Game Stooge

Sports Games: Bastard Sons of the Video Game Industry?

• Scribbled on October 10th, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in Features, Industry News, Platforms, Sports

I’ve been playing sports sims since 1985, when I first bought MicroLeague Baseball for my Commodore 64. I was already in love with it, because I was able to transfer my fictional baseball league – which I had been jotting results in imaginary games I’d thought up in my head! – to a computer which would objectively play out games according to the stats which it was given. From there on out, you couldn’t stop me. Earl Weaver Baseball, TV Sports Basketball, Front Page Sports Football: Pro, Diamond Mind Baseball, APBA Baseball for Windows, Front Office Football, Out of the Park Baseball, NBA 2K and so on. My enthusiasm spanned the entirety of the genre’s history on computers and later consoles.

In the last couple of years, though, I’ve noticed a real dearth of any sort of sports game reporting. The computer sports game market shrank til there was only Electronic Arts and no one else. A decade ago, there 5 or 6 competing football games, for instance. Along with Madden ‘98, there was Front Page Sports: Football Pro ‘98, Monday Night Football ‘98, Legends Football ‘98, and MicroLeague Football - and that’s not counting the small indie developers who catered to the “hardcore” crowd, who sneered at any sports sim that wasn’t all text. Now, it’s Madden and that’s it. Well, Backyard Football or whatever cynical kiddie-aimed junk you might find in the $10 rack. On the console side, you still had a fair amount of choices, though they were aimed at action rather than realism. Some of the most heated arguments in the computer game newsgroup landscape was at comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.sports.

Visual Concepts killed the computer sports industry, though. It married action and realism in one game, NFL 2K, so well that even on the message boards of rabid computer vets, you saw people talking endlessly about this console game that was capturing their imagination. When the Xbox came out a year later – the PC gamer’s console of choice – computer games as a whole were doomed, but especially the sports games, which already basically required a gamepad anyway for full enjoyment. The Exclusive League Deal Mania that occured a few years later shrunk the market even further.

So, what now? comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.sports is a ghost town, with the occasional visitor calling out like a tourist in Carlsbad and only getting a returning echo, except for the porn spam. Mainstream PC sports gaming was declared dead, though it’s more a case of expedient premature burial than death, as 2K Sports is finally deigning to release one of their 2K games (NBA 2K9) on a PC in 2 weeks. Console gaming is marked out territorially, as EA owns football and Take 2 owns baseball (partially, at least), and it’s not shocking that the best games are in sports where no one owns an exclusive deal (hockey, soccer, and Sony’s first party baseball game, which Take 2’s deal allows for.)

However, the industry media is, shockingly, one of the biggest obstacles, for many reasons. For one, the coverage is almost perfunctory. Madden gets far more hype in the mainstream, non-game press than Gears of War, despite the massive sales of the former title. Reviews from non-devoted sites are jokes. Chris Sanner, an editor at sports gaming megasite Operation Sports, noted:

“To me, the perception really soured after several of the top gaming sites gave Madden NFL 06 a good review, when nearly everyone in the hardcore crowd thought the game was an absolute mess. Some sites gave the game a score of 80 or higher, which was just way off-base. … When you take into account the lack of atmosphere and presentation and the only average gameplay, the game just didn’t feel quality at all. It would be like shipping Call of Duty with a single-player campaign that was missing half of the levels. The game would still technically play fine, but you would not like the fact you only got half of the game.” (CrispyGamer)

Another reason cited in Crispy Gamer’s article is an intriguing one is the entire “geeks vs. jocks” holdover mentality, and one wonders if some editors and writers hold a grudge.

“Sports games have a huge audience — thus, they should be covered hugely. Yet, they aren’t. They’re covered decently, at best.” So says Todd Zuniga, a freelancer and host of 1UP’s Sports Anomaly podcast. Part of the reason for this lack of coverage, Zuniga says, is that the people who make up the gaming press by and large aren’t sports fans. “I think in large part, the people in power at gaming websites and, before that, magazines, weren’t ’sports guys,’ and few have had the foresight to acknowledge sports as a viable income-maker. I also think there’s this nerd versus sporto mentality that’s pervasive, and unfortunate — like the people who like sports games are going to beat up the RPG lovers or something.” (CrispyGamer)

I myself was a computer geek growing up – not console, mind you. We computer gamers turned up our noses at “kiddie console gamers” – but I was also a “jock”, though you could never tell from meeting me. I was the starting centerfielder in college, and still play all sports when I can. But I still remember from a year or two ago when I sent a game review of a sports title to a 1Up.com editor (who is no longer there) and I was trashed in the following podcast. Though the editor never named me, it was a tremendous slap in the face, and Jeff Green, apologized in his stead when I sent an angry missive to him about the treatment, though I’m guessing this person wasn’t apologetic.

The point is, if you want an honest review of a game? Avoid mainstream sites, and go with trusted reviewers like Bill Abner, Dan Clarke, Glen Haag, OperationSports.com, GameShark, and GameSpy, or any reviewer or site that has editors that harken back to the days when sports games were taken seriously.

That list includes myself. I still cherish the days in which I cut my teeth in video game journalism back in the late ’90s. Some of my best articles were for Computer Games Strategy Plus/Computer Games Magazine (may she rest in peace and be resurrected some day), with feature stories like Hardcore Sports and an article about how NBA games would cope with a potential strike, and reviews such as my aghast review of Front Page Sports: Football ‘99 – the only less-than-1 star review in my life, though it became an article once the game was recalled by Sierra.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Sports gaming journalism, sure, though the light is a pinpoint dot. PC sports gaming? Harder to tell – indie developers will always be there, but the idea that PC sports games are dead is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious circle. My suggestion? Include Achievement points, as Halo 2 (PC) and Shadowrun (PC) did.

What do you think? Let us know.

(Thanks, CrispyGamer for inspiring this editorial response.)