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Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: Game Informer Interview Part II...Good Stuff!!!
Game Informer: Let’s shift the focus onto the court. What are the big changes coming to 2K10 in terms of gameplay?
Rob Jones: The thing that I’m the most excited about is the new Signature Play feature. What Signature Play is to me is really a big umbrella that takes what we started with, with signature style or whatever you want to call it in 2K7 with all the jumpers and dribble moves, expanding that to post packages—if you take all of that as one item and put it under this umbrella. We were doing signature celebrations and ambient stuff before, now we have signature facial animations. All of this brings these guys to life in the way that you would actually see them in the league. It doesn’t sound like much until you actually see it; it punctuates the rest of the game.
The biggest thing for me is the signature tendencies stuff we did with 82 games this year. At the beginning of the year one of the big things we wanted to do was portray players with individualized tendencies and abilities in a way that the AI could really replicate the way they play when you play against them. We built the system from scratch. We added 36 tendencies, plus we needed to add additional data as preferences that aren’t necessarily tendencies to get a better picture of what a guy does. The big thing for me was I was mostly a defensive player back when I was more athletic. [Laughs] The thing that made me smarter and better at doing that was I picked up on players’ tics really quickly. Their tendencies—what they liked to do and how they attacked the player that was in front of them based on their size or based on their speed—that stuff carried on for any particular guy every time they played. A great player will adjust. If you take something away from him, he’s going to do something completely different. But their preferences and tendencies to do things—those were quantifiable.
The problem was we didn’t have the data, so we ended up contracting a company called 82games.com, which is very well known as a stat-based, analytical website. They have obscure stats that I couldn’t find anywhere else that we use to drive our idea of how good a guy is at shooting outside and things like that. The only way to get that stuff would be to watch film. We went to them and said, “I want to paint this really great picture of every player. I know that Kobe likes to be up in the high post, but how does he attack once he gets the ball there? I know that Paul Pierce likes to use particular moves especially when he’s driving from the top of the key.” The guys turned around and they said, “Hey, we don’t have any of that.” The next step was tracking all of that data. It was a big project, but it was an interesting project to them because it was something that they could add to their arsenal. They were already doing a lot of scouting, but this particular level of profiling of players was something that they weren’t necessarily savvy on. They knew how much a guy went left and how much a guy went right; they just didn’t know these little nuances. What we did was build an AI system as a backbone as we were building our tendency list, and as we went back and forth with these guys, they delivered the exact type of data that we needed to drive the system. The end result is that you get a Kobe, or a Carmelo, or a Paul Pierce that attacks you the same way they would in real life. The way we had it set up before is we knew their ability and we knew what kind of shots they took in terms of they like to shoot mid-range or they like to shoot three pointers, but we didn’t know what type of shot they were actually taking. Do they shoot floaters? Do they shoot fade-aways? Do they shoot leaners? All these little things that end up being the personality of a player is now realized when you play our game.
| GI: What kind of changes have you made to offensive and defensive controls?Jones: One of the things that my feedback has been over time was that IsoMotion in general was a bit confusing. The second one was the blurring of the line between turbo and IsoMotion—they kind of triggered the same stuff from the same button, so one of the things we did this year was split the two things out so IsoMotion is now on the left trigger. Now if you want to do a dribble move, you’re holding that L-trigger and you know this is exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Turbo or sprint or whatever you want to call it is its own button on the right trigger. The combination of the two will still yield stuff, but the user now can really separate and get that idea of stop and go. More importantly, the two don’t marry very well. You can only pull of certain moves with the R-trigger held, and those are the ones that lend themselves to moving faster than normal.
From the post standpoint we simplified a lot. You auto engage, which is something that we haven’t done in the past. What that does is frees up the idea of now using the shot stick to initiate post moves. Once you start playing with it you’ll wonder why we haven’t done this before. Tapping left and right on the stick will give you shoulder fakes. Hold the stick to a side and you’ll get a shot to that side. In combination with the left trigger you can do up and under moves. If you’re trying to do a move that actually takes you to the basket, all you need to do is use your left stick to disengage. For example, I’m backing down and suddenly I want to do a quick spin to the baseline, I point the left stick to the baseline, I tap the left trigger, and he spins off. If I wanted to do a power move like a drop step, I’d point the left stick to the baseline, push R-trigger, and he would do a power move. There are various combinations of moves from that. You can face up and attack the basket that way. It’s so much simpler that it opened up a completely different area of the game that I think in years’ prior ended up being neglected by the user because it was too complex.
Defensively, one of the things we really spent our time doing was making the user feel more weight in their steps, of actually having to plant and turn. A lot of the game is based on trying to anticipate what the offensive guy is trying to do instead of just trying to react. In basketball, if you’re flat footed, if you’re not already in tune with where you are on the court and where that guy can attack you, you’re pretty much dead in the water. That’s really big on the strategy this year. It also brings a different dynamic to trying to play on-ball defense. The last thing is, holding the L-trigger—we call it an Intense D modifier—forces more physical play on the ball handler. Therefore, if you anticipate correctly you can force a guy away from the basket as opposed to giving up a drive straight to the basket. You can cut a guy off and push him to where you want him to go.
We also did major upgrades to our shot blocking system that changes what the user feels. One big thing that is kind of a nuance is that we worked really hard on trying to provide true team-style defensive rotations. If I’m shading you and giving you a clear lane to drive to the baseline, that doesn’t mean you’re automatically driving left baseline for a lay-up or getting some random guy to come over for help. In reality there is a strategy that is employed when you’re doing that because you know help is coming from a specific position and that everybody is going to rotate to take away the other options that that team has. Last year we had a different team help base concept; this one is actually based on team strategy.
Erick Boenisch: One other thing on the gameplay front that also applies to Association. It’s the first time the NBA 2K series has ever done it, and it’s really simple: in-game saves. If you’re playing a long game and you gotta go, just save it and you can load it later. That’s all there is to it.
Jones: One other thing that I always fail to mention because it seems so trivial to me—that it should have always been in the game. One of the things that people are surprised by this year is that we went out and captured more animations in one year that we probably did in three years combined. People ask why. We have fans who have been playing a long time, so if you really know our game you can say, “yeah, that animation was in 2K6.” Some guys can tell me specifically the born-on date for a particular animation. I didn’t want that anymore, I wanted it all to feel fresh, so I started by saying “let’s toss away anything that was prior to 2K8 and see if we can fill it with just 2K9 and 2K10 stuff. Then at least we get the choice of saying, “this animation was really good, let’s save it.” New variation was a big thing—making the game feel fresh. Our double team system is brand new—I don’t know if you remember how the double team system used to feel like a movie playing on once it started—now you are control of the actions of every player in the system. If you’re a defender and you hit the steal button, the player steals when you press “steal” in the double team. It feels a lot more responsive because you’re more involved.
One of the other biggest things for me was the player differentiator. Guys like Gasol or Nene—for the really big guys we were always like, “well this dunk will have to do for these guys” because a 6’9” guy is close to a big guy in most games anyway. What we did this year is we covered animations for every different size of player in the game. Now when you’re looking at particular guys, they don’t feel like they’re getting some generic animation, we made sure these guys play their own part in the game. That was a big thing. Like I said, it feels small to me because you would think it should be part of everybody’s system, but it just hasn’t been that way for pretty much anyone at this point.
GI: Many tout the Association mode as the best of its kind across the sports genre. What tweaks are you making to the successful franchise mode this year?
Boenisch: Let me give you my high-level philosophy for it. In the last three years we added some industry leading features like player morale, player ambitions, player roles, the way we integrated team chemistry into it, NBA.com—those types of events. I think our franchise is full featured, and fully authentic in almost every way. So, at the beginning of this year I was scratching my head thinking, well, what could we add this year that we don’t already have? The approach I came up with was “the year of the fan.” I went through all the feedback we get from our fans on the fan sites and the forums, just looking for things that people have been asking for that we just haven’t been able to get to because we’ve been trying to put in core features. So this year was really all about polishing the mode and adding those little bells and whistles that really make the experience for some people.
The first thing is obviously that NBA Today integration we talked about earlier. After that we have the NBA Development League fully integrated into the Association mode, so you can play any game on the D-league schedule, including your affiliated team. That includes calling up or sending down players, so if you draft that first-round rookie and he’s not getting any run on your team, send him down to the D-league. One benefit you get from doing that is the all-new player progression system. The way it has worked in years’ past is you would draft a player in the first round and you could sit him on your bench and he would automatically develop into the player he was going to be—he had preset potential, he was on a preset curve. This year the new progression system is balanced between stat-based performance and actual playing time. So if you draft that hotshot rookie and you just don’t play him, he’s not going to get any better because he’s not getting on the court, he’s not learning from his mistakes. This is where the beauty of the D-league comes into play. If you’re the Boston Celtics and you drafted J.R. Giddens he’s not going to get any run on your team because you have three hall-of-famers and Rondo and Perkins. You can send him down to the D-league and get his playing time there and he’ll develop into a player that way so it really gives you a different facet to building your team and developing your players and we thought that was really important to fans. Plus, the cool part is every time you play the mode it’s different. Some players develop into stars, and in the next franchise they won’t just because they got traded, they got injured, they didn’t have a role on the team. It really makes it a lot more dynamic in that aspect.
GI: Is there an expiration date for the players to reach their potential or could you trade for a guy who’s been buried on a roster for a couple of years and start tapping his potential even though he’s been dormant?
Boenisch: There are two ways to answer that. Players do have a potential rating. One of my philosophies in franchise is complete customization, so you can go into edit player and you can change his potential. Internally players have a peak age, which says they develop to a certain age. For some guys in the league like a LeBron, he’s going to peak a lot sooner rather than some guy who comes into the league as a 22-year old college senior. He might peak a lot later because he doesn’t have as much NBA experience. Depending on how many miles are on the legs, they are going to reach the end of their peak sooner in their career, kind of like a T-Mac, who is 30 years old but is looking like he’s 40 years old. We modeled that into it to. It’s not nearly as cut and dry as it was last year; it’s a lot more dynamic.
Moving on from that, we have 30 player-controlled teams this year, up from eight last year. This means that users can control every team in the league. This is cool for our fans who like to have their franchise follow the real NBA season. If a trade happens, you can go in there and force the trade to happen between the two teams. It’s just a no holds barred, do whatever the heck you want to do with your franchise feature for our real diehards.
Another fan requested feature is real-time practice. Last year we had a practice menu in the game where you could go set up a little scrimmage, but it was kind of simulated and your players would get kind of a stat boost based on that. This year with real-time practice you can actually go into a practice gym with your team and practice plays or go do a scrimmage or practice a signature shot with one of your guys. This is really cool for learning the signature shots of your players, learning to run plays in an environment that doesn’t count negatively against you. In years’ past people would have to learn plays in game situations, and that’s not really fun or fair because they are doing everything they can to win the game. This is another of those little icing on the cake features.
Moving on from there, one of last bits of authenticity we can add to the mode that we didn’t already have is the concept of restricted free agency. That’s any player coming off his four-year rookie contract, his drafting team has rights to him. We saw this with Josh Smith last year. If he goes out and signs with another team then he owning team has 10 days to sign him or let him go. This makes free agency a bit more interesting—is your strategy to go for that young kid where the other team might match for him or do you focus on the unrestricted free agents who you have a better shot at landing? It adds a little drama to the free agency period, which wasn’t there before.
Believe it or not, I’m not done yet. The next one is my favorite one. It’s an extension of our 2K Share feature, which we had in the game last year. This is the ability to create and import draft classes into your franchise mode. We actually have a feature outside of the mode where you can create them. This is just simply the ability to go in there and edit the 75 rookies that we generate to your liking. Legally I’m not supposed to tell you what you can and can’t do with this feature for legal issues of importing characters that we don’t have rights to, but if you let your imagination run wild I think some of our fans are going to create some really cool draft classes. It’s all done through 2K Share and before a season a little dialog box will pop up that asks you if you want to load one or just auto generate a random class. For our fans, this is a great way to keep franchise mode fresh.
The last thing I added that I think is pretty cool is a page on NBA.com called NBA History, which archives the league history and builds it up as you go forward. You can just jump into this menu and see who led the league in rebounds in 1974 or who one the title in 1996. Moving forward this history builds with your franchise so you can look back and see how your franchise has changed the course of the NBA. It sounds like a bit feature, but for people who really take their mode seriously it’s a really cool thing to have.
GI: How about online play? What strategy are you taking to multiplayer?
Boenisch: Touching back on our My Player feature we talked about a little while ago, you can actually take your offline player and bring him into online team-up games this year. They are called pickup games and they live within the scope of My Player mode. For people who are trying to play through their careers this is another avenue to play games to earn skill points to improve their player with. You’re playing with and against other My Player players. Once your player gets good enough, you can take him and stick him into a new feature we’re calling crews. Crews are organized teams of players—you and your friends all get together and make a crew and we have crew leaderboards and a crew ladder so you can rank the teams to see whose crew is the best. Crews consist of two kinds of players—My Player players, and you can also use NBA players. Not every fan wants to sit there and play 200 games to get a good rated player. You can jump right in with a Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, or whoever it is you want. The only negative side of that is once you’re an NBA player you don’t get any better. Whereas with a My Player you are always getting better and you have a chance to ultimately surpass those players.
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09-15-2009, 03:35 AM
