The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

A new approach to the sports game franchise

Just about everyone who has played their fair share of sports games on the PC or on consoles has lamented the yearly release structure of each sports game franchise.  Whether it be Madden, NBA2K, or MLB: The Show, we see a new title released every season with minor enhancements from the last years version.

The amount of time that the developers, usually, have to work on each title doesn't usually get much past 8 or 9 months for a given game... and that's being rather optimistic.

Unless there is a major flaw in the game, any minor issues you'll have with a game will more than likely be replicated into next years version.

So, what can be done to break the cycle?

Gamers usually talk about skipping a year or two after buying a new version of a given franchise and while that may work for that individual, it won't do too much to try and fix the core issues.

Another thing that gamers usually talk about is the hope that developers will throw the consumers a bone and just release a roster update (for a lesser charge) every other year, but then you would have to believe that the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL (and their players associations) would not be happy about that scenario.  I'm sure that each of them count on the revenue that they receive from all of the game sales and would prefer that those revenues are not cut in half just to benefit the people buying the games.

After that thrilling introduction, you have to be wondering what my idea is.   I don't really think that it's an incredibly unique one, but it's one that has already worked for another hugely successful franchise.

My suggestion is that sports games should follow the Activision/Call of Duty school.

For those of you that don't pay attention to that series, Activision alternates between two different developers with each version of the game.  How has it worked for them?  It's been incredibly successful.

Call of Duty 2 and Modern Warfare were developed by Infinity Ward.  Call of Duty 3 and World at War were developed by Treyarch.

The result of this is games that held true to their previous versions, but with the bi-annual releases of the titles, I believe that the developers were able to do more with the engine and make their titles better.

My suggestion would be to take the one large studio that is working on the titles, split their staff in half and create two teams that would work on alternating years.

I would like to think that would take us out of the cycle of receiving minor enhancements to each game, as you would have people working on new features for 18 to 20 months.  You would have to deal with sharing the engine and what you'd be working on, but I think that the healthy competition between the two units could help to provide us with a much more complete game series in the long run.

It's not the most innovative or unique idea for sports games, but I think it's a concept that doesn't cause any developers their employment and allows them to come up with more ideas that could benefit the games, and sports gamers, in the long run.