Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

[superjames1992]

New sports games just are not fun anymore to me... That is why I am playing ESPN NFL 2K5, ESPN College Hoops 2K4, NCAA Football 2004, and NCAA Football 06, though I still do play the NBA 2K series and the MLB 2K series.

[ThreeKing]

Quote: Originally Posted by DrJones

#1. Online leagues ARE a pain in the butt. #2. Regarding EA's NHL series and fighting/blood inconsistency, I was told a lot of that was due to the NHL and the PA flip-flopping on how they wanted their league to be perceived (remember this was about the time that Bettman became commissioner). As far as dropping features when going from current-gen to next-gen, most of those features need complete rebuilding and can't get ported. Dev teams runs out of time. #3. Real money is a league/PA issue. For years on EA's baseball series, for example, we couldn't use real dollars because the MLBPA didn't let us, so we had to use "points". #4. As I've said before, most of the real decision-makers (execs, marketing) don't really care about realism. They want gimmicks to market, and those tend to chew up a lot of dev time. #5. Devs are juggling many more balls than they used to. Quite often, I'm afraid, making a sports title is a mad scramble to make a ship date so you don't get canned/demoted. I'm generalizing, of course. Some dev teams really go above and beyond. If your gameplay engine is really solid, it gives you more time to work on the little things. Sometimes stuff happens behind the scenes that screws everything up. The real problem is that games are much more complicated than they used to be and require a longer (2-year) dev cycle to do everything properly. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Great post.

Unfortunately, #4 will never sit well with the OS community. Which I completely understand.

[DrJones]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cardot

Out of curiosity, what makes them tough? I can see how having two people from across the country play each other is tough. But putting the stats into a database doesn't seem beyond what game makers do these days. 2K has a pretty nice set up. Just curious....I'm not doubting you.

Unfortunately, I'm not a technical guy. From what I've been lead to believe, it's more of a time/manpower thing than it is nuts and bolts. The Powers That Be at EA (at least while I was there) weren't overly concerned about supporting online leagues, which meant individual dev teams weren't given the means to set them up properly.

[DrJones]

Quote: Originally Posted by A.M. Son

You're right- no matter the business, changes won't be made until it's proven they will improve finances (or that not making changes will hinder business). It's unfortunate that the gaming community is partially comprised of people who buy games semi-blindly and without knowing what to expect. This trial and error mentality of the community only helps to increase sales- they are not "speaking with their wallets". But for those of us who are informed about the games we are buying, we should know better. We need to have better willpower to not buy what we perceive to be a sub-par product. I'll say that for me, it's not something I'm good at doing.

The best thing to do (other than not purchase the games at all, of course) is to express your displeasure in forums (preferably the wishlist) like these within the first 2 months after the game ships. These are the most likely times for devs to be looking at boards like OS. You don't have to be deferential or anything, but civility will always get you further than "EA/2K is evil" or "the devs obviously added gimmick A and didn't fix bug B because they're lazy/stupid". Then hope for the best.

[DrJones]

Quote: Originally Posted by jrcain

The worst thing is not making the game fully customizable for each individual user. I should be able to edit anything and everything to my liking. Limits on this makes me really dislike console gaming.

Examples?

There tend to be 2 big problems with mega-customization:

1. The amount of time needed to test the game rises exponentially. Does changing A make B break, etc.? What if you change A, C, F, H, and Z?

2. The various leagues restrict customization of certain things. In MLB-licensed games, for example, you're not allowed to realign divisions, etc.

[Steelerfan2k1]

Still though - let me customize as much as possible. And - I can see your point about needing to devote a lot to this. But - I always appreciate it when a developer makes the effort.

[Gary Armida]

Excellent piece. You hit the nail right on the head, especially with realism and fun. I know it's not "sexy" to the execs, but I do believe all gamers want fun and we hardcore gamers want realism too. So far, the Show and NHL 08 has been the only games to capture that for me.

[bsb13]

Quote: Originally Posted by Skyboxer

I also agree with most, especially the "fun" part. Now it seems we do a lot of "work" to make the game enjoyable. If there were no sliders we'd just accept it and be having a blast with the game. Now it's a tweak fest all the time.

I agree. Now when I buy a new game I just pretend it doesnt even have sliders. I just jump to the hardest level and take it for what it is. I enjoy my games much more now with this approach. I think I enjoyed games more before I even started coming to boards like this. People here will have me noticing things I NEVER would have noticed on my own.

We all want games to be as realistic as possible, but we have to remember that it is just a game.