I meant my JD Sport's comment. It's a sports apparel chain in the UK that looks like an EA ports game come to life. It really does annoy me, I don't think gamers dislike sports at all, I think people dislike EA.
I like this discussion, you bring up some good points. But I'm going to come at it from another angle (and probably write too much).
You alluded to it in your "But who cares?" section, but I want to point out that these games are clearly cash cows. So it's worth highlighting that asking "What's wrong with sports games?" is a very different question from asking "What's wrong with RTS games?" or some other genre that has clearly experienced a crash and isn't seeing much development. It's still a good question though!
Sports games are a genre people love to complain about while they keep buying them. The only game I can think of that's worse in this regard is World of Warcraft. My WoW-addict friends (and I had a few) would do nothing but complain about the game. They had nothing good to say about it, as they spent 40+ hours/week playing it. Sports game fans are usually at least somewhat better than this, but maybe not much better.
I honestly think that the demand for and cost of licensing is really what hurts this genre more than anything else and keeps it from improving. The licensing adds a fixed cost -- but also a semi-fixed revenue stream from demand for annual updates! -- that seems to have produced a natural monopoly of AAA games that just didn't exist in the old days. Also the emphasis on online play adds network effects that reinforce more of a "winner take all" approach than exists in single player games. It's hard for someone to come up with better gameplay and disrupt the market.
But contrast this with FPSes, another genre that draws lots of young male casuals and has a heavy online play component. A game like PUBG can come from nowhere, be discovered, totally disrupt the market, and force all the existing players to respond to it or be buried. The real commercial success, of course, accrued to Fortnite, which had the first, best response to PUBG. It didn't quite come from nowhere, but Epic hadn't been a big player in the genre for a long time, and Battle Royale was originally a secondary mode in this game.
By contrast, if some small or mid-sized studio made an amazing game in one of the team ball sports, but it had no official licenses, it would just go unnoticed. It would remain an indie darling, hidden gem, etc. forever. EA or 2K could decide to lift some of its features for their next update, but they wouldn't have to.
The only company with the freedom to create unlicensed sports games and have some success is Nintendo. And a legitimate sub-question is "Why can't we get great Nintendo sports games again?" But the problem is Nintendo sports form a separate sort of monopoly; their fan base is basically a parallel group that doesn't actually intersect much with the audience for the big licensed games.
It will be interesting to see if Switch 2 brings the GameCube Mario sports games to NSO, as those provide very real and strong competition to the actual Mario Sports games for sale on Switch. I'll note though that so far they haven't brought the excellent GBA games to the service. But I also didn't think they would put the N64 Mario Party and Mario sports games on the service when those represent competition to the Switch games -- and they did!
You can never write too much, this is the exact kind of thing I want to be responding to.
It's funny you draw the RTS comparison because that was the original topic for this article but I decided to go with this instead. It is a very different question and many of the points you mention are spot on too.
That really is the root of the issue: the vicious cycle and one I'm caught up in too with the strategy genre. The options on offer seem to get less appealing every year and the quality has been on the downslide for a long time and everyone sees it but the alternatives just aren't good enough to replace it even if we/they complain a lot. If you want fully licensed, intricately modelled, real world football teams with easy to pick up gameplay, online multiplayer and official licenses and sponsors then your only choice is EA's sports games. As I alluded to in the article, I'm an F1 fan and there are no alternatives for easily accessible F1-style gameplay, so inevitably, I know come May, the next game they shit out will wind up in my Steam Library.
I touched on it before but you're right in saying that licensing is a massive issue. Pro Evolution Soccer arguably had the better gameplay compared to Fifa/FC but that franchise lost because they had none of the rights, so you had hilarious spoof players and teams like 'Man Red' and 'Man Blue.'
A part of it too I think is casual gamers' potential discomfort with buying from an unfamiliar name. I know even when I was a kid, if I saw the Ubisoft swirl, the Nintendo license, that blue Sega font etc. it was going to be a decent game but to some extent, I think you could make the best sports game in the world but without that EA logo and someone like Lewis Hamilton on the front, your average joe is going to see it as a knock-off.
I think Sega and Nintendo are really the only people in the position to do something like this; Sega is already a publisher that over relies on nostalgia and brand recognition as it is (how many times can you make a Sonic game with Green Hill Zone as the first level?) So why not draw on that rich history of motorsport and sports games? Nintendo as you mentioned seem unable to make a good sports game these days which is a damn shame, Gamecube games will only attract a certain crowd of player. At this point I think a Mario Sports All-Stars game could do really well, I'd buy it.
I'll never forgive sports-games players for the time my buddy got me to play Madden against him and laughed when I asked what button he was using to melee my guys.
Personality goes such a long way in sports games. You're right, Sega's sports games had that in spades. Bring fun back to sports games!
I’d be so much more winning to play sports games like that. I don’t dislike football, basketball etc. at all, I just don’t want to give EA more money
EA's presentation is just so soulless. And that's before you get to their loot box BS.
I meant my JD Sport's comment. It's a sports apparel chain in the UK that looks like an EA ports game come to life. It really does annoy me, I don't think gamers dislike sports at all, I think people dislike EA.
I like this discussion, you bring up some good points. But I'm going to come at it from another angle (and probably write too much).
You alluded to it in your "But who cares?" section, but I want to point out that these games are clearly cash cows. So it's worth highlighting that asking "What's wrong with sports games?" is a very different question from asking "What's wrong with RTS games?" or some other genre that has clearly experienced a crash and isn't seeing much development. It's still a good question though!
Sports games are a genre people love to complain about while they keep buying them. The only game I can think of that's worse in this regard is World of Warcraft. My WoW-addict friends (and I had a few) would do nothing but complain about the game. They had nothing good to say about it, as they spent 40+ hours/week playing it. Sports game fans are usually at least somewhat better than this, but maybe not much better.
I honestly think that the demand for and cost of licensing is really what hurts this genre more than anything else and keeps it from improving. The licensing adds a fixed cost -- but also a semi-fixed revenue stream from demand for annual updates! -- that seems to have produced a natural monopoly of AAA games that just didn't exist in the old days. Also the emphasis on online play adds network effects that reinforce more of a "winner take all" approach than exists in single player games. It's hard for someone to come up with better gameplay and disrupt the market.
But contrast this with FPSes, another genre that draws lots of young male casuals and has a heavy online play component. A game like PUBG can come from nowhere, be discovered, totally disrupt the market, and force all the existing players to respond to it or be buried. The real commercial success, of course, accrued to Fortnite, which had the first, best response to PUBG. It didn't quite come from nowhere, but Epic hadn't been a big player in the genre for a long time, and Battle Royale was originally a secondary mode in this game.
By contrast, if some small or mid-sized studio made an amazing game in one of the team ball sports, but it had no official licenses, it would just go unnoticed. It would remain an indie darling, hidden gem, etc. forever. EA or 2K could decide to lift some of its features for their next update, but they wouldn't have to.
The only company with the freedom to create unlicensed sports games and have some success is Nintendo. And a legitimate sub-question is "Why can't we get great Nintendo sports games again?" But the problem is Nintendo sports form a separate sort of monopoly; their fan base is basically a parallel group that doesn't actually intersect much with the audience for the big licensed games.
It will be interesting to see if Switch 2 brings the GameCube Mario sports games to NSO, as those provide very real and strong competition to the actual Mario Sports games for sale on Switch. I'll note though that so far they haven't brought the excellent GBA games to the service. But I also didn't think they would put the N64 Mario Party and Mario sports games on the service when those represent competition to the Switch games -- and they did!
You can never write too much, this is the exact kind of thing I want to be responding to.
It's funny you draw the RTS comparison because that was the original topic for this article but I decided to go with this instead. It is a very different question and many of the points you mention are spot on too.
That really is the root of the issue: the vicious cycle and one I'm caught up in too with the strategy genre. The options on offer seem to get less appealing every year and the quality has been on the downslide for a long time and everyone sees it but the alternatives just aren't good enough to replace it even if we/they complain a lot. If you want fully licensed, intricately modelled, real world football teams with easy to pick up gameplay, online multiplayer and official licenses and sponsors then your only choice is EA's sports games. As I alluded to in the article, I'm an F1 fan and there are no alternatives for easily accessible F1-style gameplay, so inevitably, I know come May, the next game they shit out will wind up in my Steam Library.
I touched on it before but you're right in saying that licensing is a massive issue. Pro Evolution Soccer arguably had the better gameplay compared to Fifa/FC but that franchise lost because they had none of the rights, so you had hilarious spoof players and teams like 'Man Red' and 'Man Blue.'
A part of it too I think is casual gamers' potential discomfort with buying from an unfamiliar name. I know even when I was a kid, if I saw the Ubisoft swirl, the Nintendo license, that blue Sega font etc. it was going to be a decent game but to some extent, I think you could make the best sports game in the world but without that EA logo and someone like Lewis Hamilton on the front, your average joe is going to see it as a knock-off.
I think Sega and Nintendo are really the only people in the position to do something like this; Sega is already a publisher that over relies on nostalgia and brand recognition as it is (how many times can you make a Sonic game with Green Hill Zone as the first level?) So why not draw on that rich history of motorsport and sports games? Nintendo as you mentioned seem unable to make a good sports game these days which is a damn shame, Gamecube games will only attract a certain crowd of player. At this point I think a Mario Sports All-Stars game could do really well, I'd buy it.
Great post. NHL '93 on Sega Genesis forever.
Sega’s Rally and racing games are some of the best ever made, they really were the king of sports
I'll never forgive sports-games players for the time my buddy got me to play Madden against him and laughed when I asked what button he was using to melee my guys.