The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

[Melbournelad]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

A link to the article is going to become the standard response to any negative feedback towards 2k14 on this site, lol.

I agree. On the one hand, I know that developing a game is harder than I might think. But since they're talking about year one of a feature is alpha stage, and it gets fixed and perfected the year after...well association has been a mess for 10 years now, the touches system was broken in all 3 games since introduced, rosters have been highly inaccurate for I don't know how long now. And it's not like this stuff means asking for huge new features. Just making things already in the game work as they should. That's where 2k should show progress with 2k14, otherwise I'm not buying it. I want to, but if they didn't improve some key issues, why should I?

Exactly. Unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be as many of us as there are those clamoring for things like Crew and MyTeam. Altough i don't understand why. I would of thought the main mode of an NBA game would be to experience a realistic representation of controlling an NBA team. AKA Association.

[Goffs]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

Sorry, but I wouldn't trust another developer to do the game right. Its not like you can't tell COD is done by two different teams. What about BioShock and BioShock 2?

Nope. Do not agree.

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hmmm maybe keep it in house....they did this with the next gen version but I'm thinking long term...it's actually not a bad idea if you think about it. They can just expand the team a bit.

Let's say the other team can work on something for 2 years? Mike and the gang are pretty passionate and they can check up and help whenever they can....

[mango_prom]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

Exactly. Unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be as many of us as there are those clamoring for things like Crew and MyTeam. Altough i don't understand why. I would of thought the main mode of an NBA game would be to experience a realistic representation of controlling an NBA team. AKA Association.

That's a thing I never understood about MyPlayer/MyCareer...why do people care so much about this game mode, when it's really just association with controls locked to 1 player? I've created myself in past games, too. But why would I need an extra mode for this? Create player -> Start Association -> Play games with my alter ego.
Honestly, what's the point of MyPlayer/MyCareer as a separate mode? It could be integrated into an improved association mode without any loss of features. The only benefit of having it separate is that you can use it as a marketing gimmick, but what's the big deal really? Why can't they include the MyPlayer part as an option into normal association and focus on improving the mode as a whole instead of focusing on gimmicks?

[kolanji]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

it's unfortunate that sports games and their insane challenges due to time constraints, are not well documented and exposed to the consumers

It would be great though if VC would have the resources and benefits of having two teams I.E team A and team B so that a 2 year dev cycle could be possible.....

[ryantheplague]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

honestly, why don't they go to releasing a 2k every 2 years? the off year they can fix a lot of issues with roster patches. i mean, look at how good beds rosters are vs the default rosters.

let's say 2k14 is the most solid release yet. we can ride that out (especially since all the crew crowd seems to be taken care of) until the next release if they don't lock out the modders / roster guys.

unrelated: quite honestly, i'd be very interested in a myplayer / association game ONLY. at the very least i'd love to see a more hybrid version of the two.

i mean, how long has live been working their latest release? i don't see people burning buildings down over that.

[spankdatazz22]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

honestly, why don't they go to releasing a 2k every 2 years? the off year they can fix a lot of issues with roster patches. i mean, look at how good beds rosters are vs the default rosters.

Not everything can be fixed via patches. A few years ago, the cpu didn't automatically double-team and you had a contingent on the forum freaking out about it. Last year you had the euro-step glitch online (or whatever it's called) that some were overly upset about. 2K11 and it's rebounding issues, people cherry picking online, etc. We could go back every year and find some issue that was a big problem. What if people had to work around issues for two years instead of one? Every year there are going to be issues. I guess a longer development period would mean less potential issues, but developers aren't infallible - there are going to be issues regardless, and gamers need to be realistic about that.

This is also a business, and I think you have a minority of gamers that want to ignore that aspect. If you can move 5mil+units a year, why wouldn't you release on a yearly schedule? 2K is one of the more aggressive devs out there in terms of pushing improvements/innovating. Probably THE most aggressive sports game developer I'd say given their year-to-year changes. There are some here that'd prefer they didn't make so many changes; look at the overreaction to the news about the control stick changes. I think the system is fine as it is, people just need to be more realistic in with their expectations.

[Melbournelad]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

Not everything can be fixed via patches. A few years ago, the cpu didn't automatically double-team and you had a contingent on the forum freaking out about it. Last year you had the euro-step glitch online (or whatever it's called) that some were overly upset about. 2K11 and it's rebounding issues, people cherry picking online, etc. We could go back every year and find some issue that was a big problem. What if people had to work around issues for two years instead of one? Every year there are going to be issues. I guess a longer development period would mean less potential issues, but developers aren't infallible - there are going to be issues regardless, and gamers need to be realistic about that.

This is also a business, and I think you have a minority of gamers that want to ignore that aspect. If you can move 5mil+units a year, why wouldn't you release on a yearly schedule? 2K is one of the more aggressive devs out there in terms of pushing improvements/innovating. Probably THE most aggressive sports game developer I'd say given their year-to-year changes. There are some here that'd prefer they didn't make so many changes; look at the overreaction to the news about the control stick changes. I think the system is fine as it is, people just need to be more realistic in with their expectations.

Most aggressive in innovating? 4 years. That's all I have to say. 4 years.

[Vni]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

2K is one of the more aggressive devs out there in terms of pushing improvements/innovating. Probably THE most aggressive sports game developer I'd say given their year-to-year changes.

I think this is true.

[RyanFitzmagic]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

I definitely understand how tough it is to be a sports video game developer, since the fanbase is so polarized amongst hardcore sim players, casual players, and everything in between.

However, as I feel is the case with all relationships, I believe that the people who work on the game should reach out to the community and try their best to communicate. Communication is one of the keys to a healthy, successful relationship, because it leads to understanding, and understanding mitigates anger and frustration.

2K13 is a good example. For whatever reason, we couldn't save slider sets individually or upload them to 2K Share, even though that feature has been in the NBA 2K games for a while. A lot of people (including myself) really aren't happy about that, and the reason is that we don't know why it was removed. Was it just laziness? Forgetfulness? Was there actually something wrong with the game engine or something that didn't allow them to include that feature?

If it was the very latter, and the 2K dev team let us know such on the forums, I don't see how anyone could be upset. But when 2K doesn't do that, and they fail to recognize or even acknowledge (as far as I've seen) that very problem, people react negatively, because we deserve to know.

No one's even mentioned if things like that will be fixed in 2K14. Same as the broken subs and disgustingly predictable timeout patterns of the CPU. Same as the inability to remove a Signature Skill once it's assigned to a player. Same as the removal of the grades for different shot types (Euro Step, Spin Jumper, Stepback, etc.) that individual players had. Same as nearly half the plays in the game being broken and set plays being terminated mid-play for seemingly no reason.

Communication is all I want. I don't even necessarily think that omissions like I listed above are as big a transgression as it is to keep all of us in the dark about why these things were omitted and/or if they're taking steps to fix them. That's not fair to us. Because then we don't know whether or not to buy the next game. We don't know if it'll be fixed or not. We don't know if it's even possible for 2K to fix it.

Knowing is always better than not knowing, especially in this context.

[Optik]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

honestly, why don't they go to releasing a 2k every 2 years? the off year they can fix a lot of issues with roster patches. i mean, look at how good beds rosters are vs the default rosters.

Their contract with the NBA states that they have to release a game every year.

[VDusen04]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

If it was the very latter, and the 2K dev team let us know such on the forums, I don't see how anyone could be upset. But when 2K doesn't do that, and they fail to recognize or even acknowledge (as far as I've seen) that very problem, people react negatively, because we deserve to know.

I definitely feel you on your emotions in this one, but I've always kind of wondered if transparency is as simple and easy as we wish it were. I have to think some companies may have official approaches of how to handle dysfunctional portions of their products, right? As in, maybe 2K wants to avoid or limit how many times they come out and say, "Hey, sorry, that part's broken this year" or "Yeah, totally didn't have enough time, hopefully next year we'll have it done."

Again, I totally agree that it'd be nice to hear or know more about the process and why things are or are not addressed. Sometimes it honestly feels like 2K is blatantly ignoring something when in reality perhaps there's an unusually complicated solution they can't quite put their finger on yet. So as much as I'd like more communication, I kind of temper those emotions in conjunction with my uncertainty of the process.

[RyanFitzmagic]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

Sometimes it honestly feels like 2K is blatantly ignoring something when in reality perhaps there's an unusually complicated solution they can't quite put their finger on yet.

But wouldn't hearing 2K say this be better than hearing nothing?

[Boilerbuzz]

A link to the article is going to become the standard response to any negative feedback towards 2k14 on this site, lol.

I agree. On the one hand, I know that developing a game is harder than I might think. But since they're talking about year one of a feature is alpha stage, and it gets fixed and perfected the year after...well association has been a mess for 10 years now, the touches system was broken in all 3 games since introduced, rosters have been highly inaccurate for I don't know how long now. And it's not like this stuff means asking for huge new features. Just making things already in the game work as they should. That's where 2k should show progress with 2k14, otherwise I'm not buying it. I want to, but if they didn't improve some key issues, why should I?

Jones and Wang's group don't do franchise mode. So why assume the groups work the same way and also assume nothing's been done with franchise. It is like you guys want to convince yourself to complain about something. Don't you get tired of operating on ignorance?

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[xrobbyh14x]

Re: The Tough Road of Being a Sports Developer, Featuring Mike Wang

This should be required reading for everyone that complains the games aren't perfect. I work in web development and our programmers ought to just have cots by their desks sometimes they work so much. Life ain't what it seems...

[Boilerbuzz]

hmmm maybe keep it in house....they did this with the next gen version but I'm thinking long term...it's actually not a bad idea if you think about it. They can just expand the team a bit.

Let's say the other team can work on something for 2 years? Mike and the gang are pretty passionate and they can check up and help whenever they can....

VC doesn't carry enough staff for some reason or another. Must be hard to get in. Once you're in, people seem to stay there. But that would be a good idea.

Do agree.

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