How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

[Steve_OS]

If you grew up during the explosion of video games as entertainment in the ‘80s and...

Written By: TJ Henderson

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[BryanAllen42]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

I think as big of a question could be: Will we ever see the end of the yearly release cycle? Obviously 2k and EA are making insane money off of 2k and Madden, respectively. But I wonder if slowing things down to an every other year or every third year wouldn't allow for more innovative features, enhanced graphics, and refined gameplay. I'll look at 2k as an example.

Obviously this is all moot as 2k would never get away from forcing people into the VC cycle every year. However, if they did, imagine the kind of game we could get. Putting more emphasis into a seamless gameplay transition from PlayNow into Career and, within Career, Park to Rec Center to ProAm to a Career game. Each play unique enough now but what if the cap breaks took longer? What if you knew that if you could get to 99 with your player, you could keep him for another year or two? Imagine how much sweeter getting that Gym Rat badge would taste or hitting the next cap level if you knew you didn't have to redo this entire process next year? It could be treated like something like Destiny with large updates (maybe redefine the concept of the neighborhood. Move it out to, say, a coast and have the first set of parks on the beach with future DLC bringing inner city). They already have the continously updated rosters, courts, and uniforms. Would it be that much more of a stretch to see them simply skip a year to really hone in and focus on making the game better and different rather than small changes each year?

Yes, because VC.

[LoadStar81]

@Bryan
We are starting to see some of the indie sports games (The Golf Club, Project CARS) working a semi-annual development cycle, and Codemasters still manages to crank out an incredible F1 experience annually.
EA's problem is, well, EA itself.  The NHL series is having to get by on miniscule budgets compared to Madden, but that does not in any way excuse Rammer's go-to answer to all the legacy issues on this generation being, essentially, "Look!  Squirrel!"
A man so oblivious to customer demands,  who seems to think that the solution to stagnation in flagship modes is to introduce even more modes, and who, after years of demand for better servers, puts even more of the core game online, does not belong in game design; he belongs in politics.

[CujoMatty]

Being 44 and a gamer my whole life it has been amazing seeing where we are and where we came from. I think graphics will always improve but it will be more the technical aspects. We already see it with NVIDIA Ray tracing and little things that add to the realism will be what drastically improves. Take hair for example. It’s much much better now on ps4 than even ps3 but still has a long way to go. There’s a bunch of things that will improve with technology. I think the bigger aspect that changes drastically now is how it all is offered to the consumer. Streaming advancements, smaller consoles if even we have consoles, phones as powerful as a cpu or console, *VR,.

[JKSportsGamer1984]

I'm fine with how graphics are now.  Give me 60 frames per second across the board , smarter adaptive A.I., better real time physics & better collision detection.  Eliminate player clipping!

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

They are pretty close. However I can honestly say the weather effects could be way better in Madden. They haven't touched the weather effects in Madden in over a decade now. It is a shame really for it to be 2018 and to have such basic weather in Madden. I mean even FIFA have fog, drizzle, heavy rain, flurries and heavy snow. I never did like the snow in Madden, just don't look natural. Other then that, they could better portray sweat on players in sports games.

[tril]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

graphics will continuously improve, to say that they have capped out is very shortsighted. full 4k technology and power have yet to reach its full potential, and these media companies are already pushing 8k as the next great big thing.

greater processing power means greater things. improved AI, graphics etc.
gaming has yet to unlock a full breathing complete graphical environment.

there is so much more that can be done with sports game as far as graphics, AI and functionality. I am not worried about the advances in sports games but more so the lack of developers making these games due to licensing agreements.

[timmg]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

They are pretty close. However I can honestly say the weather effects could be way better in Madden. They haven't touched the weather effects in Madden in over a decade now. It is a shame really for it to be 2018 and to have such basic weather in Madden. I mean even FIFA have fog, drizzle, heavy rain, flurries and heavy snow. I never did like the snow in Madden, just don't look natural. Other then that, they could better portray sweat on players in sports games.

It would be cool if it started raining during the game, or rain turned to snow. Basically the weather changed during the game. Im ok with the graphics, how about improved AI

[dreneel]

Hell no... I still not seeing dirty uniforms... lol

[Jershy88]

Good article, well written! We can’t be reaching the peak; though it is funny that madden almost looks better than fox’s horrendous 720p broadcasting (in 2018!!). There are many broadcast nuances video games need to add to current  state to provide what I would describe as “peak” (ie zooming in on players pre snap, statistal overlays, not the same player intros every single time)

[drugsbunny]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

Atari and Colecovision were my introduction to video games and sports games have always been my thing. On one side, I can appreciate the strides that sports games have made over the years. On the other side, I hate how certain things that have worked throughout the years are no longer present. Stadium building in MVP 2005, Team creation of NCAA Football 14, dynamic team personality of NCAA March madness 07 and such. It appears that concepts that actually were great ideas that may have missed by a small margin were needless abandoned, as opposed to reworked or tweaked. I would love to see an open world aspect added to sports games. Maybe a city to explore throughout the week. A way to spend the money you earn as a digital athlete. I would love to see some dynamic crowds. Start a new team or have a losing team and see the depleting crowd in real time. Have the audio to match a small crowd and watch it grow as you gain success. Player/ball clipping completely takes me out of the mood when I am playing a video game on a 70 inch 4k screen with HDR. The gameplay is on point these days in the sports genre, I just need more to do once the game ends.

[Cardot]

I also go back to Atari and LED games before that.  So needless to say I think the graphics today are incredible.  But as someone who watched Star Trek the Next Generation, I envision the holo-deck technology as the theoretical peak......3D graphics that we can actually interact with.  Not sure technology will ever get there, but that would be the peak.

[TJ Henderson]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

I also go back to Atari and LED games before that. *So needless to say I think the graphics today are incredible. *But as someone who watched Star Trek the Next Generation, I envision the holo-deck technology as the theoretical peak......3D graphics that we can actually interact with. *Not sure technology will ever get there, but that would be the peak.

You mean like having Gronk crash through my living room like the Kool-Aid man??

[laurenfoster]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

Great Work

[pietasterp]

Re: How Close Are Sports Games to Reaching their Graphical Peak?

In terms of still-shots of graphics, we're pretty much close to peak. But the movement of the players - the game in-action - is still horrible. "Madden" looks photorealistic in still shots, but the second the players start moving, it's like 2005 still. Long way to go in terms of overall visual/animation presentation.