Sports Games Need Effective Community Managers

[Steve_OS]

Sports games are getting more complex every year. Recently, my brother asked me to explain how...

Written By: Smirkin Dirk

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[Gotmadskillzson]

What they really need is to go back to making strategy guides that explain everything in detail. Madden haven't had made a strategy guide in years. UFC game been even longer since they made one. The rest of the sports games never had them. But yeah, that is what they need, actual strategy guides.

I remember the Madden, NCAA Football and UFC strategy guides back in the day that told you how to do everything you needed to know in the game. All the new controls, all the new features in depth, along with a breakdown of each team. I have yet to see a "good" community manager for any game period. All the current ones all they do is talk to the biggest Twitch streamers and Youtubers ONLY. If you not one of those, then you get ignored. They not in the habit of interacting outside of follow 5 different things just for a chance for receiving a game code.

But once the game actually comes out......the community managers, much like the EA Game Changers go ghost mode. You don't see them again other then to tweet a new patch was release. That is about all you going to get out of them until next years game rolls around.

[suntzu420]

Awesome article. Where can I listen to this audio from Da Czar?

[SnakeEyez]

Games don't come with manuals anymore, and while I liked the strategy guides of generations' past, they stopped selling them when they were not profitable anymore due to the internet.**
People need to just stop skipping through all of the introduction content that teaches the user the controls.* *2K did this first, and Madden followed with that approach beginning a couple of releases ago.* *People are just too impatient to pay enough attention instead of trying to skip right through... and never go back into the trainer later on to brush up on their game.

[testorz]

In NBA 2k my team I hate playing the team schedule challenges and on the last game you're forced to use 8 players from the team whose schedule you're playing and you're at a disadvantage because you're playing that team's all time stars.

The card packs also suck because you get the same mediocre cards more often than not. I bought a 10 card pack and drew 4 Kelenna Azubuike cards which is absurd.

[JayhawkerStL]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

What they really need is to go back to making strategy guides that explain everything in detail. Madden haven't had made a strategy guide in years. UFC game been even longer since they made one. The rest of the sports games never had them. But yeah, that is what they need, actual strategy guides. I remember the Madden, NCAA Football and UFC strategy guides back in the day that told you how to do everything you needed to know in the game. All the new controls, all the new features in depth, along with a breakdown of each team. I have yet to see a "good" community manager for any game period. All the current ones all they do is talk to the biggest Twitch streamers and Youtubers ONLY. If you not one of those, then you get ignored. They not in the habit of interacting outside of follow 5 different things just for a chance for receiving a game code. But once the game actually comes out......the community managers, much like the EA Game Changers go ghost mode. You don't see them again other then to tweet a new patch was release. That is about all you going to get out of them until next years game rolls around.

That's mostly because sports game communities online are mostly toxic. Even here, where moderation tries to force a respectful tone, it is often pointless for a community manager to even try to engage this community.

I think game guides would be a giant help, and EA and 2K ought to be putting them online for free. But the haters don't really care. If you tell them how something works, it's just an opening to complain about why it works that way.

The problem isn't just that sports gamers bully community managers. It's that there is a ton of trolls just waiting to use anything they say against the game. It is a risky PR move to engage with the sports gaming community. OS largely helps that, but we have seen plenty of community managers just stop coming here because so much of the conversation is negative and repetitive.

[Linacruise1467]

Ohh wow very informative article, I will share it with my friends.

[kennylc321]

For me, it is comical that the OP used basketball as his example. For the greater part of the past +decades, I've been nearly exclusively a football gamer. About 5 years or so, I bought NHL for a change and holy cow... it was almost a shock to my system. The last time I regularly played a hockey game was back in college when it was pretty much A to pass and B to shoot.

Even now, a few months ago, I bought NBA2K and again... wow!!! The new controls (new to me) are overwhelming. The suggestion I would have to the OP and his brother is to play practice mode or even 'play now' against the AI and simply pick to things to learn. Maybe it's post moves and layups. I don't know. But ignore everything else. Don't worry about trying to win the game. Just play the game doing nothing else but post and layups.

Then play another game where you do posts and layups but add dunk and euro step. It will take time, but that is how you will come to learn a new sports game.