NBA 2K - Signature Skills: Nice Feature, Not Innovative - Optik's Blog

Optik's Blog

NBA 2K - Signature Skills: Nice Feature, Not Innovative

Posted on September 2, 2012 at 11:08 PM.

This was originally written as a short reply to BizDevsConglomerate's latest piece on his blog titled "Death of an Industry". It transformed into a rambling stream of conciousness about the state of the games industry, and its gruesomely slow evolution. I highlight NBA 2K as my main target seeing as I play it the most, and I use the new "Signature Skills" feature to as an example of the lack of innovation and the lack of speedy innovation:

I've been saying this for quite some time.

First thing I would blame is that there is no gaming governing body that can prevent game companies from making seven year exclusivity deals with the associations like the NFL. This should absolutely not be happening. I mean seriously? EIGHT FREAKIN' YEARS since 2K released a football game? That is 8 years worth of potential development GONE DOWN THE DRAIN. That is absolutely inexcusable. If this deal was prevented, you would probably have two games that were BETTER than Madden 13 and people would be getting better value games.
When EA saw what damage Konami had done to FIFA's reputation with PES 1-5, they knew they couldn't just hijack the league all to themselves because there are far too many leagues to be able to afford to do that. They were actually ambitious and brought in a new team and head of staff with a new vision who new that if he failed in his first year or so, he was GONE. Now, the tables have turned, FIFA is the clearly better game and PES has been in the doldrums for years because partially they've failed to make a smooth transition to the current-gen, but also because they became lazy and were just content to sit on their hands and offer utter twaddle year in, year out.

Second thing is what I've mentioned earlier - LAZINESS, and more to that - a complete lack of innovation. In fact, what on earth has happened to the games industry? Why is it that the hi-tech industry - in particular: tablets and smartphones - are developing at a rapid rate and the games industry is just ambling along, almost converging in overall feel of a game to OLD-gen? I'm kind of stuck, since I don't like COD or any of these MMO FPS where as soon as the enemy is within your peripheral vision and you turn to take a look, you've been shot dead. I also don't like RPGs/FPS like Skyrim where you're basically slaying and shooting demons and zombies for the whole game. I'd play something like Heavy Rain if it were on XBox, and I like Assassin's Creed but apart from that, nothing. So I'm stuck with playing sports games.
The first 2K game I ever played was NBA 2K5. I LOVED IT. The soundtrack and 24/7 stand out for me the most, but the gameplay was great for that time, and at its price it was a steal. But that was when I was 16 and only beginning to learn beyond what the casual viewer sees on TV. Now, I know how the base set of plays are supposed to work, and I would just like for 2K to actually REWARD me for my knowledge of the game. Animations aren't enough. I need to defeat my opponent strategically as well as being good on the sticks. So many bugs have continued to rear their ugly head in the game. Too many times has 2K removed good parts of their game to make way for features which turn out to be BAD. I don't want to have to find a group of people who are sim, to play with. I don't want to play in a league with artificially-imposed constraints to avoid the fact that parts of the game are broken. When was the last time 2K innovated? Look at their SS feature. It's a good feature yes, but it's a concept that PES has had for nearly a decade. Why did it take so long? I feel this game is 2-3 years behind where it really should be at. When I say laziness, I'm not saying they're not putting enough work in, like Konami after making PES 5. They clearly are. But I think they are being intellectually lazy and uncreative. There's far too much flash covering up the diminishing substance. Of course it wasn't all their fault as EA has had a 3 year existential crisis. That leads on to perhaps the most important factor which is...

...A lack of competitors. It cannot be right that we have a duopoly dominating in the sports gaming market for each major sport. I remember when there were several competitors in a few major sports, and yes even though they were all dominated by EA, it was still nice to have a choice. Now we don't (kind of). It's kind of like what people say of the two party-system in the US, a lot of the stuff that the different administrations will do will be similar because of corporate influences and geopolitical events. I know that it must be much more expensive for companies to develop games for these current-gen systems in comparison to the older ones, but Samsung just seemed like an average Japanese company to me a few years ago, doing a lot electronics, flastscreen TVs etc., but now they have one of the best smartphones available and are challenging with huge companies like Apple. You've got the blackberry, you've got Windows's phone, you've got the Android from Google. Then you have the tablets! Why can't we get this level of competition in gaming companies. Is there just not enough of a demand? Latest stats show that less and less kids are going for video games and are just playing them on everything else BUT the console. Is this something we'll just have to deal with for the future and should we thus just buy the game every two years instead?

WHERE OH WHERE IS THE INNOVATION? THIS IS 2012 AND THERE ARE STILL FORCEFIELDS ON THE BASELINE? COME ON...

Comments

# 1 bxphenom7 @ Sep 3

I'm starting to think we can't expect anything innovative until next-gen unfortunately. The fact that devs don't try to innovate or drastically improve certain areas of their game tells me they listen to ALMOST NOTHING fans speak or write about as soon as they buy the game or MONTHS BEFORE the next release. they have the time, they just don't use it.