Sports Gaming New Year's Resolutions
 

Every year we hear about all these grand improvements being made in sports games. More times than not, though, these improvements are minimal at best. Remember all of the speculation and excitement before this generation of consoles began? The Madden target videos, Ray Allen dripping sweat, and the promise of "next-gen" physics and gameplay had everyone excited.

Now, years later, it is time to actually take a step forward. Strides have been made year to year, but these are three things that must be standard in sports video games in '09. Even though Christmas has yet to pass, it is never too early to talk New Year's Resolutions. These are sports-gaming's New Year’s Resolutions for 2009.

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As much as I'd love updated rosters for NCAA, it's not a realistic goal. I looked at the detailed roster update for Madden this year, and tried to imagine EA doing that for 10,200 players. It's just not a realistic goal.

That said, I do wish they'd at least do an update when the season begins, not to edit player's ratings, but at least make it so the players are largely correct.

On a similar note, correctness should be a focus of sports-gaming for the future. Not rating-specific, but everything else. There was at least one high-profile quarterback in NCAA this year that had the wrong race in the game. And Corey Lynch was represented by a black man in EA's NFL Head Coach. I realize that Lynch wasn't a major name in the NFL Draft last year, but how many times did the replay of him blocking the kick against Michigan get shown? If EA's going to take the time to put real players into Head Coach, they should make sure they're at least physically correct.

With NCAA, I think that they could release one update at the end of the regular season. This way, it could add life to the game by playing with teams that may have had a better regular season than predicted (Oregon State, for example).

I spend too much time on sliders and reading how to make the game more realistic, fun, accurate, etc. instead of just enjoying the game for what it is. Another problem is that I buy games and never even play out a season (or even half of it sometimes). The next year, I do it again!

I resolve to not buy a game unless I am going to play or at least sim the dynasty through!

I agree that more time and effort should be put into real life rosters. MLB should update their rosters atleast once a week. NCAA should update monthly. And it doesnt have to every single player. Just players that over/under played their rarings. I love to play with rosters that are current. The realer the better.

Devs of all major studios - please - read - this - post.

Great write up.

Faces are not that important, and are quite gimmicky...Certainly a cool feature, but not all that important in the end.


...And the last thing the world needs is more dumbed down sports games.. And most games with complex controls have different schemes for people desiring simpler controls anyways.

Kudos to 2k for at their innovations, whether they succeed(NBA2k9) or maybe not so much(MLB2k8)...Hopefully 2k tightens up their MLB series, because I believe that gamers will change their tune if they do.It is better for everybody if both The Show and MLB2k9 are good games.

Re: Sports Gaming New Year's Resolutions
 

If I were to make a New years gaming resolution it would be very similar to this.