The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

[luda06]

This is why sports games should just exist as one game (w updates) versus annualized alphas and betas with roster updates slapped on.

[The 24th Letter]

Good article...

Some of these replies are embarrassing....

[blues rocker]

i definitely appreciate the complexity of a 2k basketball game. to me, it is probably one of the more complex types of games to pull off successfully...the amount of player interaction and specific animations that go into it are staggering. if you look at the average video game, the amount of movements the characters do are usually pretty limited and simplified: run, punch, clim, shoot, etc. but in 2k basketball, there are so many nuanced movements and contextual animations that other games just don't have to deal with. every year i'm blown away by how well 2k can pull off that level of complexity in movement compared to the average video game.

[cthurt]

Are Mike Wang and the crew working on both 2k14 for current and next gen, or does 2k have a different development team for both games??

[Sundown]

Quote: Originally Posted by Boilerbuzz

Sports games have to have the depth of an turn based strategy, the visual quality of a front line FPS, the character development of an RPG, and the balance of an RTS. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

And the realism of a simulator.

[Rensational14]

How about things like

Correct team color accessoires
Saving slider sets
Correct jersey colors

[RyanFitzmagic]

I think one of 2K's biggest problems (if you can call it that) is that they're amazing at inserting/building upon great, dynamic, complex features, but then the simplest of mechanics are removed (such as saving sliders) or never even seen in the games (changing headband colors, removing a Signature Skill after it's been assigned to a player, etc).

It's not even like I'm really mad about those exclusions. It's just that I know 2K is better than that. I'm more mystified than anything.

[Sundown]

Quote: Originally Posted by RyanFitzmagic

I think one of 2K's biggest problems (if you can call it that) is that they're amazing at inserting/building upon great, dynamic, complex features, but then the simplest of mechanics are removed (such as saving sliders) or never even seen in the games (changing headband colors, removing a Signature Skill after it's been assigned to a player, etc). It's not even like I'm really mad about those exclusions. It's just that I know 2K is better than that. I'm more mystified than anything.

Also QA.

A ridiculously complex game with a variety of compelling gameplay mechanics and well engineered systems is often undermined by one or two oversights and exploits-- the weakest links the chain. As a result, it's arcade cheese online most of the time.

The limited number of patches they can put out before being charged on current gen consoles didn't help either. Hopefully that changes moving forward.