Part I: Felecia Whitehouse - Online Producer

Hi everyone, I’m Felicia Whitehouse, the Online Producer here at Visual Concepts.  I’m excited for this opportunity to let you guys know about some of our new online features for NHL 2K9.  We overhauled a good portion of the online game this year, from our server support, to revamped lobbies, new website functionality, and the addition of our own Team 2K competition and 6-on-6 Team Up play, which I’ll be focusing on today.  

To start with, Team 2K is a 10 week competition we are sponsoring this year and the first thing you’ll be introduced to when signing online.  It’s simple - play ranked games and move up the Leaderboard, and at the end of the week, whoever is at the number 1 spot wins and earns their place on Team 2K.  The Leaderboard will then reset so you have a new shot to work your way up to the top every week.  This year we have also switched to the ELO Leaderboard formula, so it’s more about the quality of your opponent than just the number of games you’ve won.

From loading into the game where you’ll get a preview of your opponent’s rank and their stats, to returning to the Team 2K page after your game to see your new place on the Leaderboard, this is all about doing whatever it takes to win.  Now the stakes are higher.  The 10 winners at the end of the competition will be included in the Team 2K roster for NHL 2K10 as well as receive a ton of 2K gear and our full 2K10 library of games.


Now let’s shift gears to Team-Up.  There are 2 ways to play - you can select Ranked Team-Up from the main menu, or create/join an unranked Team-Up match through the lobby.   Selecting Ranked Team-Up will take you directly to a pre-game lobby with a pre-determined match up.  We have a playlist running from our server with the most popular match ups that will be updated throughout the year to keep things fresh.  From the pre-game lobby, the most time you’ll wait is a minute and a half.  During that time, we’ll fill the match with as many people as we can until it’s full.  Once the game is ready to start, we’ll randomly assign positions for everyone starting with forwards and then defensemen.  In this mode you’ll get into matches quickly and have a new experience every time being locked to different positions and playing on different teams.

Be sure to pay attention to the intro cut scene - that’s where you’ll see who you’re locked to and what your player icon color will be for that game.  Once gameplay starts, you will notice the teammate grade at the top left corner of your screen.  In every game you will start out with a C, and over the course of the game you will either see that grade go up with positive team play or down with negative team play.  Not only are we grading on stats, but also on the extra things teammates do to help each other out on the ice.  For example, screening the goalie to help set up a shot, taking quality shots on goal, or clearing the puck on the penalty kill.  This gives everyone from role players to stars plenty to do and be rewarded for on the ice.

Selecting to create an unranked Team-Up match is where you’ll be able to invite friends, choose teams, and pick which position you want to be locked to, including the goalie.  We also provide the opportunity to be a floater and not lock to any particular position.  This mode gives you a lot of freedom in setting up the game with a ton of sliders and gameplay options available to choose from.

It's another year for NHL 2K, will it be a better year?

Finally, in NHL 2K9 you will be able to access just about everything about your online game on the 2K Community website.  You can create a 2K account and you’ll be given your own page where you can access and manage all of your media uploads, get updates on your league, keep track of your place on the Team 2K Leaderboard, and meet up with other NHL 2K9 gamers.  We’ve made a ton of additions to our league websites, which you will hear about from our Web Engineer, Tristan.  But I can’t hold out on the PS3 gamers out there.  This year you’ll finally be able to manage your leagues on the website too.

We’re really excited about what online has to offer this year, and can’t wait to hear what you guys think.  This is a great community you have here at OS and I’m grateful for the opportunity to come and talk about what we’ve been working on this year.  Thanks for all the feedback and words of support!  See you online!
 

 

Part II: Tristan Hodge - Web Engineer 

Hello everyone, I'm Tristan Hodge, 2K Sports web engineer, and I'm going to talk about some of the some of the cool new online website features for NHL 2K9. As you may already know, this year it's our goal to bring the fun back to hockey, and to me there is nothing as fun as playing in an online league with my online buddies. This year, NHL 2K9 is being built from the ground up by our Visual Concepts studio and I was given the opportunity to improve upon our online leagues service. I really wanted to do something special for our online community to get our fans excited about playing our products online.
 
My goal was to make the online league experience feel as dynamic as possible by better expressing the stats and other results from on-ice gameplay. I also wanted to more clearly display all pertinent information that is happening in your league in a new and easy-to-navigate system.
 
To start with, one of the major new features we added this year was the ability for members to upload videos or screenshots from their online league games right to 2KSports.com. These highlights will then automatically be attached to your league's web page. This means members can now watch all the great plays and game turning moments from around their league.

We could have stopped there, but we added a ton of additional functionality to uploaded media that we think will really engage our members and ultimately improve league interest and participation. For example we added the ability for members to "tag" all the players in their video or screenshot so that when you view that player or team stats page, you will see all highlights related to them. We also added an automatic league poll so members in the league could vote on the best highlight of each week, with the winning highlight being awarded the title of "highlight of the week".

Of course, all of these great features would not work out so well if saving and uploading videos was cumbersome and inconvenient. However, our engineers built a great system where after an online game is played, there is a menu option for each user to look at the game’s event log and either watch any event or save the replay. This means you don't have to worry about your opponent pausing in the middle of the game to save his replay of Rick Nash walking through your defense.
 
Another cool feature we added this year is the "GameTrak" system. Whether you’re a casual gamer or a hard core hockey fan, this system will help you break down key events from your latest online league game. For me, every time I'm scored on I always want to know who I had on the ice and if there was a line mismatch (i.e. their first line vs. my defensive 3rd line). On an even more basic level, it helps to know where the key passes were that led to the goal, or where on the ice the shot came from. All this information is at your fingertips with the "GameTrak". How it works is pretty simple. You can select to view several different key events, including where a face-off took place, where a shot took place (either a goal, saved shot, blocked shot, or a shot that missed the net), or where a successful pass took place. You can also turn on one event or a series of events, like where all of a team’s shots came from.

NHL 2K9 is storming onto the ice later this week.

One of the most useful new features this year has to be the "automatic news story system". There is a lot happening in your online league, and unless your league was analyzed by a team of reporters, you would never know about half of it. This is where the automatic news comes in. We did away with the old system where your league just had a main news story, and we have now given each league a separate news section. Your league is always being checked to see if there is any important news to be shared, and this section will be updated regularly.

For example, this year on the website we allow custom league conferences and divisions, and if a team clinches a playoff spot, the division, or the conference, this system will automatically update your league’s home page with a story about it. We also have a new feature this year called "League Records" where we keep track of 20 important team and player records, like which NHL player scored the most points in a game and which team had the most power play goals in a game. Each time a record is tied or broken, it will create a new news article to inform your league of the achievement.  
 
There was also a significant amount of time spent on the little details to ensure league members truly felt they were running a realistic hockey league. One of those areas was to make sure we reported important hockey specific stats that you would hear or see on a TV broadcast. For example we group player stats together by "lines" on both the game detail page and the team detail page to help users better judge how their players are playing together. We also record stats like team record when scoring first, team record when scored on first, team record in 1 goal games, how many shifts each player has taken, and team and player shootout stats.

 

Will the new online features help NHL 2K9 overcome EA's NHL? Time will tell.

 And finally, I'd like to talk about the attention paid to make tools to help users better manage their team. We linked each league to our roster database to allow us to retrieve every player attribute that we record, and we use this information in very creative ways. The first thing to come from this data is our "Edit Lines" tool that puts all those player attributes right at your fingertips. For example, let’s say you were filling your 2nd line’s center slot and you wanted to know who on your team is the best in face-offs, or maybe you want to fill your 4th line with tough, hard-hitting players. When you use the "Edit Lines" tool, a pop up appears when each position is selected that shows all your player attributes and allows you to quickly sort by any value. Another example is the "Trade Analyzer" tool that will break down trades in every player attribute category and let you know exactly where you might be gaining or losing in any type of deal.
 
Well, that's it for today, Overall, I really think we've created a new and exciting experience for our online leagues that will satisfy both the hard-core gamers and the casual hockey fans, and I’m looking forward to everyone getting to check things out.