Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

[Steve_OS]

We have just posted an article entitled, Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate, written by Dave Branda.

"Year after year, 2K Sports and EA Sports miss the mark when it comes to their games. They always seem to be close to making a truly great game, but then ceremoniously shoot themselves in the foot and revert in quality. You almost have to wonder if they’ve ever been told that certain things drives gamers wacky. Well …wonder no more. Here are the top five things sports game developers do that drive us to drink. And if we missed something that drives you looney, make sure to let us know in our forums."

[MassNole]

Great article.

I definitely agree with most of it, especially the blood pouring from the head in NHLPA 93.

[Glenn33]

Can you add to the list - NOT having features in Next gen games that are in Current gen games (I'm talking to you Madden!)

[MassNole]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

Can you add to the list - NOT having features in Next gen games that are in Current gen games (I'm talking to you Madden!)

Don't forget NCAA in that cold hard stare of disappointment. Heck, I am just waiting for EA to catch up to some features they had back in the PS1 days.

[ehh]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

#5 is the biggest, too many sports games simply aren't fun anymore. The 2K basketball titles are about it for me these days, though MLB2K7 was fun but I definitely had to look past a ton of glitches to play it. Hopefully 2K8 will be very entertaining as well. I don't know if I'll ever buy another football title, they are way too complicated these days and provide little fun for me.

[DrJones]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

#1. Online leagues ARE a pain in the butt.

#2. Regarding EA's NHL series and fighting/blood inconsistency, I was told a lot of that was due to the NHL and the PA flip-flopping on how they wanted their league to be perceived (remember this was about the time that Bettman became commissioner). As far as dropping features when going from current-gen to next-gen, most of those features need complete rebuilding and can't get ported. Dev teams runs out of time.

#3. Real money is a league/PA issue. For years on EA's baseball series, for example, we couldn't use real dollars because the MLBPA didn't let us, so we had to use "points".

#4. As I've said before, most of the real decision-makers (execs, marketing) don't really care about realism. They want gimmicks to market, and those tend to chew up a lot of dev time.

#5. Devs are juggling many more balls than they used to. Quite often, I'm afraid, making a sports title is a mad scramble to make a ship date so you don't get canned/demoted.

I'm generalizing, of course. Some dev teams really go above and beyond. If your gameplay engine is really solid, it gives you more time to work on the little things. Sometimes stuff happens behind the scenes that screws everything up. The real problem is that games are much more complicated than they used to be and require a longer (2-year) dev cycle to do everything properly. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

[A.M. Son]

I'll take all 5 of those suggestions and kind of roll them into one.
When it comes down to it, it seems that game developers don't listen to their customers (gamers). I don't know too many "other" business genres that can afford to regularly and consistently NOT listen to their customers. If developers realized that what gamers want is usually far more appropriate than a development team's whims and guesses, we'd not be in many of the scenarios we are in today.
Each of the areas laid out above would never have happened if the collective voice of the community were heard and appreciated. Especially in todays internet age, why is it that developers still act like they develop in a vacuum? Listen to gamers, and many of the criticisms and complaints would simply go away.... not to say they have to do everything we suggest or wish for, but just take our voice into more consideration is all.

[DrJones]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

I'll take all 5 of those suggestions and kind of roll them into one.
When it comes down to it, it seems that game developers don't listen to their customers (gamers). I don't know too many "other" business genres that can afford to regularly and consistently NOT listen to their customers. If developers realized that what gamers want is usually far more appropriate than a development team's whims and guesses, we'd not be in many of the scenarios we are in today.
Each of the areas laid out above would never have happened if the collective voice of the community were heard and appreciated. Especially in todays internet age, why is it that developers still act like they develop in a vacuum? Listen to gamers, and many of the criticisms and complaints would simply go away.... not to say they have to do everything we suggest or wish for, but just take our voice into more consideration is all.

Read my post above. EA and 2K don't care about complaints unless they think said complaints result in lost revenues. Hardcore gamers are deemed (rightly or wrongly) to be a vocal minority who rarely put their money where their mouth is. They complain and then buy the product anyway. From a business perspective, why cater to them?

[mgoblue]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

Read my post above. EA and 2K don't care about complaints unless they think said complaints result in lost revenues. Hardcore gamers are deemed (rightly or wrongly) to be a vocal minority who rarely put their money where their mouth is. They complain and then buy the product anyway. From a business perspective, why cater to them?

We have a winner!

That being said, I don't think the devs can win with the trade/free-agent engines. Not enough trades and people bitch and moan here. Too many trades people bitch and moan. If no big guys get traded then people cry. If too many get traded people cry.

Look at the NBA. If the game traded Shaq to Phoenix, Gasol to LA, and Kidd to Dallas people would be screaming that it wasn't "real", at least before this season.

I'm starting to get convinced that the "hardcore sports gamer" is someone who cannot be pacified by a game. A lot of people just want to find flaws and be angry. Not everyone here, just a lot of people. It's human nature to find flaws, but honestly IMO we take bug hunts too far. Just my opinion, I just try to avoid that and have more fun....the game ceases to be fun for me when I constantly read the forums looking for roster and minute gameplay issues.

[Skyboxer]

I also agree with most, especially the "fun" part. Now it seems we do a lot of "work" to make the game enjoyable. If there were no sliders we'd just accept it and be having a blast with the game. Now it's a tweak fest all the time.

[J.R. Locke]

The worst thing is not making the game fully customizable for each individual user. I should be able to edit anything and everything to my liking. Limits on this makes me really dislike console gaming.

[Cardot]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

#1. Online leagues ARE a pain in the butt.

Out of curiosity, what makes them tough? I can see how having two people from across the country play each other is tough. But putting the stats into a database doesn't seem beyond what game makers do these days. 2K has a pretty nice set up.

Just curious....I'm not doubting you.

[Scott]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

I agree with all of those...good list.

[eDotd]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

We have a winner!

That being said, I don't think the devs can win with the trade/free-agent engines. Not enough trades and people bitch and moan here. Too many trades people bitch and moan. If no big guys get traded then people cry. If too many get traded people cry.

Look at the NBA. If the game traded Shaq to Phoenix, Gasol to LA, and Kidd to Dallas people would be screaming that it wasn't "real", at least before this season.

I'm starting to get convinced that the "hardcore sports gamer" is someone who cannot be pacified by a game. A lot of people just want to find flaws and be angry. Not everyone here, just a lot of people. It's human nature to find flaws, but honestly IMO we take bug hunts too far. Just my opinion, I just try to avoid that and have more fun....the game ceases to be fun for me when I constantly read the forums looking for roster and minute gameplay issues.

Agree 100%

There are a couple dudes in the NBA 2K forum who believe that if something hasn't happened in real life, than it shouldn't happen in the game.

[A.M. Son]

Re: Show Us The Love, Part I: Five Things Gamers Hate

Read my post above. EA and 2K don't care about complaints unless they think said complaints result in lost revenues. Hardcore gamers are deemed (rightly or wrongly) to be a vocal minority who rarely put their money where their mouth is. They complain and then buy the product anyway. From a business perspective, why cater to them?

You're right- no matter the business, changes won't be made until it's proven they will improve finances (or that not making changes will hinder business).
It's unfortunate that the gaming community is partially comprised of people who buy games semi-blindly and without knowing what to expect. This trial and error mentality of the community only helps to increase sales- they are not "speaking with their wallets".
But for those of us who are informed about the games we are buying, we should know better. We need to have better willpower to not buy what we perceive to be a sub-par product. I'll say that for me, it's not something I'm good at doing.