Stagnancy of the "Create-A-Play" Feature in Sports Games

[Stain]

"# 5 kjell1979 @ 01/17/09 08:52 PM

The football games need to take a page out of the Front Page Sports Football Pro create a play editor. I'm floored that no other game has really come close to it. "

Right there, hoss. Couldn't have said it better myself. I was rather shocked by this category heading and story and no mention was made of, what is, in retrospect, the finest play editor ever created, any sport.

AND .. and .. in addition, an outstanding AI that would TRULY exploit the weakness if you created a stupid play.

Also correct is the comment that AI is weak these days. Tricks of the system. That's AI in 2009.

[Skyboxer]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjell1979

The football games need to take a page out of the Front Page Sports Football Pro create a play editor. I'm floored that no other game has really come close to it.

Agree about taking a page from FPSFB. I spent hours upon hours designing plays and creating playbooks. Not to mention designing/creating gameplans.

[jyoung]

Yes, the reason none of the Mogul games or Front Page Sports received a mention is because the scope of the article is limited strictly to console sports games.

And while people often mention AI exploitation as a potential problem with this feature, I'd like to think that, ideally, players would be able to create defensive plays to counter anything that the offense can create.

Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure until a developer steps up and let's us find out the answer for ourselves.

[Cryolemon]

Great article. I echo the props for FPSFB's play editor, it was epic. I wish I could get FPSFB '97 to work on Vista.

[7stringking]

C-Hoops 2k8 had a play creator......


I think play creation was taken out of most sports titles because the CPU A.I. could not properly defend them

[rudyjuly2]

The ability to create money plays is a problem. The other problem is that 99% of the people who buy the game won't use it and the other 1% that do would buy the game even if it didn't have create a play. There is no financial incentive to provide this feature. It takes a lot of time to do this right and since it wouldn't boost the profits or benefit a significant number of people, it just doesn't get done.

[J.R. Locke]

Financial incentive is to charge a premium price for an external play editor that can save playbook files for various consoles and PC versions.

I really would like to see options like this start to develop in games. With the online capabilities of the consoles it is about time that external sources are allowed in the game. Like using pictures to create our own cyberfaces-portraits for players.

Companies could make money on features like this, they just aren't smart enough yet.

[Stain]

Absolutely right, J.R. I can honestly think of four or five ways to expand the financial viability of sports games. However, the big roadblock is very simple : it would be harder. This is not a generation that generally does things that are harder. And that's to their credit. That's not disparaging. I watched the previous generation to mine work like dogs for 60-65 hours a week to maintain a lifestyle marketed and sold to them by the television set. And they died early because of it.

My generation saw that, couldn't do much about it. This generation, a little smarter.

However .. and a big "but" here .. if some truly unique people, and it would have to be a conglomerate not two .. were to come along, they would set themselves aside. I see a lot of it in unpaid circumstances, for the love of the game. I play the "Battlefield" series and my goodness, the free mods blow away most anything this side of MVP 2005. It's shocking. And they have no support or access by EA. And they get it done.

Imagine if they were all brought on board, paid well and given full technical and corporate support to simply ... create. Make it bigger, make it better.

Then, charge the level fees as mentioned to cover the all-important Corporate Cost.

It would be a new way of marketing a sports game : Choose your flavor, kind of situation.

*And honestly, thinking back on FPS : FBPRO on the PC, I can't really imagine how they would do that on a Nintendo Wii.*

It was far more complex. You needed to know what a nickel back does, you need to know why defensive lineman are blockers, not tacklers, in a 4-3, you need to know square-ins coupled with flags and what they do to a Cover 2 secondary.

You needed to have played some serious organized football to design plays in FPS : FBPRO. Geekdom suffered. I know. I enlisted two friends to help me design plays that were cutting edge coders at the time. They could never understand the difference of what a free safety does compared to a strong safety. It was beyond them and FBPRO ate 'em up.

That level .. that level of football knowledge right there .. I, uh .. I don't think that is truly marketable.

Most of the guys I played organized ball with, looking back, are lucky enough to draw breath on time they were so stupid outside the boundaries of a football field. Beyond those white lines, they were pretty clueless. If that's your audience, it's no audience and I believe that answers, entirely, the question of this article.

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