Is it harder to make a football video game?

[Big FN Deal]

Quote: Originally Posted by TNT713

Can't disagree more... Football has always been the most difficult sport to replicate in a video game. When you consider the level of sophistication and diversity of the audience - it's IMPOSSIBLE to program a great game that will satisfy us all. Consider that every year something happens in an NFL game that has never happened before, something that used to only happen on Madden happens in a game, or a host of other odd variables that make the sport so sensational - it's CRAZY that Madden could have ever built up the following it has... Following the history of football games, most development companies simply opt to not publish a title. Part of that was that Madden had such a large market share, the other was that football games simply aren't worth the hassle. They are inherently a PR nightmare. When Sierra games opted not to ship FBPro99 - it wasn't because the game wasn't decent. It was because although the game was decent there weren't enough players to justify spending the money to develop the game only to see the game ripped apart in message boards for nothing more than what WASN'T in the game. Later, some of the console game producers followed suit when GameDay and the Microsoft offering were axed (didn't visit their forums, so I'm not sure about the forum topics)... To date, only 1 game has ever been killed by the exclusive license... Practically other game was killed by suits that didn't want the hassle because of the difficulty. Later

What exactly that I stated did you disagree with because I don't think you actually understood what I posted.

H-E-double hockey sticks NO, it is not any "harder" to make football games than it has always been.

Are you saying that you believe it became harder to make football games once EA obtained the exclusive license? If not, then we agree.

[KBLover]

Quote: Originally Posted by TNT713

Can't disagree more... Football has always been the most difficult sport to replicate in a video game. When you consider the level of sophistication and diversity of the audience - it's IMPOSSIBLE to program a great game that will satisfy us all. Consider that every year something happens in an NFL game that has never happened before, something that used to only happen on Madden happens in a game, or a host of other odd variables that make the sport so sensational - it's CRAZY that Madden could have ever built up the following it has... Following the history of football games, most development companies simply opt to not publish a title. Part of that was that Madden had such a large market share, the other was that football games simply aren't worth the hassle. They are inherently a PR nightmare. When Sierra games opted not to ship FBPro99 - it wasn't because the game wasn't decent. It was because although the game was decent there weren't enough players to justify spending the money to develop the game only to see the game ripped apart in message boards for nothing more than what WASN'T in the game. Later, some of the console game producers followed suit when GameDay and the Microsoft offering were axed (didn't visit their forums, so I'm not sure about the forum topics)... To date, only 1 game has ever been killed by the exclusive license... Practically other game was killed by suits that didn't want the hassle because of the difficulty. Later

Sierra is just a crap company in general. Just poorly run outfit. And they probably put themselves in a hole with the buggy release of 98, too.

But yeah Sierra...ugh. I don't think the difficulty of football was the only reason...unless baseball and RPGs (Lords of Magic) or RTS (Lords of the Realm) were also too hard for them.

Better stop before I get on a Sierra rant.

[TNT713]

Quote: Originally Posted by Big FN Deal

What exactly that I stated did you disagree with because I don't think you actually understood what I posted. H-E-double hockey sticks NO, it is not any "harder" to make football games than it has always been. Are you saying that you believe it became harder to make football games once EA obtained the exclusive license? If not, then we agree.

YES and NO... The difficulty of programming the sport has not changed, but the challenge of satisfying the football gaming audience has steadily become more difficult. Regarding the post-exclusive license... I feel it's impossible for a single football title to satisfy everyone.

Later

[bukktown]

I've heard that the A.I. is the hardest of all sports to program because there are 22 A.I. scripts that need to be written to run concurrently.

But as mentioned previously, there already is a flag on top of that mountain.

[Big FN Deal]

Quote: Originally Posted by TNT713

YES and NO... The difficulty of programming the sport has not changed, but the challenge of satisfying the football gaming audience has steadily become more difficult. Regarding the post-exclusive license... I feel it's impossible for a single football title to satisfy everyone. Later

I think that's true statement but misleading because no reasonable person ever expected Madden to satisfy "everyone" but that's seems to be some lofty goal EA set for presumably profit based reasons.

Ergo the second part of my post, that maybe you missed;

That said, if the question is "is it harder for EA/Tiburon to make a football video game?" then the answer may very well be yes but that's their own fault.

[roadman]

I'm not in the IT or software world, so, I couldn't tell you if it's more difficult making a football game vs widgets.

Who am I to judge when I don't know a thing about programming?

[TNT713]

Quote: Originally Posted by Big FN Deal

I think that's true statement but misleading because no reasonable person ever expected Madden to satisfy "everyone" but that's seems to be some lofty goal EA set for presumably profit based reasons. Ergo the second part of my post, that maybe you missed; That said, if the question is "is it harder for EA/Tiburon to make a football video game?" then the answer may very well be yes but that's their own fault.

Oddly, we all seem to be aware that there's no way for EA to satisfy everyone while at the same time each individual in the "everyone" group expects to be satisfied. Logically, somebody has to be disappointed.

To answer one of the OP's questions - Our expectations (and maybe EA's too) are quite unreasonable.

Later

[KBLover]

Quote: Originally Posted by TNT713

Oddly, we all seem to be aware that there's no way for EA to satisfy everyone while at the same time each individual in the "everyone" group expects to be satisfied. Logically, somebody has to be disappointed. To answer one of the OP's questions - Our expectations (and maybe EA's too) are quite unreasonable. Later

I disagree with the unreasonable expectations. Heck if the Backbreaker people didn't just use sports to show off the engine and make a true football game, it made have been done.

For the time FBPro was also close. I'm not versed in the 2K series but its supposedly was close.

I see nothing unreasonable about expecting a large development house in the era of tech we are in now to have physics and AI working together and in the game. Having done AI modding, including creating AI systems/players from scratch, and seeing AI code, I'm sitting here with ideas on how things can be stored in arrays to represent what the player sees and can anticipate off it, behavior rules, agent states, I'm sure a pro AI programmer with full access can do big things. I have seen modders, guys doing this stuff in free time with 3DMax and what not make and fix developer issues in graphics and put new models in from scratch. How much more can an experience pro team be expected to add in with a year's time, let alone all the othe years?

And we know physics can work in games. The play calling can be rules tables/xml that can work has a base and value/priority changes. I mean just even BASIC stuff. Populate each player's AI with basic goals based on the assigment on the play, and adjust as the action unfolds like an RTS. Yeah, its 22 data points, but that's doable. Not unreasonable.
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The difficulty of the sport is the developers knowing the game enough to put it in and an engine that allows it. If Madden picked a limited engine and can't, or won't, extend it, that's not our fault for wanting an NFL football game to play...NFL football.

That's the fault of EA as that's its decision, not ours. Of course players want more graphics and stuff. That's constant in any genre. It's caled technological progress. PS3/X360 gamers will not be happy with NES graphics in any genre. If EA can't deal with that and represent the on field action, that is not our expectations at fault. You can have good presentation without having to have insta-changes in direction or defenders that don't get off-balance, insta-max jumps, or coverage that is done with shortcuts, or defenders ignoring hit boxes, etc.

FBPro98 at least abstracted all of this and made the ratings really matter for within the engine to where you didn't need to dissect a replay frame by frame or "do testing" to see it. And that's a 14 year old game.

I know you want to largely blame the users/community as if EA is pressured into its choices, but that is not reality. Madden is missing things and, worse, other things wrong, and if other games didn't have some of these issues with weaker technology, why is it unachievable now?