Would going semi-annual make for better sports games?

The current collection of sports games in my house, although the all-time list

is way more expansive. And yes, I did buy two versions of MLB 14.

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and Madden.

Although the same can be applied for most sports games; NHL, FIFA, MLB The Show, NBA 2K, they all get annual installments. And thousands of people - me included - show up to buy the newest editions of these games every year.

Some years are good, some are bad, others are just "meh." But in every case, just as the saying goes when your favorite team falls short, "there is always next year."

With the way the gaming landscape is right now, though, I don't think annual installments for sports games are really necessary anymore.

Making a sports game every year is tough. Development teams have less than a year to put together the best game they possibly can, then have to repeat the cycle all over again once they're done to have another game ready to go in 12 months. Meanwhile games in any other genre usually get 2-3 years worth of time.

I can only imagine that the constantly increasing importance of online connectivity only complicates things, now that roster updates, online modes, and patches to fix bugs and adjust balance have been standard practice for quite some time now. Developers can't just focus solely on next year anymore, they also have to worry about keeping the current year's game up to date too.

That kind of development cycle is hard to sustain. It shows too, and you don't have to look very far back for proof of it. There are a few examples to point to here, but there is one that really stands out to me in particular...

Xbox.com

Yeah, NHL 15 isn't a good game, and believe me, that hurts to say. I've played every game in the series since NHL '98, and can say without any hesitation that I was more excited for this game leading up to release than any other before. 

I had reason to be. NHL 15 was the series' next-gen debut on the Xbox One and PS4, and everything shown leading up to its September launch looked incredible. 

I mean look at the game's E3 trailer. It's beautiful.

But then I got my hands on the game. It looks great, yeah, but the list of modes that weren't there was longer than the list of what was, and even the ones that were left were scaled back in some way. There were plenty of reports about that in the weeks leading up to launch, but it was hard to accept until I saw for myself.

And while the game itself plays pretty fluidly, the AI-controlled players need a lot of work (exhibit A and exhibit B).

It was disappointing, and, given the fact that the series skipped the chance to make a next-gen debut the year before with NHL 14, pretty baffling. Until you realize that technical hurdles and time constraints held the game back.

But let's just say, hypothetically, that series developer EA Canada didn't have to worry about making an NHL 14 on the old consoles the year before, allowing the team an extra year's worth of time to bring the series to the new consoles. It wouldn't guarantee that everything missing from the game now would've made it in, but it at least would have improved the chances for more problems to get fixed and make for an overall better game.

I liked NHL 14 too, but my point is that having to come up with a new game every year takes a toll, and that's especially clear when sports franchises transition between console cycles (although there is an exception to that).

Compared to the rest of the gaming industry, the development process of sports games is pretty unique, because they all come out at the same time every year. Madden is always out in August, NHL and FIFA in September, NBA in October, MLB in March. 

These games always have their deadlines set, and they're hard ones. You rarely see any of these franchises get delayed, and I can easily see developers under constant pressure, having to cut or save new features in order to get their game out on time.

But say sports game went from annual to semi-annual, giving development teams two years to make the next game instead of one. That's more time to add new features, improve the existing ones, fix more bugs, and to just flat out make a better game. 

On top of that, one of the biggest detractors about sports games is that there isn't enough differentiating them from year to year to justify them as anything more than $60 roster updates. There is some truth to that, but going from every year to every two years can help rid of that problem.

It's not like this sort of change would mean a longer wait for any sort of improvement either. Like I said earlier, online roster updates and patches have become the norm now. In the off years when a game isn't coming out, developers can put out a bigger patch that does a massive roster update before the start of the respective sport's season, and throw a couple gameplay tweaks into the mix to keep the game fresh until the next one comes out.

On paper, doing an update like that would be a much easier task, and one that would allow developers to put more time and resources into making the next game an even better product.

A change like this is big, and it can be a tough call to make. Games like FIFA and Madden make easy money for EA every year, an to be honest, it's pretty much become a tradition for me to buy a lot of these games every 12 months now.

A move from annual to semi-annual would be an adjustment for a lot of people. The ones that make the games, the ones that sell them and the ones that buy them. But with online connectivity becoming a primary part in the way games work now, it's a move that the developers of sports franchises can pull off.

Whether the publishers of those franchise are willing to do that, however, is a completely different story. My guess is probably not.

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Wait, I never put a GIF in here.

BlogSoHardSports.com

There we go, much better.

And don't worry, Ovi. I know you're having a good year...and that you're probably not reading this anyway.