[DJ]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jay D

For me, sliders nearly ruined my love of sports gaming. I've been playing sports games since the vibrating fields of electric football and the cards and spinners of All-Star Baseball. Whether it was the LED lights of Mattel's handhelds or even slot car racing, we tracked everything, filling countless wired bound notebooks with box scores and stats. And yeah, we were always wanting realistic results, even when it was just a fantasy. Sports gaming on the early consoles was just fun. There was nothing remotely realistic about it. I mean, we thought Intellivision Baseball was the most realistic thing that could ever be created. But man, we played everything. Even our C64 was a sports gaming machine, with Summer Games, The World's Greatest Baseball Game, Hardball and Larry Bird vs Dr. J being our heavy favorites. When siders first began appearing, it was welcome method to achieve realistic results in CPU vs CPU games. The idea was that once the CPU was generating realistic results, then it was fun to see how we stacked up. But at some point that changed, with sliders being created to give users a boost or to limit their results. That seemed great, at first. The problem was that sports games then became a paint-by-numbers project. I wasn't playing for the fun and enjoyment of competition anymore, but to re-create reality as I perceived it to be. Now, instead of a long season where I competed, I was trying to force the games I played to re-create the results I thought validated the "sim." Soon, that's pretty much all sports games became. And it wasn't pleasant. It was hours and hours on Usenet and forums, trading ideas and bitching about the "lazy developers." All we wanted was reality. could it be so hard? Well, yeah. Before sliders it was never close to realistic. But it was fun and competitive. Now, with games becoming so much more realistic, we often spend weeks or months before we will even start a season, if at all. And even if we start to get realistic results, then we began picking apart how it looked getting those stats. I'm not saying that doing all of that can't be fun. It is very much like working on puzzles. But I also saw how I and others began interacting wit the games and the developers. Our entitlement shot through the roof. We had sliders, just like we wanted, but now we hated that they weren't better. I came to dread new releases for the work and lack of fun. And you see it in these forums. People have some of the greatest sports games ever created, but no one seems to be really happy. Well, some are, and they are mocked. So I changed my outlook. I'll admit that Ultimate Team modes helped clarify what I liked about playing sports games. I wanted to compete, to have those moments in games where you had a hard decision strategically, to have moments when execution was critical, to enjoy the success of a well executed strategy. I stopped worrying about the stats, and just concentrated on playing the games. First, the stats are never too far off. Games are great today. Second, by playing on default settings, it's like every other competitive gaming genre. I'm comparing myself to others using the same settings, the same playing field. I mean, if you have tweaked the settings to get a result, how exciting is it really to see your stats? Not scoring enough goals? Tweak. No you got more goals. Yay? I'm glad we have sliders. I'll still tweak a setting or two in a season mode. But I am enjoying sports gaming like a I did almost 40 years ago. That period where I didn't, I used to think it was the developers ruining games. I now look back at it as how I ruined my experience.

A great post here, and I echo many of its sentiments. I made the move back to default sliders for all sports games a couple of years ago and it was refreshing. The games are more enjoyable now that I'm not stressing over if sliders are working, not working, reversed, etc.