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

[Steve_OS]

The grind of a yearly sports videogame can work the nerves in so many different ways. GameSpot has posted an interesting look behind the scenes with NBA 2K14 lead gameplay designer, Mike Wang. Make sure you give it a read, you might learn a few things.

Wang believes that developers given multiple years to fulfill their vision have an inherent advantage over those who work on a yearly schedule. "[Sports developers] don't have the liberty of a two- or three-year cycle," he said, "so you don't get to see these big jumps." Because there isn't an obvious technical leap from one entry of NBA 2K to the next, a layman may not recognize how dramatic the improvements are. But if you compare every second or third entry in the series--putting NBA2K on the same development timeline as other franchises--you can see a jump that's on par with its more respected peers.

..."If we're at that point where we feel we can't innovate any further, we can't take the game any further, then we shouldn't be here."

[JerzeyReign]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer with Mike Wang

Mike and his staff should do a behind the game documentary of sorts going through the daily struggles of the game. Make it a webisode thing - I promise that thing will bubble if its released a month or two before the game drops and ends as the game is released.

[VDusen04]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer with Mike Wang

Good stuff. I enjoy hearing truthful tidbits on the development process, as I do not know much about the in's and out's.

[23]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer with Mike Wang

One thing I loved about the old CH was that they had another studio working on the game (Kush) and when 2k took over the project, you didn't see a drop in quality.

I promise if these guys could get involved with someone that allowed them to switch off between years like what the COD games did we'd probably get a chance to see what Mike is mentioning here. I understand why people say nuh uhn, it aint gonna happen...its just something I wish they could do.

[Gramps91]

Good stuff. I enjoy hearing truthful tidbits on the development process, as I do not know much about the in's and out's.

same here. It also let the fans know the dilemma that developers have to face on a yearly basis. I imagine it would be quite harder. This is why I try to always take everything with patience when it comes to these games. However, 2k has shown that they can innovate well within a year. Just think of the jump between 2k10 and 2k11 it was a completely different and better game.

[jersez]

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

After I read this It made me feel sorry for the devs, it's really unfair that they don't get nearly the amount of time most of these games get but get all of the backlash. They have really improved their game from year to year which is impressive, even 2k13 in some areas is really an improvement. Now knowing the facts that a lot of stuff was year one stuff, it really answers a lot of stuff that I see during games. Devs did the best they could do.

[MoultonHawk]

I understand what Wang is saying, but if the game wasn't broken every year, and many things not fixed we wouldn't have that problem. My team was broken , they never fixed it. I couldn't drop players. Stolen VC glitch never fixed. No matter how good my defense was the player would still make the perfectly contested jumper iif he was shooting with a superstar, drove me crazy,

[MoultonHawk]

As well it shouldn't be so easy to score under the paint if you are playing excellent man on ball defense, where the only open look is directly under the basket which is so hard to stop if the opponent does it repetitively. We shouldn;t be punished for playing man on ball defense. The people playing off ball should be punished. Man on ball D is how a SIM game should be played.

They need to make online a more user friendly excellent experience like NBA LIVE 2005 used to for example, online lobbies were epic, complete with different rooms, matchup games we could choose to join, DNF %, records, skill level, etc, and a chat box, and everyone had an avatar. So much fun !

However, all that being said we love NBA 2K, we just want it too be perfect. THat's why Wang gets the big bucks. Thanks Mike !

[ghettogeeksta]

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

Heres my resolution, go Call of Duty and have two teams work on two games and release them every other year. Make My Player/Path to Glory or whatever a separate title, release it one year then NBA 2k the next and keep rotating. If their was a dedicated team for My Player I believe it can be deep enough for a stand alone game.

[JasonWilliams55]

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

Heres my resolution, go Call of Duty and have two teams work on two games and release them every other year. Make My Player/Path to Glory or whatever a separate title, release it one year then NBA 2k the next and keep rotating. If their was a dedicated team for My Player I believe it can be deep enough for a stand alone game.

But make the myplayer an MMO... where you can play pickup games to gain points to make better player, join a MMO league ala 2Konline (2kCHINA). I believe this will happen 2k15 next gen.

[Ramboooo]

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

Article is on point. Sports games in general don't get as much appreciation as the fantasy RPG n FPS games out there. NBA 2K deserves credit for always striving to stay true to the sport and I think it's the sim crowd / hardcore NBA and basketball fans who see that and appreciate that effort the most. From subtle gameplay tweaks only hardcore fans would notice to all "the little things" that brings the game to life, this is a franchise that truly 'gets it' and they deserve a ton of credit.

[Boilerbuzz]

Heres my resolution, go Call of Duty and have two teams work on two games and release them every other year. Make My Player/Path to Glory or whatever a separate title, release it one year then NBA 2k the next and keep rotating. If their was a dedicated team for My Player I believe it can be deep enough for a stand alone game.

Sorry, but I wouldn't trust another developer to do the game right. Its not like you can't tell COD is done by two different teams. What about BioShock and BioShock 2?

Nope. Do not agree.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[Boilerbuzz]

Article is on point. Sports games in general don't get as much appreciation as the fantasy RPG n FPS games out there. NBA 2K deserves credit for always striving to stay true to the sport and I think it's the sim crowd / hardcore NBA and basketball fans who see that and appreciate that effort the most. From subtle gameplay tweaks only hardcore fans would notice to all "the little things" that brings the game to life, this is a franchise that truly 'gets it' and they deserve a ton of credit.

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

[Melbournelad]

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

I don't mean any disrespect, but 2k, you haven't touched a mode (association) whatsoever for 4 years. 4 YEARS. 5 if association hasn't been fixed this year. Surely it's not much to ask for for at least 50% of the issues to be fixed.

[mango_prom]

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

I don't mean any disrespect, but 2k, you haven't touched a mode (association) whatsoever for 4 years. 4 YEARS. Surely it's not much to ask for for at least 50% of the issues to be fixed.

A link to the article is going to become the standard response to any negative feedback towards 2k14 on this site, lol.

I agree. On the one hand, I know that developing a game is harder than I might think. But since they're talking about year one of a feature is alpha stage, and it gets fixed and perfected the year after...well association has been a mess for 10 years now, the touches system was broken in all 3 games since introduced, rosters have been highly inaccurate for I don't know how long now. And it's not like this stuff means asking for huge new features. Just making things already in the game work as they should. That's where 2k should show progress with 2k14, otherwise I'm not buying it. I want to, but if they didn't improve some key issues, why should I?