GI:
Though many sports games successfully capture the spirit and culture of contemporary sports, few tap the rich vein of sports history. For years Madden featured legendary teams, but stopped short of including the official player names and likenesses. The NHL series celebrated the Montreal Canadiens’ 100-year anniversary with a team of all-time greats like Maurice “Rocket” Richard, but they had no historical rivals to compete with. With Electronic Arts owning the NFL license, 2K Sports mashed up an impressive roster of Hall of Famers in All-Pro Football 2K8, but without the official team licenses this brilliant concept didn’t resonate like it should have.
Craig writes: "Since the release of the first NBA 2K game, EA have arguably been left behind in 2Ks dust in the basketball video game category."
No, don't stop. We need competition beetween sports franchises in gaming. Push on and don't stop or the 'winner' will become lazy
EA and competition in sports games don't belong in the same sentence. They've had healthy competition in many different sports genres and the ones they could, they monopolised the licenses to effectively kill the competition. Poor Konami in PES were feeding off of scraps with their CL license.. EA went and bought that too. With them, there is no such thing as healthy competition.
"Since the release of the first NBA 2K game, EA have arguably been left behind in 2Ks dust in the basketball video game category."
I don't know about that, Nba live was the basketball game to get until Nba live 07 came out.
If you look at Metacritic NBA2K games have constantly outdone NBA Live. And a lot forget how much of a jump the original NBA2K was as it was only on the Sega Dreamcast which many gamers ignored due to pure ignorance and lack of knowledge on just how great that console was.
The last good ones were Live 04 n 05 for ps2 era n Live 06 last gen
NBA 2K19 senior producer Rob Jones defends virtual currency, saying it's an "unfortunate reality" of modern gaming because "most people lack patience."
BS, they are not needed at all.
"Every game, at some point, in some way has currency and they’re trying to get additional revenue from each player that plays the game."
Every game? That's just flat-out wrong.
They aren't needed but people do want them regardless. I've never purchased a MT. But I know that people who don't have the time to grind a game everyday purchase them so they don't have to.
The unfortunate reality is that we all use to earn these things in game, now they are all locked behind a paywall with no possibility of earning them through gameplay. Basically taking away the incentive of playing 1 game constantly
The thing is, remember back when games had cheats in them. All you had to do was enter a code.
Now they charge you for the cheats in the form of special players and the ability to increase their stats at least until that player disappears because you played it too much or didn't add more 'games' to its capability.
It's pretty sickening.
One of the problems with MTs is that publishers/studios will build the game to incent you to purchase them by unnecessarily creating gratuitous grind mechanics so people buy the MTs. I am thinking of Shadow of War. Tons of grind gratuitous mechanics created to incent you to buy "time savers". I never have purchased an MT. If I can't grind it out I just don't buy the game. Seems like the industry is moving away from such "time savers" though as they are off-putting. Rather the move seems to be towards cosmetic MT. IMO, I disklike MTs in general.
If they didn’t work, they wouldn’t use them. A lot of ppl rail against, myself included, but then go and buy them, myself included, if even just a few.
Problem is this. The average age of a gamer is like 32 or something. Nowadays too many of the core players work a lot and prefer just buying things instead. Then you have a Youtube/Twitch crowd that can afford to buy them.
GTAV is a great example. It’s the best selling retail game of all time. And yet the $ made from retail sales pales in comparison to the money made off of online micros. Fortnite is free and makes more money than most games that are $60.
Fact is...it works. But there is a right way to do it. And I think eventually many of these sports games should just go f2p, as should games like Destiny, Anthem or The Division.
It's one thing to say that MT's generate a large amount of money.. it's another thing to say that it's an unfortunate reality to save player's time.. no if you want to allow player's to save time.. you can easily implement cheats like they did back in the day.. it's not real life.. all of this can be offered for free if they really cared about saving the gamer's time and actually care about the gamer. The amount of profit generated from GTA V sales alone is more than enough profit but like all companies.. greed becomes an unfortunate reality.
Asking for cheat codes and being locked offline in single player is one thing. But I am pretty sure most MT's are generally an online multiplayer issue.
All that matters is whether there is a market for microtransactions. There clearly is.
I hope this guy has an updated CV cause he'll be needing it if he keeps saying stuff like that.
They are not needed on these 60 dollar games. When you make a sports game they dont cost more to make. You literally are using a 10 plus year old engine and just making minor improvements.
Totally agree with you on that, It seems they are releasing mediocre games at full price then after a couple of months tries to peddle a new DLC together with some "improvements/bug fixes for the game."
You're 100% correct. Which makes this whole comment even more ironic, coming from a sports game producer.
They literally use old engines and assets to make these games every year and simply add some new players and update the team rosters.
I'm curious why people buy sports games yearly.
I enjoy NHL franchise and I'm still play NHL 16. Why?.... Because I don't play hockey online and I don't feel like buy the same game with just a new coat of paint.
Also rosters are still being updated so other than a few tweeks here and there and the odd new feature, it's still just the same game as the one before.
I always just stay behind a year or so on NBA 2K, PES, NHL, etc., games. That way I get them for like under $10 once the newer versions come along. It's pointless to pay full price for these types of games that just keep getting small changes/improvements every year. Not nearly enough to justify paying full price on.
For me mlb the show usually has enough change to validate a purchase. Madden is in my birth month so someone buys it for me lol. Wwe i need to stop its gotten so bad i never want to buy it again.
' ......."unfortunate reality" of modern gaming because "most people lack patience." '
Nice to hear someone in the business finally say, what anyone with brains has known for almost a decade now. Though, I'd also add that "most people lack brains." along with it.
Lack of patience isn't always the case.
Some people just don't have the time to put in to unlock everything they want. So I don't have as much of a problem with someone wanting to spend some extra money to unlock all the guns in Battlefield, for instance. Especially since they will since they will never have the time to do it through normal gameplay.
Also, there are other MT's that aren't progress based. Like skins and crap like that that you can't get in the actual game. What's the excuse for that being "necessary"? Those are the MT's I find to be the real problem. Selling things that can easily be in the game, but aren't. Personally I don't care because I never buy it, but I can see why people would be upset by it.
It is not an unfortunate reality because people lack patience. He is completely wrong and it is said that he wasnt called out on it right then and there.
For instance they could just give you EVERYTHING up front for free since you paid $60 for the game period. Not every game uses/used a grind mechanic. That was a mechanic put in to reward/make the game last longer. Did you grind to unlock Street Fighter in the Arcade or SNES days? Do you "have" to unlock crap for a sports game? The "game" is playing it, not grinding for unlocks. That is just putting "rpg" mechanics into a sports game and is unneeded to begin with.
Luke Lawrie, Stevivor -- "The people I’m friends with know that I’m fairly passionate about a few hobbies. Those include video games, movies, and basketball. So when given the opportunity to have an early look at NBA 2K18; combining 2 of my favourite things – and getting to chat to some of the developers behind the game, I had to jump at the chance."
Why is that picture missing Scottie Pippen?
Oh wtf
He doesnt want to be in the game after being in NBA 2k11 and NBA 2k12?
Charles Barkley is awesome, he was a great player and the funniest commentator. Doesn't have a clue what he's talking about sometimes, but still funny.
I guess no NBA Live 13 this year.
its a shame pippen wont be in, he was probably my favorite back in the day. These NBA games always seem to be 1 player short
TNT's coverage of the NBA with sir charles is always entertaining. Way better then ESPN's.