to do these things in real life because there is SKILL involved. Making a 3-pointer takes skill. Stick handling a puck and shooting top corner takes skill. Before ANYTHING else, these things need to be fun to do. I think that has been part of the problem with basketball games of this generation. The basics of playing the sport were not the main focus. The main focus was on signature styles, more and more animations, player likenesses, broadcast presentation and making the game LOOK like an NBA basketball game. Before I get flamed for saying this, I am not saying these things are not important, nor am I saying that these games were not enjoyed by many basketball fans. But the issue is that these things don’t matter much if we haven’t nailed the basics first. Elite still has signature shots. We still have team-specific play styles. We can even have player-specific signature behavior with our REAL AI technology (see below). But first and foremost, we need to nail the basics of what makes PLAYING basketball fun.

Specifically though, all gamers expect top-notch graphics, so it is a given that we must have that. Controls and physics are a huge part of the reboot for NHL and NBA because:

• We need to mimic the controls as closely as possible to real life (that is where the Skill Stick and Hands-On control come in)
  
• There needs to be skill involved in succeeding, because that makes people feel good (skill based shooting)
  
• You should always be in control of your character (real physics instead of long collision animations and two-player animations)
  
• We want the game to be totally unpredictable and move towards emergent gameplay instead of anything canned (real physics, ball is loose)

OS: From a quality standpoint, do you feel like you're in better shape to capitalize with Elite on the first go-round than you were with NHL? To clarify my own position, I would say while NHL 07 was a nice first effort, it was not as feature-rich or nearly as deep on the gameplay front as it is today -- or compared to the competition at the time.

Littman: NHL 07 was basically starting from scratch on brand new consoles. People think we had two years to build NHL 07, but we actually only had one. We were using incredible new EA developed technologies (ANT – Animation Tool Kit, for example) that were in its infancy. Other companies just ported their PS2 and Xbox sports games to the PS3 and 360 and up-ressed the graphics. As a company, we took our lumps for a year or two. Since we didn’t port our games, we had to start over with our feature sets. But, over the last couple of years it has really started to pay off for us (NHL, FIFA and now Elite, for example). Our technology has attracted some of the best people in the industry. So when we combine incredible people with incredible technology, we have the building blocks to make great sports games.

The big difference between NHL 07 and NBA Elite 11 is that on NBA Elite 11, we are not starting from scratch. NBA Live 10 was considered the best Live game of this generation of consoles. A lot of what people loved in NBA Live 10 is still in the game…we just improved a lot of it. So even if you play the game in the broadcast camera (yes, it is still there, just not the default) and use button controls (yes, it is still in there, just not the default), you will still have a much improved NBA Live 10 experience.

We have also done a much better job of sharing technology at EA Sports over the last few years. Besides ANT, an example of this is the REAL AI technology we are using on Elite 11. You will hear more on this soon. This technology was something we developed on NHL 08 and it makes the AI play like a human. It does this because humans -- mostly producers and software engineers (SEs) -- can play the game and the AI can then use the best most successful moves themselves when the time is right. With our new one-to-one movement and dribbling, and the new physics, the AI would not be able to pull off new, creative on-the-fly moves without this technology. Fight Night Round 4 also used this tech to help them get each fighter to fight like their real-life self.

I was playing a game of Elite the other day and someone walked by and said “Oh, you’re playing online? Who are our playing against?” It is because the CPU team looked like a human opponent.

The other big difference is that we are adding two new game modes this year on Elite 11. It took us three years on NHL to get these two game modes.

1. The new Become Legendary is our take on Be a Pro modes that starts with the Jordan Brand draft showcase game that is in the demo, and takes you on a journey to become a basketball legend.

2. The new EA Sports Basketball Association (EASBA) is an online league where you create your character, with your name on the back of your jersey, create or join a team with your friends, and take on all challengers to become the best basketball team in the world. It is based on the EA Sports Hockey League (EASHL) which has over 500,000 gamers playing in it. For the EASHL, we even flew the top 360 team and top PS3 team to Vancouver for a worldwide Championship (more details to come for the EASBA).

OS: This might be a bit hard to quantify, but if you were to compare NHL and Elite at this point, which franchise had to go though the bigger first-year rebuild?

Littman: As stated in my last answer, we are in a much better position for Elite 11. Besides the mature technology and using NBA Live 10 as the base, it is the people that make the biggest difference. NHL 07 was a team that was quickly put together with a bunch of people from NHL 06 (PS2/Xbox) and people from around the studio. So the NHL leadership team led by Dean Richards (NHL 07 line producer), Jeff Atienza and I knew that we needed to put together an all-star team to execute on the three-year plan that we had for the franchise. Dean is amazing at putting together great teams. By NHL 09, we had that team and we still do.

The people on NBA Elite 11 are already an all-star team. We have basketball experts and some of the best SEs that I have ever worked with. There are many heroes on the team, some of them you already know, as they are on the forums interacting with the community. But there are also some that you never hear about, but are just as important. Nick Channon is running the team day to day, and he and I talk all the time about how passionate this team is about making a great playing, authentic basketball game. I am really proud to be part of this team, just as I am proud to be part of the NHL team.

OS: In general, has this been more of a challenge than the one undertaken with NHL?

Littman: They each have separate challenges. As stated previously, NHL’s reboot had the challenge of starting from scratch, brand new technologies and a new team.

The big challenge with NBA is we are fundamentally changing the way people play basketball games. The one-to-one control of dribbling and defense, the skill-based shooting system, the real-physics system instead of canned animations, are all game changers. But all of that isn’t even the toughest part.

The toughest part is convincing the hardcore basketball fans that this is the most realistic basketball game we have ever made. The reason this is so difficult is because basketball gamers have become used to a certain type of basketball game. These are basketball games where the most important part of the game was that it LOOKED like real basketball. It needed to be from the TV-style broadcast camera. It needed every signature animation that real players have. It needed two-player animations, so that it could use mo-cap (motion capture) animations exactly like they were captured in the studio. It became an animations arms race. Which game could have more animations became the focus. No other sports video games have had this animation battle. While animation is obviously important in FIFA, NHL and MLB: The Show…that is not why people love these games. People love them for the overall gameplay feel. It feels like you are PLAYING the sport, not just influencing the sport.

Henry Ford once said that if he asked the public what they wanted, they would have said, "a faster horse." That is how I feel. The games I have worked on have done a decent job of interacting with the community, and I can honestly say that many features in NHL and NBA are based on community feedback. But before this year, if we had asked the basketball community what they wanted, it would have been more signature shots, more animations, better presentation…in other words, "a faster horse."

Now I just hope that the Hands-On control and real physics take off like the automobile did.

OS: Before you folks decided that the NBA franchise was going to be overhauled, how long was it discussed? Was this a change that was decided on while NBA Live 10 was still being completed?

Littman: Just before and just after NBA Live 10 came out, there was a lot of discussion as to why basketball games are among the lowest-rated sports games on the market. Hockey, soccer, football, Baseball, boxing, UFC, etc. all have games that have higher Metacritic scores (average review scores across many media outlets). There was also a lot of discussion as to why the basketball category has been shrinking over the last few years (overall revenue/sales), and categories like hockey and soccer have been growing.

Are these two points related? Of course they are.

So while all of this was being talked about, I walked into Brent Nielsen’s office (NBA executive producer) and I showed him a PowerPoint deck that I put together. It had Hands-On control, Be a Pro, EA Sports Basketball Association, a bullet point that said, “Absolutely NO two-player animations,” and a few other things. At around the same time, Geoff Harrower (known on Operation Sports as rEAnimator) had an amazing demo in our ANT technology showing real physics for all player interaction. Brent gave me the go ahead to work with him on a prototype for Hands-On controls. A week later we had one, and everyone on the team and around the studio played it, and everyone absolutely loved it. That was the beginning of NBA Elite 11.

OS: When I've spoken with you in the past, you have pointed to Metacritic as a sign of progress and a reason why NHL and FIFA have been so successful. Do you feel like this change to the controls might give Elite a bit of a ratings push by default? For example, when NHL 07 came out, many argued that NHL 2K7 was the more polished/deeper game, but plenty of people were still immediately drawn to NHL 07 even though it was a relatively bare-bones title in comparison. In addition, while NHL 07 did not hit 80 on the Metacritic scale, it still beat out NHL 2K7 by a point on that same scale.

Littman: That is true. NHL 2K7 had more modes and overall was more polished because of how each company went about the transition to the next generation (as stated above).

The fact that we almost hit 80 Metacritic with NHL 07 really shows you the power of giving gamers the same tools that athletes have in real life. The one-to-one movement for deking and the act of shooting on the goalie instead of pressing a button was so compelling that people forgave us for the rest of the game. When I go back and play it now, it is kind of scary how bad it is compared to now. It was at 30 frames per second. It had very few game modes. But when you deked a goalie out of his jockstrap on a breakaway like you could in real life, people jumped off the couch with excitement. We also had a very clear three-year plan with gameplay (Year 1 – skill stick offense vs. goalie, Year 2 – skill stick offense vs. defensemen, Year 3 – skill stick defense). We have an awesome three-year plan for the Elite franchise also.

But overall, it is not specifically the control change that I expect will give Elite the push.

• It is when you dribble for the first time and you realize that it is the closest thing to really being on the court in real life.
  
• It is when you hit your first shot to win a game and you realize it was your skill that did it.
  
• It is when you go up for a dunk, make contact with an opponent, and adjust to your left hand for the lay-up.
  
• It is when you block your first shot and realize how powerful defense is.
  
• It is when you see your name in ESPN-style headlines in Dynasty mode.
  
• It is when you step out onto an NBA court in Become Legendary (Be a Pro) and see the arena from your point of view.
  
• It is when you create yourself, create a team with your buddies and win a monthly Championship in the EASBA.

OS: As a developer, is rebuilding a franchise the most exciting and at the same time most frightening thing you get to do? Or does building a franchise from "scratch" fit that description a bit better?

Littman: The best part of my job is that there are always new challenges. The NHL and NBA have different challenges. Getting people who don’t like hockey to play a hockey video game was a tough challenge, but we succeeded. I was the creative director on NHL Slapshot for the Wii this year also. Trying to make a great playing Wii sports game with a peripheral or accessory was a tough challenge, but we succeeded. Getting NBA gamers to try something new when they are used to something different is a tough challenge, but I believe we will succeed there also.

Is the game going to be perfect this year? Of course not, but that will always be our goal.

All I care about is making the best, most authentic sports games that as many people as possible will enjoy. My job is to make sure that it happens.

OS: Are you concerned at all people might view the new controls as a gimmick to "save" the franchise? And this has to be a game you want to get to the people in the form of a demo way before its official release date, right?

Littman: We have been saying all year that people need to try Elite to really understand how close to reality the new Hands-On controls really are. I said before that we are making a game that FEELS like you are playing real basketball as opposed to watching a game on TV. So seeing videos and reading this interview might not change people’s minds. But playing it will.

The demo is really important to us this year. It is a very deep demo this year that we will discuss soon, but there is an interactive tutorial and practice mode where you will learn the basics and experiment to find new moves.

The biggest reason that I know this is no gimmick is this story. I lost a game a couple of weeks ago to Novell Thomas, our gameplay producer (It was a late night at work, and we play a lot at night so we can prioritize things to improve for the next day). I was missing a lot of outside shots. I missed a 3-pointer with no time left that would have tied the game. On my way home from work, I was practicing my shot with my thumb. Straight up, hold and release. Straight up, hold and release. I did it about 10 times and that is when it hit me. This is a real sport. I was practicing my shot like players do before a free throw or that golfers do even without a club. You have a technique and you need to practice it to become the best. Never before in a sports video game have I ever practiced my technique like it was a real sport. That is how I know we will succeed.


A big thanks goes out to David Littman for answering our questions.