The state of modern sports games: American Football

[ThisIsBlitz21]

After this entire Madden debacle taking place this year, I was wondering what happened along the way that most sports got monopolized by either EA or 2K, or were dropped entirely. So this is first of a series a threads just sorta reflecting on what happened.

The PS2 days had so many options for sports games. I'll just be going over football as a comparison.

You had Madden, NFL 2K, NFL Blitz, NFL Gameday, NFL Fever, NFL Quarterback Club, NCAA EA, and NCAA 2K, and more. I'm sure I'm missing a few. Yeah, not all of these games were sublime, but at least there was a healthy market and competition

The only option now is Madden. EA signed an exclusive deal in 2005 that made it so only they can make a simulation NFL game. That deal is still ongoing, and it was just renewed for another five years just recently. NFL 2K was really critically acclaimed, especially 2K5, so there was a lot of outcry, and still is, regarding that rather scummy deal. Madden was still really good for the following years (06-08 on PS2), and I'd argue a lot of the 7th gen games weren't bad either, up till Madden 12, which still retained a lot of features from the PS2 ones. Madden 13 is where the downfall began, in my eyes, when a lot of features were removed, and superstar/franchise modes was massively stripped down,with a lot of those lost things never showing up in the Madden series ever again. The gameplay seemed to get infinitely worse since then, as well. It feels really buggy and scripted, more like a game of animations and when to trigger them, rather than a game of football.

I blame a lot of this on Ultimate Team. Feel like this mode (and it's other forms like MyTeam and Diamond Dynasty) are a parasite for sports games. Since they're the huge moneymaker, they get full attention from the publishers and other modes are left by the wayside.

I'm a really casual player as well. I only watched football often during the Seahawks runs to the final. But as a kid, Madden and NFL 2K were my jam, and it's sad to see football games not being a fraction as good anymore, the last good one being 9 years ago. Even further than that, depending on who you ask.

 

[ThisIsBlitz21]

well, press sent to early, this thread is a WIP.

 

[EvilChameleon]

I would love for the Super Mega Baseball devs (Metalhead Software) to make a Super Mega American Football game sometime.

 

[The Albatross]

nice thread OP.

I've written a lot of thoughts on the collapse of the sports genre. It's, without a doubt, the most stagnated or downtrodden genre in videogames.

I wrote this in 2018 in "what genre has stagnated the most"

Sports games. And I'll tell you why it's not close to almost any other genre.

The sports genre used to be huge, one of the biggest, highest selling genres in the industry, with every major publisher releasing an entry in every major sports category a year, and both 3rd, 2nd, and 1st parties making sports games, and this huge bevy of other developers making arcade or simulator sports games. Microsoft, Sony, Sega Sports, and EASports all made their own football games. Sega and EA both made football games that competed against their professional football counter-parts. Companies like Midway and Acclaim made arcade-styled football games or specialized football games.

Consider around the year 2000, from say 1998 to 2001. You had:

• Madden (EA)
• NFL 2K (Sega Sports / 2K Sports)
• Gameday Football (Sony Sports/989)
• NFL Quarterback Club (Acclaim)
• NFL Fever (Microsoft)
• NFL Blitz (Midway)
• NCAA Football (EA)
• College Football 2K series (Sega Sports / 2K)
• Front Office Football (Front Office Sports)

And I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting. WIthin just a few years you'd have dozens of different just football games. THis was mostly the same with basketball, with every major company making a basketball game.

• NBA Live (EA)
• NBA Fastbreak / Virtua NBA / NBA 2K (Sega)
• NBA Courtside (Nintendo)
• NBA Jam (Midway)
• NBA Street (EA)
• College Hoops (Sega)
• Fox Sports College Hoops (Fox Interactive)
• March Madness (EA)
• NBA Shootout (Sony)
• NBA Run n Gun / In the Zone (Konami)
• NBA Inside Drive (Microsoft)
• NBA Street (EA)
• College Slam (Acclaim)
• ... more that I'm not remembering

Think about that... EA, Sega/2K/Visual Concepts, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Midway, and Konami all released licensed NBA Basketball games in the same calendar year. NIntendo made a sports game that didn't have Mario or Toad as the primary characters in it, it wasn't "Wario's Basketball Jam" it was "Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside." These aren't small fries throwing their hat into a genre, like Microsoft taking a chance licensing a Halo RTS one year, these are some of the biggest names in the industry releasing games every year for a decade, all competing with each other, all trying to best each other in features, fun factor, creativity, simulation, or some other angle.

This continued for several more years until the great quickening in 2005/2006, when EA and the NFL kicked off the frenzy of exclusive licenses. It quickly followed suit with MLB, NHL, NBA, Nascar, PGA, then you had the law suits from the NFL legends, former college basketball stars, and of course the horrible industry years of 2006 and 2007, followed by the financial collapse, which caused tons of companies to go out of business, get swallowed up, or stop making "non essential games that didn't fit our core vision" or what have you. The idea that Konami would make an annual sports game, from 1996 to 2003 ... ? Or Nintendo would make a licensed simulation basketball game? Or that Microsoft and Sony would both try to go head-to-head against Electronic Arts and Visual Concepts, in NBA and NFL?! That's unheard of today, it's not imaginable.

It's not just NFL and NBA, of course. There were three or four hockey games every year, multiple futbol/soccer games, there were multiple licensed NASCAR games in a single year, F1, hell there were multiple simulation golf games (EA's PGA series, the Links series, many more I can't remember) and multiple arcade golf games every ear. Between North AMerica and Japan you had half a dozen licensed baseball games coming out every year. In the late 90s and early 2000s you had scores of pro-wrestling games, from WarZone, to Attitude, to WWF 2000, NoMercy, WCW v. NWO Revenge, Rumble Roses, FirePro, Smackdown, ECW Extreme (or whatever it was), DefJam, and I'm sure other gems that I can't remember.

Today? You have basically one game from one developer per sports category (if you're lucky), and that's it.

There's 1 shitty wrestling game, WWE 2K, and sure FirePro just came back, so you've got two wrestling games. There's only one football game, Madden. EA makes a golf game once every few years. There's two basketball games. Baseball is the hardest hit... You used to have High Heat, Front Office Basebtall, Sega Sports Baseball, Nintendo's Ken Griffy series, All star Baseball, EA's TriplePlay series, Big Hurt Baseball, seriously a huge number of baseball games (not even counting the excellent japanese baseball games that I had never played)... and now... you have one simulation baseball game on the market today, and it's only on Playstation. The Xbox, a platform seemingly built around the north american sports-gamer-fan, does not have a single simulation baseball game on it because the owner of the multi-plat MLB license, 2K Sports, decided to stop making the games. Now, sure, Super Mega Baseball is amazing, the best baseball game from the last 5 years, but that's because there's no other relevant baseball games on the market other than The Show, and if you're not a fan of The Show, then too bad for you. Back in 1998? If you weren't a fan of Triple Play, then you had High Heat, if you didn't like High Heat then you had MLB 99, if you didn't like MLB 99 then you had All Star Baseball, if you didn't like All Star Baseball then you had Ken Griffey Jr or VR Baseball or any of the myriad odd baseball games available.

And, worse off, the games that are being made are the worst they've ever been. Madden, NBA 2K, and MLB the Show have all become (or are quickly becoming) vehicles to just sell microtransactions. Madden is by far the worst, followed closely by NBA 2K, and MLB the Show is just... trying to get their footing in the evil microtransactions gambling market. No licensed sports games are made without card trading or character building gambling games being the focus anymore. The big feature in the licensed NBA game last year? "My Neighborhood," a 3D open world where you walked into digitized Foot Lockers to buy branded sneakers and t-shirts for your fake game character with real money. Seriously the feature wasn't even focused around playing basketball, you spent most of your time in this mode literally walking through a digital world walking past other avatars, going into Foot Locker stores to buy fake clothes with real money. The big feature in the licensed NFL game last year? MUT CHAMPIONS where you had to buy tickets with real money to participate in a Madden tournament that paid you in digital prizes.

I'm a life long sports gaming enthusiast and I say this with 100% certainty and 30 years of sports gaming authority:

The state of sports gaming is the worst that it's ever been in videogame history.

Click to shrink...

I'd like to add to one thing you said about football games, which is 100% right... Look at how many companies used to make basketball games. Between ~1997 and ~2000 you had:

• NBA Live (EA)
• NBA Fastbreak / Virtua NBA / NBA 2K (Sega)
• NBA Courtside (Nintendo)
• NBA Jam (Midway)
• NBA Street (EA)
• College Hoops (Sega)
• Fox Sports College Hoops (Fox Interactive)
• March Madness (EA)
• NBA Shootout (Sony)
• NBA Run n Gun / In the Zone (Konami)
• NBA Inside Drive (Microsoft)
• NBA Street (EA)
• College Slam (Acclaim)
• ... more that I'm not remembering

Today you have...... one. Take2/2K.

Just imagine, Nintendo making sports games that weren't like ... Mario Move Tennis or Mario vs. Wario Hockey. Like, they made a licensed NBA basketball simulation where the main focus wasn't Peach vs. Toad. This isn't a slam on Nintendo or anything, it's a slam on the state of the sports genre and the industry.

Now, 2K is still a pretty solid game. And while I rip Madden, I think some aspects of it are still pretty solid. But, when you have an industry and a market that makes it possible for 3 or 4 companies to take chances making NBA or NFL games, or basketball or football, you get a lot of experimentation. Sure, some games are shit... Fox Sports College Hoops was bad, NBA Run and Gun was pretty arcadey despite trying to be a sim, but you had a variety of games trying to do different things, and some eventually got some things right that would then improve all sports games. A great example if NFL GameDay taking a chance going to polygonal models back with GameDay '98. Madden was still using sprites and didn't think polygonal models would be playable, but Gameday changed the whole genre in one release, proved it could be done, and even though it was a flawed game, that aspect was so much better than what EA was doing, it forced their hand with Madden 99 to go Polygonal (and Madden 99 was a really good Madden).

Today, you don't have that Sony Sports willing to take chances to try something new to unmount Madden. THere's no chance a developer tries a new concept. It's too expensive, there's no market, there's no support. It's too bad we're all worse off for it.

 

[TheIdiot]

Nothing will beat The Crib in 2K5

 

[samred]

EA and the NFL jumped into one of those cash shower things, like you see in game shows, in 2005, and that was that. They'd already cinched up the NCAA's rights years earlier (1994, I believe.) And publishers were convinced that American football fans wanted nothing to do with generic players, so they all gave up on making competing products during the big-box era of the '00s. (The biggest exception was Blitz: The League, which bombed.)

As a lifelong Dreamcast stan, I'll always hold a grudge that Visual Concepts had the football genre essentially ripped from their clutches.

These days, we at least have indie shit like Gridiron in the works--an online-focused 7-on-7 version of football, which I've always wanted to see. It's reeeeeeally rough for now, but I wanna believe that team can turn it around.

Gridiron on Steam

Gridiron is a fast-paced fusion of sci-fi and arcade-style football featuring easy to understand controls and a competitive multiplayer driven online experience. Gridiron supports up to 7v7 action in both casual and competitive online matches, offline practice mode and much more!

store.steampowered.com

 

[freakybj]

It's really sad when you think about it. The only sports game I've enjoyed in recent years are MLB the Show and Out of the Park Baseball.

 

[kubev]

It's a shame unlicensed football games don't really stand a chance. I really enjoyed Backbreaker, even with it playing P.O.D.'s Boom during every kickoff.

 

[ThisIsBlitz21]

Nothing will beat The Crib in 2K5

Click to shrink...

As a lifelong Dreamcast stan, I'll always hold a grudge that Visual Concepts had the football genre essentially ripped from their clutches.

Click to shrink...

2K5 is the best football game to ever be made, honestly. It's a shame they couldn't continue making it.

 

[WestEgg]

I miss NCAA so much.

ESPECIALLY THIS YEAR.

 

[ThisIsBlitz21]

-snip-

Click to shrink...

Great writeup here. I'll get to other sports in separate threads. But the MLB situation is eerily similar to NFL. I think it was 2006 when 2K, in retaliation to the EA-NFL deal, signed an exclusivity contract for third party MLB licenced games (The Show was exempt).

And the last Baseball game EA made (MVP Baseball '05) is regarded by a lot (including me) as the best baseball game of all time, the game is viewed as the NFL 2K5, but for baseball.

Baseball is in a better state luckily, with the Show, but that itself is also plagued by it's ultimate team-like mode, and is just not quite MVP '05 level, imo.

 

[Deleted member 40853]

This is a really good thread, it's so sad what happened to the genre. I have so many good memories of playing NFL Blitz and MLB Slugfest on PS2/GCN. My friends and I got such a kick out of those arcadey games and the ridiculous things you could do, it felt like a great fusion of video games and sports. We also played MLB 2k constantly. I love watching sports but I find sports games now so boring. I think your point about sports games now feeling like it's just a game of animations and when to trigger them is very accurate. I enjoyed The Show for a couple years, but it just feels so sluggish and not fun to play. The game feels less like playing baseball and more like watching a game of baseball on your TV that you can control. It tries to replicate the experience of watching an MLB game on TV. Maybe it's just my memory, but MLB 2k just felt more fun to play and more "gamey" - even if it wasn't as "realistic" as The Show.

The Xbox, a platform seemingly built around the north american sports-gamer-fan, does not have a single simulation baseball game on it because the owner of the multi-plat MLB license, 2K Sports, decided to stop making the games

Click to shrink...

I never really thought about this before, but it really is shocking. Especially when I think about the height of the 360 in the USA, everyone I knew was always playing sports games. You would think Microsoft would try harder - a really amazing sports game would probably be a system seller in America.