EA Sports had a clear opening opening with NBA Live 14, and they didn’t even realize it.

NBA 2K14 fumbled its launch about as much as 2K Sports could manage, which is to say — there are still some problems, a few of which are quite serious which consumers are facing, but the game is largely quite good.

Connectivity issues, save file issues with MyCAREER, crashes, and some old legacy gameplay issues are hampering the product at this point. A patch has fixed some issues, but many remain it appears.

In all reality, there is a lot you can find wrong with NBA 2K14 if you look hard enough.

The biggest thing is of course, NBA 2K14 isn’t so good that there is no need for a competitor. In fact, a few of the things 2K14 doesn’t do so well such as co-op seasons and a more traditional set of game modes, much less what is still one of the most complex control schemes in sports gaming, gave EA Sports every opportunity to step up to the plate and deliver something new and fresh along with familiar and comfortable.

And then came NBA Live 14. A game which needed only to be stable, solid, and ok in order to be considered a success wasn’t.

It’s a rare thing to have a AAA game releasing which doesn’t necessarily need to be great to be considered a success, it’s rarer still that such low expectations in place simply aren’t met on any level.

There are numerous and maddening questions which must be asked of why EA's basketball product, which has had several years come forth out of development, simply hasn’t come close to being a game which is an acceptable $60 purchase.

No one expected Live 14 was going to live up to the standard NBA 2K has set over the years. No one outside of camp EA even had illusions the game was going to be seen as an equal in quality — I personally wrote several times Live 14 simply needed to get a good and solid foundation of gameplay and online play right to be viable.

Neither happened.

There have been key areas of mismanagement which plague the NBA Live series, and until each is fixed individually, this series has no future.

Mismanaged Expectations

In an interview with the SportsBusiness Daily, EA CEO Andrew Wilson (and former head of EA Sports and ultimately the one responsible for the Live product) said the following:  “The game is releasing. It is happening, and this is very gratifying. We did ourselves absolutely no favors, but it was still the right decision in both instances. We’ve now built a great game, shifting focus entirely to the next-generation consoles, and are looking forward to getting back out there and competing in the marketplace. But we also know it will be a multiyear process.”

That quote was handed down on November 18, 2013, one day before the game released.

That was also one day before the reviews of the ‘great game’ which was ‘gratifying’ began to Metacritic in the 30s or 40s, depending on your platform.

In an interview with Review Fix, executive producer Sean O’Brien said when asked how he’d like NBA Live 14 to be remembered, “…that we stayed focused and delivered on our vision that NBA LIVE 14 is great basketball video game for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. If we do that, I feel we’ve made progress in returning the NBA LIVE franchise and establishing a strong foundation for the future.”

When asked on Twitter if Live 14 had a chance against NBA 2K14, O’Brien answered, “of course.”

Reading these quotes, one of two things must be true: Either EA knew they were sitting on an absolutely horrible game and people promoting it publicly were lying about its condition or, perhaps worse, they actually thought the game was good.

Neither of the above scenarios promotes the idea that the future of the EA basketball product actually rests in viability and any future efforts, if there are to be any, must have radical differences to how the promotion and expectations of the game is handled.

The truth is, the act of trying to be authentic and real with fans has to go away, replaced by what is actual and real authenticity. EA cannot say or imply they are releasing a great basketball game which can compete in the marketplace if the game you are producing is simply not going to make it there.

EA’s number one task this year was to release a product which manages to build trust with what would be their future core audience on the new generation of consoles — one could make the argument, compellingly, that EA not only didn’t do that, but they actually have irreparably ruined trust forever when it comes to their basketball product.

If NBA Live is to have a future as a series, one thing has to happen and it has to happen quickly — there has to be an open and honest dialogue about the game like we’ve never seen before from EA on any previous product. Consumers have to be let in to the entire process, and we have to see the game being built — and we have to see the current mess fixed.

The only way EA is going to gain enough trust to have anything more than a few misguided parents plopping $60 down on this game next year is to get people involved like never before in a AAA title. Anything less and people are simply not going to trust the company’s basketball efforts.

Mismanaged Foundation

Perhaps the most puzzling move of the entire EA Sports Basketball debacle was the series of decisions after the release of NBA Live 10.

In NBA Live 10, EA Sports had just released a product which not only competed but in many ways bested 2Ks effort that same year. Everything seemed to finally be working right, and EA basketball was on track for a better tomorrow.

And gamers? Well gamers were set to enjoy what was going to be a fantastic future of basketball gaming.

The answer to that successful year, of course, was to completely scrap the game, the name, the foundational gameplay and start all over — at least, that’s what EA chose to do.

One has to wonder what led to those sorts of decisions being made after NBA Live 10 had such a successful release — it’s not the first or only time a company has done something as foolish, but such decisions are usually made out of desperation or legal position weakness, not from strategically minded and confident positions that EA should have found themselves in.

Think about it this way, had NBA Live 14 been built off of the NBA Live 10 engine, this year’s game could probably have done no worse than a 60% on Metacritic. Theoretically of course, but it's hard to imagine such a solid game which improved visuals and some subtle gameplay enhancements not getting received warmly by at least some.

Such a game was exactly the type of effort Live needed to produce too. Instead, from what we know, the series has been scrapped and code based dumped no less than twice since the last NBA Live release in late 2009.

This mismanagement has set the product back valuable years on getting the core basketball experience right while the competition continues to refine even the finest parts of the game of basketball.

As I said earlier in this column, NBA 2K14 isn’t so good that competition is not needed — and now with Live 14 releasing with so many fundamental basketball gaffes — one has to wonder where any of the old Live 10 code went off to.

NBA Live product has to develop a competent foundation which can be built off of for the game of basketball. This process has to start immediately with important and much needed fixes to their current product which our own Jayson Young has outlined in the How To Fix NBA Live 14 article.

Mismanaged Vision

There was one common thread between NBA Elite 11 and NBA Live 14: both were banking on a dribbling engine being the thing which made gamers want to play their product over the 2K series.

And while yes, dribbling is an incredibly important piece of basketball — Live 14’s execution of a new dribbling system is actually inferior to 2K14’s improved dribbling mechanics. Focusing on such a narrow window of gameplay to best the competition on, and then losing in that small area is a recipe for disaster (which Live 14 currently is).

And granted, I’m writing this piece from the comfort of my home as a gaming and sports journalist, but the vision behind Live 14 and the Live series in particular, has been horribly flawed over the past several years.

Live 14 does something incredibly well, it has an amazing amount of strategic depth which could easily be leveraged if a competent game of basketball could be played on the court. Another thing Live 14 could have leveraged was an easier to pick up and master game of basketball — instead the game was perhaps more convoluted than 2K14 when it comes to mastering the intricacies of the game.

Even Ultimate Team feels mailed in with Live 14, with scant features compared to other offerings from EA.

Going forward, NBA Live can have a future but developers have to bring a vision which matches what is already in place. The game’s focus on strategic depth is something which should be expanded upon, but going forward the game has to find a way to differentiate itself from 2K14.

Becoming even more complex and convoluted is not the answer. I believe the game would benefit from a simpler approach with controls to allow the game to appear to play a much better game of basketball.

It is very possible the intense effort to try to get so many different controls and transistions perfect led to the gameplay being unnecessarily complex and thus the focus of development with the on-court action was so diffuse that we didn’t get a solid core of basketball.

If Live 15 exists, the game needs to be simplified and it needs to see the strategic options expanded upon in a way which guides the gamer into and through the in-game strategic options.

Live 15 will have to deliver a game which plays the basics of basketball well along with strategic depth which the game not only explains but actually presents in a compelling manner, there would be an angle EA could run with on the court.

Ultimately, the answer in establishing a vision for the NBA Live series is a simpler game of basketball which literally is built for fans by fans. Which brings us full circle.

The Future of EA Basketball

It’s simple: EA has a lot of fixes and about faces to do and a lot of medicine to take in order to secure a future in basketball.

An open and honest discussion about where the series is and where it is heading is the best possible course of action. At this point, you will gain more consumer goodwill by that than you will lose strategic advantage over the competition.

It is 2013, almost 2014. Openness and honesty, as well as authenticity and access are rewarded by consumers by loyalty when it comes time to check out. Imagine if fans were allowed access and an open window into the Live 15 development cycle and we were all updated on what was worked on and what the team is up to. Imagine what kind of good will could be created if at the same time, we were shown how the developers were real NBA fans who actually love basketball.

NBA Live has to be considered a desperate endeavor at this point — meaning that the company has literally nothing to lose if it is committed to delivering another basketball product.

I am not willing to give up on the Live franchise, as I believe the more sports games we have on the market, the better we all are. I also believe there is room for a second basketball title, but that opening comes with an expiration date which is approaching fast.

Doing things the traditional way isn’t going to result in EA basketball being viable in the future. No matter what EA does, they are not going to succeed with NBA Live 15 if they simply do what they've always done and control the conversation and have it be a one way conversation.

I see little way for the game to improve enough to justify that approach and what little trust potential fans had is now gone after the disastrous NBA Live 14.

To be cliche for a second: desperate times do call for desperate measures — and doing things radically different with a theoretical NBA Live 15 might be so crazy, it just might work.