On the cusp of E3, we’ve got a two-part show breaking down NCAA Football. In Part 1, Rich Grisham and Ben Haumiller discuss everything NCAA Football, including what it’s like to be ‘the face’ of the game, the differences between old style ‘climb-the-QA-ladder’ game designers and newer ones that come from design school, as well as dive into the core gameplay updates to this year’s game.

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In the second part, they chat about the web and mobile tools that will help recruiting in NCAA Football, how the Madden and NCAA teams have consolidated some core features, the impact of the real-life changes to conferences on the game, and tons more.

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Enjoy!

INFO BOX:

Post Date: 5/30/2012

Podcast length: Part 1 47:14 | Part 2 58:12

Follow Richard Grisham on: Twitter (@richgrisham (opens in new tab))

The post Box Score: The Podcast 010 Parts 1 and 2 appeared first on Game News.

Real-world sports seasons have their own unique rhythms; so, too, does the sports game landscape. Its unofficially kicked off every July with college football and concludes the following March with baseball. In between, pro football, soccer, hockey, and basketball titles all compete for our attention.

Many themes develop over the course of a sports release schedule; a time capsule of sorts, and I love to analyze where these games intersect and diverge. Now that the dust has settled on the last releases of the 2011-12 sports game season, these themes are easy to spot.

1) The annual roster update is a myth

The next time someone dismisses a console sports simulation as nothing more than a roster update, glare at them. Nastily. The notion that developers have large teams of 50 or more people building games that are simply adjustments to player ratings and team affiliations is an insult to all of us. Simply put, 2012s major sports titles all contained significant modifications to core gameplay, presentation, and/or online features that took significant effort and risk to build.

Did all of them work? Of course not. Just because someone spends 4 months and $350,000 to create a new mechanic or control scheme is no guarantee that it will be well-received by the public. Did I like MLB 12 The Shows new Pulse Pitching? Not hardly but it introduced a new way to play a major part of the game. What about FIFAs new Impact Engine? It altered the way players interacted with each other (often well but occasionally with hilarious results (opens in new tab)) and set the development team up nicely for future adjustments for realistic physics. These are just two examples.

Anyone claiming a new sports title is just a roster update doesnt come close to understanding what our games are about, and I guarantee you they havent spent more than a few minutes (if at all) experiencing what theyre dissing. The proof is right there in front of them.

2) Online is a mess

At least were not alone. The recent launch debacle of Diablo III proved that just about any game with an online element can suffer at release, and plenty of sports games failed miserably; some continue to struggle.

A few of my favorite games of last year top the list of online messes. NBA 2K12 was a disaster out of the gate with online play. Between dropped connections, a non-functional website, and a comically under-explained Online Association mode that confused everyone, it was an ugly underscore to an otherwise amazing experience. MLB 12 The Show continued its sad legacy of lousy online multiplayer, with atrocious lag and dropped games on both the PS3 and Vita. NCAA Football 12 had a near-catastrophic series of bugs in its Online Dynasty mode that ruined the experience for a number of its dedicated fans.

There are legitimate reasons for each of these, too. Online code is often built on top of creaky previous-generation infrastructure thats too expensive or risky to rebuild, and the unpredictability of an exponentially larger group of people playing your game than you can ever test for is an issue. Even so, that doesnt help gamers like me who play the majority of their games versus friends over the internet and doesnt sit well moving forward, either.

3) Sports sells

Despite some of your hardcore gamer friends scoffing at your collection of sports titles, the fact is they consistently sell well. FIFA, Madden, and NBA 2K typically stay in the top 10 sales numbers for several months after release (if not longer), which is good news in a constantly evolving games landscape. After all, in the sales downturn were experiencing now, so-called sure things are much more likely to get made and supported than riskier bets.

On the other hand, sports games are incredibly expensive to develop, in large part because of the massive license fees publishers must pay for the rights to use the player names and the leagues. As weve seen with other titles, a good sales number doesnt necessarily equal a profitable one. With several key licenses up for renewal over the next few years including the MLB and NFL it will be interesting to see if exclusivity remains, or if license fees are reduced in order to open the floor to a larger group of players like the old days.

4) Its a patch culture

Go ahead, name one sports game from this past season that wasnt patched. Cant do it, can you? Like most games anymore, the patch culture has settled permanently on us and shows no signs of waning. This is obviously good for many reasons roster adjustments after the game releases, and the ability to fix potentially game-breaking bugs that arent discovered in time but inherently it gives developers and publishers an out. Release dates are easier to hit when you know you can fix things after the fact.

But what about the experience between Day One and the patch? And what if the patch actually makes things worse which are the claims of many people about certain updates made to several games this season?

With sports games being so hyper-complex to build and test these days, its inevitable that software will ship with issues. Theres no studio in the world that can prevent that, no matter how good they are. However, the inevitability of patches with sometimes comically huge lists of fixes made (opens in new tab) does nothing to dissuade people from feeling that these titles are released as incomplete works instead of finished games.

5) Legends are the new hotness

Between NBA 2K12s sublime The Greatest mode, featuring a mother lode of Hall of Fame players and classic teams, and NHL 12, loaded with hockey greats like Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky, theres been a heavy push towards historical representations. Madden 12 also got into the fray, although you needed to buy Legends Pack for use in Ultimate Team to use guys like Barry Sanders and Jerry Rice.

Mining the history of sports can be a beautiful addition to many games, especially when its done well. Between the period-specific presentation and complete rosters of full teams, NBA 2K12 ran away from the field. Meanwhile, NHL 12s rather clunky implementation of their legends in Be A Pro combined with the fact that hockey players are infinitely less distinguishable on the ice from their instantly recognizable hoops-playing counterparts left much to be desired.

Even so, theres much more to be done with players from the past. In many ways, truth is better than fiction, and there are hundreds of real-life tales that can be told if developers can dive into the personal or emotional sides of players. Imagine trying to get 56 straight hits as Joe DiMaggio or inhabiting Charles Barkley trying to win an NBA title at the end of his career. Heres hoping the door thats been cracked this past year gets kicked wide open as we move into a new console era.

6) Pleasing everyone is impossible

I enjoyed most of the big games this year, but at times I have felt like an idiot for feeling that way. Ive played hundreds of games of NHL 12 against friends, for example, having a blast the whole time. Yet a perusal of message boards reveals a vocal group of people railing against cheesers in the EASHL and money goals that can be abused online. Are they right and Im wrong?

Same thing with MLB 2K12; Ive sunk 40+ hours in the My Player mode for my starting pitcher, thoroughly enjoying much of it. I rarely see the bugs and choppy gameplay that many others do; does that invalidate others or make me an outlier? I cant deny that Im having a good time, even though my experience is a small chunk of the overall package.

The bottom line is that its simply impossible for developers to please everyone or, for that matter, even close to everyone. For every highly-rated game, there are hundreds of detractors complaining about items small or large that for them render the game busted. The closer that these games get to ultra-realism, the louder the criticisms get. Its not an enviable position, and the internet makes that vocal group that much more powerful.

7) Newbies are in trouble

7) Newbies are in trouble There are few things more painful than introducing someone to a modern sports game. Handing a controller to a friend or family member who hasnt played in the past few years is a recipe for frustration. Several years ago, the Wii had several sports titles geared toward newcomers that didnt sell particularly well, and since then the pendulum has swung wildly in the other direction.

With rare exceptions like NHL 12s old-school Sega controls, managing the action on the court or the field can be a challenge for casual fans and an impossibility for newbies. Honestly, I dont think Ive used more than 20% of the abilities of my coaching and individual player moves in NBA 2K12 despite an obscene amount of playing time. FIFA seems simple at first, until you see how you can adjust you teams strategies, make multiple types of passes or shots, and move your player in multiple ways. Madden is even nuttier, from playcalling to pre-snap options and in-play jukes, trucks, and receiver adjustments.

Sales are still good for many of these games, but old-fashioned tutorials are needed to expand the market. While NBA 2K12 has a terrific one even if I cant remember what Ive been taught at practice when Im in an actual game FIFA and Madden in particular would do well to explain how, exactly, their game really works.

Looking ahead

As we put 2011-12 behind us, E3 looms with promises bigger, better, faster sports experiences. What are the themes that will develop next year? Who knows but I have a feeling itll be dramatically different. I know Ill enjoy the ride.

The post Box Score: The Top 7 themes of the last years sports game season appeared first on Game News.

On the eve of MLB 2K12’s launch, Richard Grisham talks to Mark Little, the senior producer of MLB 2K12 on the 360, PS3, and PC. The guys talk about how you bring the strategy of real-life pitcher/hitter matchups to a game, all about the updated fielding mechanics, and how the contest to win a million bucks changed into something a whole lot more people will have the ability to try.

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So kick back, fire up a spring training game on your TV, and join the guys as they break down everything about MLB 2K12. Enjoy!

INFO BOX:

Post Date: 3/5/2012

Podcast length: 59:25

Follow Richard Grisham on: Twitter (@richgrisham)

The post Box Score: The Podcast 005 appeared first on Game News.

Box Score is a weekly column that offers a look at sports games and the athletic side of the industry from the perspective of veteran reviewer and sports fan Richard Grisham.

This is the third of a 3-part series examining how FIFA for the Vita went from conception to completion. To read Part 1, click here; Part 2 is here.

“This is where a little piece of you dies.”

So laments Matt Prior, producer of FIFA for Sony’s new Vita handheld. The final months of a game’s development cycle are when the toughest, most painful decisions are made. After a year and a half of planning, designing, building, and testing, Prior and his team must look at each other and kill one or more features they’d desperately hoped would make it into the hands of the players.

“As a producer, you want to make the best possible product you can,” explains Prior. “All producers are gamers; we’ve sat there and criticized other products, but the reality is every team is working its hardest. You have to make those sacrifices and decisions.”

Sometimes those decisions can be taken personally. Each major aspect of a game has an individual producer associated with it; cuts to that mode can make that person feel as if their work has been compromised or, even worse, eliminated altogether. No one said the business of building videogames was easy, after all. It’s a simple, cold calculation. “You’re up against time and budget,” says Prior. “That’s the most brutal, from a producer’s standpoint.”

The last few weeks of a game’s development are frantic. When things are going well, that’s when the daily builds start to reveal the essence of what it will be. “You’re up against the time limit and it’s kind of a critical phase. (That’s your) chance to put the polish on it; hopefully time allows it,” says Prior. “It’s where you do the final bit of tuning. You say ‘oh, we must do this, because it makes it better.’ The game really comes into its own that last little bit where it all gets polished.”

Then, of course, there are the bugs.

“No game in the history of gaming has ever gone out without bugs,” continues Prior. “Bugs do get shipped; they have to if you want a game on time. As a producer, your role is to make sure those bugs that are shipped aren’t detrimental to the overall quality. You hope it doesn’t really affect the consumer experience. At the end of the day, that’s the paramount thing. We want to make the best possible game.”

While Prior and his team are making the tough calls on last-minute adjustments and frantically prioritizing the issues to tackle, he’s also taking his game and putting it in the hands of the general public and press for the first time. It’s one thing to do this on a platform people are comfortable with; quite another to do so on something so different and innovative as the PlayStation Vita.

“You’d be amazed at how many thousands of ways people could hold the device; it’s one of those things you never really think of when designing it,” laughs Prior as he describes the initial ‘game-ops’ sessions with people the team invites to the studio to play-test the title. “We love watching people pick it up and hold it. Almost no one holds it the same way, so we have to kind of say ‘We’ve got to adapt to this.’”

Almost immediately, Prior and his team discovered that they’d need to provide several options for control. In particular, the presence of a rear-touch pad on the Vita presented a challenge. While FIFA takes advantage of the screen for passing and shooting, the team realized they’d need to give users the ability to toggle its use on and off – at least until the person got a handle on how to best play using the screen.

“Rear shooting is off if you desire,” explains Prior. “You can’t design for everyone. There is no best practice in how to hold it even though the device has got the grooves on the back. Clearly you’re meant to hold it with your fingers bent, but very few people actually do that off the bat. We sat and looked at people and how they held it and we said ‘we’ve got to be kind of clever.’”

As Sony has begun holding events promoting the Vita (at both invite-only sessions and its Vita Social Clubs), FIFA has been one of the showcase titles. As a title with wide appeal, terrific visuals, and unique control offerings, it’s easy to see why Sony would choose to show off the power of their new handheld with such a big, deep game.

Even so, the newness of the machine, coupled with its unique rear touchscreen has many people talking. On his influential show Weekend Confirmed from January 20, host Garnett Lee voiced a combination of optimism and concern based upon his initial experience.

“I’m sort of torn,” said Lee, explaining his first go with the game and, in particular, the rear touchscreen. “You can do what you couldn’t do before in FIFA, which is shoot a low hard ball into a corner. [However,] my fingers are so long that I have a hard time holding the thing and not having them touch the back touch[screen], which defeats the purpose.”

As with any new hardware, it will take time for players to get familiar with, and ultimately comfortable using, all the features the Vita offers. FIFA has clearly been built with a tremendous amount of passion, which reflects in the conversations I’ve had with Prior. Whether or not FIFA ultimately succeeds when it’s released next month depends on many things, not least of which is the reception the Vita gets from the North American market. One thing is clear, above all: Matt Prior has poured his heart and soul into it being something to be proud of.

Richard Grisham has been obesessed with sports and video games since childhood, when he’d routinely create and track MicroLeague Baseball seasons on paper. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and four-year old son, who he’ll soon be training to be an NFL placekicker. As a freelance journalist and writer, his work has appeared in GamesRadar, NGamer, and 1UP.

The post Box Score: Taking the leap, Part 3 appeared first on Game News.

Box Score is a weekly column that offers a look at sports games and the athletic side of the industry from the perspective of veteran reviewer and sports fan Richard Grisham.

This week’s column is the first of a three-part series examining how FIFA for the Vita went from conception to completion.

“What can we do? What can’t we do?”

These aren’t just the questions of expectant gamers waiting to get their hands on the PlayStation Vita in February. In fact, they’re the exact queries Matt Prior had for everyone around him back in August 2010. Prior had just gotten the word that he would be the producer of FIFA for Sony’s brand-new, high-tech handheld console. As the “owner” of the game, so to speak, he would be responsible for its design, production, delivery, and support. Depending on the time of day, Matt would be frantically scrambling to assemble the right team of developers and engineers to ensure his vision for the title, answering pointed questions from senior corporate executives about its potential for profitability, or trying to – literally – get his hands on the new little machine that would define his job for the next two years. All against the backdrop of delivering the world’s most popular sports game on brand new hardware at the system’s launch.

No pressure.

“We’re first out of the blocks, and we don’t know what we’re building on,” says Prior of those first few weeks of discovery. “We’re kind of the pioneers, blazing a trail. We’ve got no one to go to say ‘How did you do this on this;’ you kind of have to work it out all by yourself.”

To say developing for the Vita is unique is an understatement. On one hand, because of some high-level similarities to the overall architecture of the PS3 as well as its enviable processing power, Matt and his team did not have to completely start from scratch. “We’ve got the game, we know the game; there are some similarities at the core. All the licensing (the leagues, FIFA, the governing body itself), all of that knowledge base is applicable.”

On the other hand, there’s a staggering amount of work to determine just what FIFA will be. Prior and his team have to finalize their vision for the game, pitch that plan to senior management for approval, analyze what the makeup of the their staff will be, choose which game modes will be in the plan, schedule the development tasks, ensure the budgets make sense, and get the design documents going. After all, there’s only one launch date, and it won’t move. Prior simply has to hit it with a highly functional, beautiful game that will be devoured by an insatiable – and demanding – fanbase.

Oh, and there’s that whole “two touchscreens” thing to deal with.

“From a game design standpoint, you have to work out what you want to do with the Vita and what makes it unique,” explains Prior. “How can that be adapted to FIFA? We wanted to do a lot of controls around the touchscreen. We didn’t just want to make gimmicky touchscreen features; we wanted to create features that affected the game at a core level.”

“We saw the touchscreen and how it gives you the ability to point and press exactly where you want to go,” he continues. “We thought, ‘How could we address some of the more frustrating things about FIFA?’ We play FIFA a lot in the office, and there’s rarely a game that goes past where someone doesn’t scream ‘NOT THAT GUY!’ when they make a pass. The reason for that is you’re kind of at the mercy of the AI; you might be looking at the player on screen and trying to make a pass, but the AI, just because of its limitations, might assume you wanted [a different] pass. With the touchscreen, you press on the screen, and there’s no ambiguity.”

Building an all-new – and significantly more intuitive – way to shoot on goal was another obvious opportunity once the team laid their eyes on the Vita’s back-touch mechanism. “It clicked straight away, almost,” chuckled Prior. “The physical dimensions of the Vita lent itself very well to football in the sense that the (back touchscreen) looks like a goal.”

Dreaming up new and different ways to control FIFA is one thing; determining exactly how many different ways to play is quite another.

“We wanted to make sure this is a full and complete experience,” Prior says with conviction. “We’ve seen time and time again launch titles on new hardware come out very lightweight, kind of tech demos. FIFA represents the biggest and most complex game we’ve ever made for a handheld.” His goal was to ensure that all of the major game modes a FIFA player would expect would be represented, including Be A Pro, Tournaments and all the major leagues and players, Career Mode, and online play.

Unfortunately, as Prior analyzed the development schedules of the PS3 FIFA 12 and his own game, he realized that the team wouldn’t have the technical bandwidth to link the two titles (hence the decision to not assign a “12” designation in the name) and share the experience between the PS3 and Vita. It’s not because of a lack of desire, according to Prior; there are only so many things that can be done in a short amount of time. “That’s one for the future for sure,” he says. “It’s kind of a no-brainer, and the framework is there.”

Amid all this, Prior is excited and upbeat, bursting with pride at the chance to deliver a potential system-seller on Day One. “It’s a challenge and an honor,” he says. “FIFA’s one of the biggest games in the world.”

NEXT WEEK: Development starts, and the “a-ha!” moments begin…

Richard Grisham has been obesessed with sports and video games since childhood, when he’d routinely create and track MicroLeague Baseball seasons on paper. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and four-year old son, who he’ll soon be training to be an NFL placekicker. As a freelance journalist and writer, his work has appeared in GamesRadar, NGamer, and 1UP.

The post BOX SCORE: Taking the leap, Part 1 appeared first on Game News.

Box Score is a weekly column that offers a look at sports games and the athletic side of the industry from the perspective of veteran reviewer and sports fan Richard Grisham.

“Look, Daddy, I made a Portal level!”

My four-year-old son excitedly pulled me into his playroom to show off his handiwork. Strewn on the floor was a mish-mash of Legos, blocks, and marbles. To an outside observer, it would simply look like the result of an afternoon at play, but to us it was obviously a puzzle inspired by Portal 2, the sublime videogame from Valve Software.

“Look, Daddy, there’s the box, the button, and the door!”

My wife walked over and smiled. “He’s his father’s son, all right.”

Becoming a Dad is a wonderful, terrifying and life-altering experience. It forces you examine everything, make tough choices and sacrifice. While it’s well down on the list of items of importance, the issue of how, when, and even if video games should be a part of that equation is a polarizing issue. More than a few people have let me know they think games should have no part in a young child’s life.

But I’m a gamer; I have been since I can remember. What’s more, I love sports, and sports videogames have been the center of my entertainment world from their earliest incarnation. Now they even help pay the bills. I didn’t plan out how my son would be introduced to games, but I knew it would happen one way or another.

“It’s kind of by default,” says ESPN’s Gus Ramsey, a father of three boys whose background – a passion for sports and games – is similar to mine. “I’d play, and they’d see me, then they’d hop on the chair and say, ‘What’s this?’ First they watch, then sooner or later, they want a shot at it.”

Ramsey’s sons have all grown to love games. A lifelong baseball devotee, Ramsey has been particularly struck by the influence two specific video games have had on his middle son’s passion for the sport.

“He liked baseball – at five or six, we played wiffle ball and went to Mets games at Shea Stadium – but what the videogames did for him is increase his understanding of the game,” Ramsey said. “Backyard Baseball is great for kids because it’s simple, but the rules of the game still apply. You learn about force outs and tagging up, things like that. With MLB The Show, he learned about the teams and the players. I remember my father visiting when he was 6, and asking him to name all the teams; he was rattling them all off because of the game.

“We go in the backyard to play wiffle ball, and I can’t just pick up the ball to pitch,” Ramsey said. “Every player had to be announced and have a walk-up song because that was in the game. He would not have gotten that from just sitting there and watching the Mets. I think there’s great value in that.”

MLB The Show is a beautiful, immersive game, but it’s also incredibly difficult. I asked Mr. Ramsey about that – and it shined a light on yet another lesson that the game teaches.

“I put everything on rookie level, and the biggest thing I try to tell him is, don’t throw a fastball down the middle every pitch,” he said. “So he learned that, too. You have to go up and down, in and out, slider and curve, just like they do in the big leagues.”

All those lessons translate onto the real-life diamond as well.

“He plays baseball in the summer and fall, and for his age group every year there’s always a handful of kids who get it more than others,” Mr. Ramsey recounted. “I talk to other dads, and they’ve told me the same thing: kids learn the game from playing the videogames. There’s a runner on first, they pick up the grounder, they look to throw it to second, because they know. Meanwhile, other kids are just staring at the clouds.”

Over time, videogames have become a centralizing mechanism of collaboration and competition for his busy family – a common ground where he and his 12-, nine- and almost-four-year-old boys all have a blast. Wrestling games in particular get the Ramsey clan in a boisterous mood.

“I always kid them that there’s no videogame I can’t master,” he laughs. “Someday they’ll be able to beat me in, say, basketball, but I’ll always be able to beat them in video games. We got WWE All-Stars, and they’re down there for hours practicing the moves, then say ‘Dad, come on, let’s play!’ I’m trying to figure it out, and they’re drop-kicking me and smashing me into turnbuckles. My three-year old holds the controller, thinking he’s playing, then walks around the house singing all the guys’ entrance music.”

Around the Grisham household, my son and I have a weeknight routine. Every night before bed, we’ll hang out for half an hour in our “man cave” (my upstairs office). Because of what I do, I’ll usually be playing a sports game, but occasionally I venture into other genres. Earlier this year, I was goofing around with Portal 2, and my son instantly loved the characters. He’d go everywhere talking like Wheatley and the sing-song turrets he called “lasers.” He begged me every day to play more. Naturally, I had to be very careful around these lethal, bullet-slinging robots, because I’m not trying to expose him to heavy machine guns just yet. He’s got his whole life to absorb violence in media.

Over the course of the next few months, his life was seemingly centered around his idea of what Portal was. He’d build Portal levels with his Legos, any stick he grabbed was a “thing that makes holes”, and he loved to have me grab a marble and speak in a Wheatley-inspired English accent. His Halloween costume was a handmade Atlas (because they don’t exactly sell Portal costumes in stores). Thanks to the great people at ThinkGeek.com, we were even able to buy him a Turret and Wheatley for Christmas. These will be a massive hit.

Portal isn’t a sports game, but the fact that we’ve bonded over it thrills me. Life is magical for my boy right now, and we’re absolutely best buddies. Things change over time, though, and he’ll be a teenager one day; we’ll inevitably butt heads over things like school and driving and the other trials life will throw at us. My hope is that no matter what else might be going on, we’ll always be able to sit down and play a game together, having fun in spite of any difficulties – and I’m pretty sure Gus Ramsey feels the same way. Anything that brings fathers and sons together is a good thing in my book, and no one can degrade that.

Richard Grisham has been obesessed with sports and video games since childhood, when he’d routinely create and track MicroLeague Baseball seasons on paper. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and four-year old son, who he’ll soon be training to be an NFL placekicker. As a freelance journalist and writer, his work has appeared in GamesRadar, NGamer, and 1UP.

The post Box Score: A family affair appeared first on Game News.