With President Obama passing a $787 billion stimulus bill last week, I really started thinking about how much the sports-gaming industry is in need of a bailout as well. Sure, financially developers seem to be struggling like the rest of us, but it is the lack fresh ideas, common-sense programming and attention to detail that really seem to be hurting the industry as a whole. With games at $60 a pop, and with many gamers cutting back for their own economic reasons, it is truly a time for your average taxpayer/sports gamer to stand up and demand more from their games.

Imagine a world where we the gamers had a say in how our games were developed. Imagine a world where we could say what our hard-earned gaming dollars would be appropriated towards within a sports-gaming development studio. Today I am going to pretend that we live in this world, and will explore exactly what could be done to give us the best possible sports games on a yearly basis.

Without further hesitation, I give you the first ever Sports Gaming Stimulus Bill. This is my attempt to boost gaming quality, eliminate consumer spending on sports titles that collect dust after a week and promote consumer confidence and spending in the sports-gaming sector during these troubled economic times.

$125.36 Billion To Improve Physics Engines

This honestly has to be one of my biggest pet peeves about sports gaming. We are playing our games on some pretty sophisticated pieces of hardware, yet developers cannot seem to get one of the core aspects of sports games right: physics engines.

Remember back to Pong, and remember the strategy that went into the game -- you would use the game's physics engine to line up paddle shots that were too awkward for an opponent to defend. It seems crazy to say, but Pong had one of the better contact physics engines in gaming history, which makes it even more unacceptable that current games still do not feature such engines. Additionally, do not even get me started on collision animations in football games.

For a prime example of sports-gamer pains, all you have to do is look at various sports games we have been playing through the years:

-How many baseball games have inaccurately mimicked bat-on-ball physics? Why is it that hitting has devolved into timing your swing instead of actually adjusting your bat as it goes through the zone? Contact should be based on bat angle and arm extension, not a simple button press.

-What about the hockey games on the market? Do they accurately portray the physics of a puck leaving a stick? Why are there times when I wind up for a slap shot, only to have my puck follow what seems like a predestined line wide of the net?

-Do soccer games accurately track the trajectory of a ball’s spin/power? Much like in hockey, my personal feeling is that the ball is following a predestined path the second I release the kick button.

-Collision detection in football games is terrible. Developers do not seem to focus on mass, acceleration and force of impact when designing their tackling programming. What we are left with is a jumbled mess that could benefit from some serious tweaking.

-Basketball games need better pass physics, better blocking physics, better shot trajectory physics and better player movement physics. Of all the perpetrators on this list, basketball developers are the guiltiest when it comes to implementing poor physics engines into their games.

Devoted sports gamers deserve better, and that is why I propose $100 billion be given to sports-gaming developers so they can create physics departments on their staffs. These departments will be responsible for implementing the newest technologies in programming and game engines.

Proper physics could elevate our games to a whole new level -- just look at what rag-doll physics did to the FPS genre.

$289.10 Billion To Improve Franchise/Dynasty Modes

Aside from the actual gameplay, franchise and dynasty modes should be viewed by developers as the most important aspect of their games. Simply put, games should not be allowed to be released unless their franchise/dynasty mode is exceptionally deep, fun to play and easy to navigate.

It is my personal feeling that the franchise/dynasty mode of a game is the single biggest factor when attempting to justify a game purchase. This is the mode where the majority of the core gamer's time will be spent, and it is critical that the mode provides the core gamer with hours upon hours of gameplay and management.

We live in an era where MMOs encourage 24-hour gaming marathons -- MMOs have an undefinable addictive pick-up-and-play nature. A sports-game developer should be able to inject the same type of addictive play style into a dynasty/franchise mode. It is frustrating when a standalone game like NFL Head Coach is released because it could have simply been Madden's franchise mode.

So I propose $200 billion for the creation of a standalone franchise/dynasty developer. I do not really care if the development studio hires another studio to work solely on a franchise mode as long as I get a fully fleshed out franchise/dynasty mode.

There is no need to pay $60 a year for a game that is not improving the mode that its hardcore fan base spends the most time playing.

$196 Billion To Standardize Online Features

Anyone else getting sick and tired of online modes that do not function correctly or need to be patched three times post-release before they are even playable?

The sports-gaming industry should standardize the following online features for the benefit of all sports gamers:

1. Implement online leagues with CPU opponents, which would let gamers play in a league with just three or four buddies.

No offense to strangers out there, but I do not really want to join a random online league against people who do not have the same gameplay schedule as me and do not play a game in the same style as me. I want to play a fully interactive season with my buddies who live in different states, and I want to play CPU teams when I am not playing my friends.

2. Implement living rosters complete with stat upgrades. Not only is this one of the best features to ever make it into sports gaming, but in today’s Internet-fueled world, it should be standard in every sports game.

3. Team up modes must become a standard. This is pretty self-explanatory, but all games need to offer the ability to fully populate both teams with human players. If it can be done in a FPS, it should become standard in a sports game.

4. All online servers must be properly maintained and tested on an hourly basis to ensure Net stability. I am sick of playing an online game, only to have that game freeze or crash on me within minutes.

By standardizing online modes and stability, sports gamers can be assured a solid online experience, coupled with less frustration from shoddy connectivity. It is the year 2009 and people can surf the Net/play online via a cell phone. Therefore, we deserve better from our online console-sports titles.

$10 Billion and 37 Nickels So Consumers Can Beta Test Unfinished Products

Here is something from which we can all benefit. Developers need to start giving out beta copies of their sports games to the regular consumer.

If a developer wants us to invest $60 a year when it comes to a specific game franchise, then they need to start allowing us to audit their products. I appreciate the fact that there are now active community managers on many websites, but this is not good enough -- the average sports gamer deserves the opportunity to beta a game pre-release. Call of Duty and Halo allowed us to do this, so why not a sports game?

A beta would allow gamers to catch many of the bugs that seem to be shipping with games lately, and it would also decrease the amount of time spent working on patches. A business model that revolves around shipping a broken product, then later spending time/money/resources to fix it, is not as profitable as it could be. A yearly public beta would save developers a lot of time and money.

This is a very important issue that developers need to attack. If we are supposed keep spending $60 a year on a specific gaming franchise, the least a developer can do for us is release a game free from deadly bugs. Developers are obviously too time-constrained to fully bug test a game on their own, so why not let the public join in? I would gladly bug test a game for free.


Now I know the monetary amounts I have presented in this article are nothing more than satirical numbers, but I completely believe in the underlying concept of the article. For too many years, sports gamers have been exposed to half-hearted, lackluster releases of our favorite game franchises.

When you take a look at how well other genres have been able to develop on the current wave of consoles, it is difficult to fully accept the sports games that are releasing on a yearly basis. This is precisely why the sports gamers of the world need this stimulus bill, and we can only hope that developers use the ideas presented here to pull us out of this sports-gaming recession.

I’m Christian McLeod, and I approve this message.