Stagnancy of the "Create-A-Play" Feature in Sports Games

**J.R. Locke** · 01-16-2009, 06:36 PM

Great article!!!! I am in just about every forum here rallying for a create a play feature. To me it is the most important aspect of sports games. It is the most easily identifiable "AI" and if give the tools would greatly enahnce sports games.

The lack of create a play/playbook editor is the biggest feature missing in all sports games. If you would have told me back in 1998 that sports games would regress in this area I would have said what is the point in buying the games then? Sometimes I still wonder why I do.

I sure do hope those developers prove us wrong! Great article!!!

**MC Fatigue** · 01-17-2009, 12:26 PM

Re: Stagnancy of the "Create-A-Play" Feature in Sports Games

I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with the lack of AI these days.

Seems create a play can really be used to just completely take advantage of what is some pretty poor AI programming in sports games these days. I kind of wonder if developers are leaving such a mode out because of this.

**Acedeck** · 01-17-2009, 03:09 PM

I think create a play is most definitely left out of games due to that reason, Timmay. There's already tons of money plays in football and basketball games. Being able to customize the cheese could definitely make things challenging on the programmers with regards to the CPU AI. It didn't break NHL 09 because there's only so much you can do in hockey. There's just five guys and the puck. In football, creating plays could definitely break the AI, if people abused it (which they would, as they already abuse every little loophole in the games as is).

I'm all for customization personally. I really wish a football game had a create-a-play feature. I just don't know how great it'd work out in the ranked lobbies of Cheeseville, USA. For playing against fellow sim gamers, I could see it being a fantastic addition. With the lack of innovation in football games these days, I'm shocked something as simple as creating plays hasn't made it into the games. It's only been like 20 freaking years now! Come on!

**b psycho** · 01-17-2009, 04:03 PM

If I could create plays in NBA 2k9 I'd never use the ones that were built in.

I don't know how well the plays reflect what teams actually run in real life, but it seems like a lot of them run the Motion offense -- which is IMO terrible -- so I always have to remember to switch the playbook to "all plays" so I can change it.

**kjell1979** · 01-17-2009, 04:52 PM

The football games need to take a page out of the Front Page Sports Football Pro create a play editor. I'm floored that no other game has really come close to it.

**duke776** · 01-17-2009, 06:00 PM

Re: Stagnancy of the "Create-A-Play" Feature in Sports Games

Do you just want to re-create the plays you used to run in the glory days of your high school/college career?

I can't speak for myself as I decided against playing football in high school, but I know my brother would always re create his high school defensive playbook on madden. He would've rather done it on college football, but there wasn't an option to(except on a couple versions on the ps1).

As for me, I just like to see if my ideas would work, though they usually didn't...

**Jared99** · 01-18-2009, 01:18 AM

It's ironic that you didn't mention the new Football Mogul. I could see how a text sim would slip under the radar. I basically agree with James over at 'OutOfEight' (http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2008/11/football-mogul-2009-review.html) that FM this year hasn't changed a whole lot (and I don't like the dark color scheme) but the new play editor is awesome. It's fun and intuitive to design new plays -- all the info on player ratings is right there so you can build the playbook to your strengths. It sure beats the hours it can take in Madden to enter just a couple -- and you can save as many playbooks as you want to your hard drive and even re-design plays in the middle of a game if you want (this really comes in handy if one of your stars gets injured). I wish the big companies would take some lessons here.

**Stain** · 01-18-2009, 09:33 AM

"# 5 kjell1979 @ 01/17/09 08:52 PM

The football games need to take a page out of the Front Page Sports Football Pro create a play editor. I'm floored that no other game has really come close to it. "

Right there, hoss. Couldn't have said it better myself. I was rather shocked by this category heading and story and no mention was made of, what is, in retrospect, the finest play editor ever created, any sport.

AND .. and .. in addition, an outstanding AI that would TRULY exploit the weakness if you created a stupid play.

Also correct is the comment that AI is weak these days. Tricks of the system. That's AI in 2009.

**Skyboxer** · 01-18-2009, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by kjell1979

The football games need to take a page out of the Front Page Sports Football Pro create a play editor. I'm floored that no other game has really come close to it.

Agree about taking a page from FPSFB. I spent hours upon hours designing plays and creating playbooks. Not to mention designing/creating gameplans.

**jyoung** · 01-18-2009, 02:10 PM

Yes, the reason none of the Mogul games or Front Page Sports received a mention is because the scope of the article is limited strictly to console sports games.

And while people often mention AI exploitation as a potential problem with this feature, I'd like to think that, ideally, players would be able to create defensive plays to counter anything that the offense can create.

Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure until a developer steps up and let's us find out the answer for ourselves.

**Cryolemon** · 01-18-2009, 05:50 PM

Great article. I echo the props for FPSFB's play editor, it was epic. I wish I could get FPSFB '97 to work on Vista.

**7stringking** · 01-19-2009, 03:22 PM

C-Hoops 2k8 had a play creator......

I think play creation was taken out of most sports titles because the CPU A.I. could not properly defend them

**rudyjuly2** · 01-19-2009, 04:41 PM

The ability to create money plays is a problem. The other problem is that 99% of the people who buy the game won't use it and the other 1% that do would buy the game even if it didn't have create a play. There is no financial incentive to provide this feature. It takes a lot of time to do this right and since it wouldn't boost the profits or benefit a significant number of people, it just doesn't get done.

**J.R. Locke** · 01-19-2009, 11:04 PM

Financial incentive is to charge a premium price for an external play editor that can save playbook files for various consoles and PC versions.

I really would like to see options like this start to develop in games. With the online capabilities of the consoles it is about time that external sources are allowed in the game. Like using pictures to create our own cyberfaces-portraits for players.

Companies could make money on features like this, they just aren't smart enough yet.

Stagnancy of the "Create-A-Play" Feature in Sports Games

Stagnancy of the "Create-A-Play" Feature in Sports Games

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