The Problem With Sports Videogame Design

[mrprice33]

http://www.hiwiller.com/2012/08/13/s...in-a-nutshell/

Very interesting.

[Smoke6]

Quote: Originally Posted by mrprice33

http://www.hiwiller.com/2012/08/13/s...in-a-nutshell/ Very interesting.

I don't think it has anything to do with controls, its about the way the game plays on the field each and every year. QB 1 plays exactly the same as QB #5 and the same for all positions on the field.

You can throw a DB in at DE and he would dominate just as if that was his true position neglecting a lot of factors that go into such a matchup.

Just play a random online game and an offline franchise game and you wi see for yourselves.

[Big FN Deal]

I don't even know how to articulate how confused I am by the POV espoused in that writeup. It definitely doesn't have ish to do with Madden because that game hasn't even gotten some of the basics right. With regard to other sports simulations like The Show and NBA2k, as good as those games are at replicating their sport, there is still more to refine and improve. Who they heck are these people complaining about control schemes or that sports simulations are too realistic and inaccessible?

I am amazed at the amount of drivel that people will swallow from companies and then repeat as if it makes all the sense in the world. What most companies want is to produce low cost games for greater profit but that's hard to do when other companies are pushing the envelop making better and more realistic video games every year. So then they try to convince consumers that simpler less realistic games are more "fun" and accessible because those type games are likely less costly to make. SMMFH

[mrprice33]

So this

Quote:

Football video game players are generally pretty familiar with the real world mechanics of playing football and there are certainly a lot of them: running, blocking, passing, play selection, time management, coverage schemes, and so on and so on. How do we fit all of that into the five chunks of working memory that we have? The short answer is that we can’t. As long as we are trying to simulate a thousand little things, only the people who have deep understanding of not only those thousand little things but how we’ve chosen to represent them in our game will be able to actually appreciate it. And it will always feel off because each of us will have a different idea about how that should work on-screen. We never had that problem in Tecmo Bowl because we weren’t as close to the Uncanny Valley. We had some sprites and two buttons; we imagined the hand-play, we imagined the blocking battles that didn’t really exist.

doesn't ring true to you?

[Big FN Deal]

Yeah that rings true in the sense of that's probably the POV some affiliated with Madden have but it's not true about they can't represent those things due to the memory limits of consoles. Not when past games have done it better with less memory.

Again, this all sounds like some cooked up excuse for a company not improving the realism in their sports sims every year. With Madden they have chosen to prioritize superficial things like improving graphics and adding back of the box features, opposed to replicating fundamental football aspects. Even for network broadcast presentation, which should be an easy thing to replicate considering how many other sports game do it and another football game did it last-gen, they chose to put their own low budget version of for the longest time in Madden and still in NCAA Football.

This whole notion is a farce, imo, some marketing strategy to convince consumers that realism is not what they really want in a sports sim. It's ridiculous because they already have sports games for gamers like that and they are called sports arcade games, not simulation games. If anyone wants to make an arcade sports game with better graphics, career modes, etc that's fine too but it's still an arcade game and should be labeled and marketed as such.

[mrprice33]

You realize the person writing the post does not work for EA anymore, right?

[jfsolo]

I'm glad that Zack Hiwiller is a former sports game designer. I fundamentally disagree with almost everything he says. The increased intricacies that he mocks, I zealously crave. I have always, and will always loathe Tecmo Bowl because of its absurdly simplistic nature. I know that people worship that game, but I always thought that it was made for 8 year olds. With a game like Earl Weaver Baseball having come out a year or so before, I could never play such a Rock-Paper-Scissors game.

Hell no developers aren't asking too much of players, they aren't asking enough. If you really care about the game you will put in the time to learn the controls. If you don't have the time, then I guess it's one button mode for you. This isn't 1988 anymore.

Also, they better put 20 chunks of working memory in the next consoles, because I don't want to hear about RAM holding things back.

He's right when he says that so far the games are failing to "fulfill that players mental model", but IMO, its because they aren't going far enough in mirroring real life, not vice versa. If I want to imagine blocking battles and hand play, I'll follow a game on an internet game cast, if I'm playing a game, then I want those things playing out with as much authenticity as possible. I'll say it again, 1988 is long gone.

[Big FN Deal]

Quote: Originally Posted by mrprice33

You realize the person writing the post does not work for EA anymore, right?

I didn't know that the writer ever worked for EA, I just don't get their POV. I am bothered by the fact that anyone would adopt what I believe to be this company POV. Knowing that the writer is a former EA employee but that still seems to hold this POV, is more concerning. I know the mob mentality or group think can be hard to not get caught up in if you are around that everyday but the writer has adopted this POV even away from EA.

Like Jfsolo just stated, I don't want anyone with this type of POV anywhere near the creation of a sports simulation video game. However, this POV is likely rampant at EA/Tiburon and at least partly why Madden is the shell of a NFL football simulation video game it is to date.