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Why Are There No Sports MMO Games?
Brian P. writes "With the online gaming market growing at a remarkable rate and new games being announced frequently, why have developers and publishers shied away from creating an MMO sports game? Online fantasy leagues are bigger than ever and online sports games such as Madden '05 are huge franchises. It seems to me that a logical evolution of this trend would be a gaming experience that lets a player start out as a street-baller and work their way up to virtual super-athlete status. The possibilities are endless...but obviously there's something seriously wrong with the concept because all we keep getting are tiresome sword and sorcery games and online adaptations of megafranchises such as Star Wars."
The NFL, NBA, NHL, and the other leagues own the team names, and restrict their use. Any MMO would bump up against this. When a user tries being the "Detroit Lions" he's appropriating the trademark and likeness of a real-world team, without paying licensing fees.
It's all about the right people getting rich. If you offer money to the leagues, they'll let you play sports online.
Why are there no team sports games where more than one or two people can play against eachother at a time? Why not large amounts of human controlled players on each side? I call first baseman!
Planetside is pretty close to what you are thinking about.
You can answer your own question by looking at reviews/critics of this game (seems to be an issue with team quality and griefers) or even trying it for yourself.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
That'd be sweet if ESPN or Madden came out with a version of the game where a human could play every single position. Have 11 humans on each side of the field.
I agree completely. The coop mode of games is sometimes what makes the best game overall. I would love to do a virtual football game where all the players are real. How cool would that be? :)
Plus, sports games tend to be more based on the skill of the actual player than the character, and someone who was good at basketball games would be mighty pissed if they got schooled by some noob who had just played a long time.
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Anyone who's played any team sports can support that if you play with the same team as the same positions all the time then your skill goes way up. You know exactly what to expect from your teammates and you're not just running hail mary towards the ball.
To have something like this online, you'd have to arrange the group to meet online at certain times and I don't think there's enough people around to take this kind of game seriously enough to do that.
Well, the idea is pretty neat. There are a few things about it though that might turn off _regular_ sports games players
,moving up to the major league, and along the way breaking away from 'guilds' of players whose skills they have surpassed. There could even be roles for managers/coaches of teams .
1) Licenses - Players would generally like to think that they are playing for a major team (say Manchester United in football). They might not enjoy the experience of playing the game if they were playing street football. (One of the reasons why the FIFA 200x series is so popular despite having relatively shallow gameplay as compared to Pro Evolution Soccer).
2) How do you address the aspect of every player wanting to be a part of the action. Take the case of football again. Almost everyone, would like to be in control of the player who is dribbling the ball. Playing the game sort of loses it's excitement if one has to stand at the back of the defense.
Of course it's highly possible that there does exist an audience for whom the above two shortcomings don't really matter, and who would like the concept of starting out as a street player
note to self: play on all the teams I don't like and then just spin around and not play right. well... I won't do that.... but people will, I have no doubt.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
A lot of it comes down to bandwidth problems. Compared to sports games, RPG-ish games take considerably less updating and refreshing, and are also less time crucial than sports games.
If each person could control a player on the team, you would have to have every client synched, otherwise the play experience would be terrible. It's no problem if one person happens to see you walk in a slightly different path than someone else does in an online RPG, but if I'm playing football, you better be running the same route that my fellow defender sees. These types of synchronization problems are what made simple two player online sports games take so long to perfect. A lot of games use some type of motion prediction algorithm to make these games seem smoother than they are, but this is unacceptable for sports games where accurate "reproductions" of athletic skill need to be created using joystick commands.
I hope someday this does become a reality though.
In MMOs, the game is based around you being a character in this alternate world. It's something you probably aren't in reality for lack of monsters or foes you can legally slay.
Sports games revolve around one person controlling an entire team. In an MMO, assuming your character finds a team, they have to:
1) be online at the same time as the team
2) the designers need to come up with an entirely new way of playing sports games online from a 1 player=1 player perspective
3) the new way of playing has to be fun
This is not remotely easy and might not be possible at all. Otherwise, if you're just looking for seasons, doesn't X-Box Live have support for that?
"If the good lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates." -Willy Wonka
100-200 milliseconds isn't much when you're deciding whether to attack that orc or not, but when trying to intercept a pass... Ever play Everquest? Sometimes you have monsters running off and then 'porting right next to you. That's because the clients use prediction to show where the mobs are and what they're doing and they have to catch up to the servers sometimes. That works fine for an RPG where you're sitting in the same spot for 30 minutes waiting for a certain MOB to spawn, but not so well in fast-paced action games with 20+ human players trying to react quickly to what's going on. They do more advanced prediction in action games like Unreal Tournament, but I don't know if it would be fast enough for a sports game.
MMO does not work very well unless you have lots of people hoping to ride the bench.
But say, a 10 or 12 player hockey game, or Football, or Soccer might work a bit better. I dont see Baseball working very well for this, since the team currently on the offensive will have alot of players riding a bench.
END COMMUNICATION
http://www.ultimatebaseballonline.com/
- and -
http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/
Gamers are allergic to even simulated physical activity...
Seriously, sports fans have ESPN, Fox Sports Net, Speed Channel and even Outdoor Life for some thrilling trail walking escapades.
The reason Madden, etc. are so popular is b/c they're just pick-up and play when you got your friends around and there isn't a game on that you care about.
I could be wrong.
No sig for you!!
I know that one of the appeals of sports games (atleast on console, their prime location), is that you and your buddies can all enjoy a game together. I am not sure that sports gamers, who traditionally fall under the heading of casual gamers, would want to put in the time & energy that is often present with MMOs into the game. Realistically speaking, there seems to be bigger potential markets than this, however the one thing sports game have going for them is they have a very respectable market share and are highly marketable. Let MMOs develope a bit more and maybe such an idea could go somewhere, and grab those otherwise casual gamers.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
How are you going to powerlevel your rookie football player? It's not like you can just equip him with +2 boots of speed, or a +5 helmet of tackling. Well, not unless the developers get really creative.
I think MMO sports games would be a bit difficult to target the desires of most sports fans. First, most sports fans tend to think they know what's best for their teams and nobody can tell them otherwise. In a real-time environment, the competition for who would be "king" of the team, controlling the QB or calling the shots would turn off the majority who have no desire to be anything more than the exclusive one in charge/handling the ball. Good luck getting your typical sports fan to play left field or right guard during the course of an entire game.
Second, sports fans never really have their insight or talent challenged. These are the people that would last about 20 seconds in MMO first person shooters, getting killed over and over before they'd give up and head to the pantry for more nachos.
Third, watching sports and playing sports are two different things. A typical sports fan thinks he has the depth of wisdom to select the best approach towards winning, but in a realistic simulation, he'd probably get trounced by people who are less fans than they are technicians and tacticians.
That notwithstanding, I'm sure there will be more sports MMO games coming out, but they'll be more likely to turn a traditionally tactical gamer into a sports afficiando than they will turn a typical sports fan into an online gamer.
Let's take american football, 11 players on each side, so that's 22. What's so massive about that? Is the other 10,000 people on the server sitting in the stands.
Actually this sounds very cool, I'll play the virtual peanuts vendor... I can annoy everyone within my sector by yelling "Peanuts get your peanuts..." or even better I can be the streaker in the game and try to avoid security while running across the field...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Ok, I'd play a pulling guard (American football... acts as a lead blocker for a running play :), but few others would. It's kinda like the C-47 duties in a game like Aces High. Few of us want to play "supply chain management," even though I find the cooperative team concept entertaining. It has appeal to me (though the points about lag are well-timed), but I don't know if it has a wider appeal. I don't know a lot of Madden players who'd want to be the receiver who doesn't get the ball.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I think everyone has pretty much nailed all the problems.
-Technology lacking, not enough bandwith to handle the control needed.
-Boring, who wants to play right field?
-Pub jerks, Xfool goes offsides, 5 yards. Xfool goes offsides, 5 yards. Xfool goes offsides, 5 yars...
-Coordination, Can't run any plays without lots of practice.
There are some ways around the bandwith limitation. You could run the sports game like some of those old tecmo games. Where you have a menu and the game pauses when the ball gets to you. Actually could play it somewhat like the blitzball in final fantasy X. This way you could have a lot of people around, then have a menu come up for 5 to 10 seconds to let you pick out what to do, pass the ball to players close by, try to move up the field ect. On the pause, everyone else could try to pick out what they want to do, move forward and signal for a pass, on defense, decide to move up and steal or keep your distance. Things like that, if well thought out, could make a somewhat fast paced game interesting game. Stats can determine how well you do at making tough passes or intercepting other passes.
Or you could use a small game. Beach vball would be a great candiate, only 4 players need. Get more massive with 6 on 6 vball. There's a good chance the ball will come to you or you'll get to do something on your side. Six's would be hard to coordinate though.
Make up a small sport that has 4 on 4. Play it full on. I think by now people with good cable and dsl connections can handle 8 people without much lag and jumpping around.
Sports don't need to go MMO because I can't think of any sports that have teams of 150+. But they sure could do with a little bit of online presence. Pick out some sports that have a low number of people, let you make an avatar with stats, let you train up the stats, that may or may not apply to all or one of the sports, then let you go pick which sport to play, run tournyments with stat limits set, keep a global ranking going, whatever.
I'd try something like that.
Sports games are by their very nature time limited.
You need to agree on a time for all the players to be there, anyone who has worked with ameture clans in say CS knows this is difficult.
You could create a persistent online character who's stats gradually increase but that isn't the same as say UO where you can enter and play any time.
Face is video games are an entertainment of convenience and will never be more than that.
Why is 90% of MMO games (notablyu MMORPGs) are about wizards, elves, spells, warriors and assorted fantasy? City of heroes was a notable exception, but it seems like every new game is a copycat of the one before it.
Something like the Fallout series translated to an online game would be quite nice.
Called Motor City Online.
You would race for pink slips (that's Yank for certificate of ownership of a car), build up money to mod your car, and so forth.
Here is a Gamespot review. Little point in buying it now, though.
I never played it, but at its peak it in Summer of '02 it had around 36,000 subscribers according to this study of MMORPG subscriber trends.
It fell sharply from its peak and Electronic Arts shut it down a year later.
Half Life has a mod where you play on a soccer team. You can play any position that isn't already taken by someone else (even goalkeeper, though the server owner can lock it so that players can't be goalkeepers).
I've played it a few times. It's not MMO in that there are no stats taken that persist over time, but it made for interesting gameplay. It took a while to get used to the controls and as others have posted everyone wants to be the star. It's tough to bunch random people on a team and actually have them do what's best for the group.
I suspect that the best way of putting the game together would be to have "classes" of players for whatever sport you're implementing and filling in the boring roles with computer players (possibly having their behavior controlled by the team captain).
Most sports are playable by those interested in them in real life without a whole lot of hastle. Its also much more condusive to going out for beers afterwards.
Conversely...
I don't know of a place in the world where you can join up with your friends, suit up, shoot them in the head with a sniper rifle - taking great joy in watching them flop over dead with a little blood spurt - and then doing it again when they respawn and run into the same area 2 minutes later.
i'm just sayin.
s'wut i sed.
If you look here there's an MMO baseball game I played during Beta last year. It's actually alot of fun. Give it a try.
Kleedrac
Sure we wang, can.
I haven't found any leagues to join where I can practice swords and sorcery, while I'm pretty sure if I were so inclined, I could go find a league to join to actually play.... =)
Because MMO rely on hard core gamers for most of their business. I don't mean to be mean but the dorks who play 8 hours a day and they don't much like sports.
I suggest that the easiest way to resolve the problem of the boring team positions within football, hockey and so on is to create a MMO sports game but replace the real-world games with fictional. For example, Speedball.
OK, obviously it would need to a different game, and certainly be in 3D, but this would seem to have the necessary attributes: the positions in the team are balanced; it's fast; tactical; requires team work; and by Dog is it fun ! :)
But I'll play them.
Also, one way to deal with this is to perhaps force players to make an O-lineman or D-lineman along with another position, and not allow their 2nd player to progress to a level beyond their lineman.
That way, people will still "put in their time" in the trenches, and maybe even get hooked on it if it's made fun. But they will get to play the glory guy too.
Also, make lineman progression much easier, and make, say, quarterback progression the steepest by far.
For other sports, you can substitute in the positions of more/less glory accordingly.
Fantasy and Sci-Fi...
How about a Western based MMORPG? Gunfights, bank and train robbers, miner 49ers, saloons, gambling, Deadwood....on and on and on....
Just wondering. Probably not much call for it.
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This is SlashDot. Who the hell do you think we are?
First of all, many people have already pointed out, you have to get people to play all the positions. Not just that; you need people to play BENCH players, too. Who's going to do that? Second, they all have to be at the games at the same time. You're talking co-ordinating anywhere from 25 to 50 to 100+ people to all show up at the right time, every day or every week, to play a game. That's going to be a nightmare. What do you do when a team doesn't show up, or doesn't show up with all its players? Modifying the schedule will be a nightmare. Thirdly, what happens when a guy gets disconnected during the middle of a game? Does he disappear? Is the game suspended until he returns? Do you replace it with some lame AI player? Great, now you have to go code AI players somehow. What if the guy comes back? Finally, what do you do about seasonal rosters, trades, and so on? If you require the guy to be on the same team all season, he may just not want to play anymore when his team is 0-12. What do you do when all of your QBs quit the game? Can you get a new QB? They're not retired; what if they suddenly come back? On the other hand, if you let players just move around all the want and play on whatever team all season, the league will be a joke, not to mention very confusing to follow. You could do this at the managerial level, but then it's not really a MMOG. But having everyone control their own player? No way. (It should be noted, however, that there are some MMOGs in development that are trying to solve these issues.) Bruce
Given the technical issues involved, I imagine that solo sports would be the first sports to be MMO worthy. They tend to have developable stats, and some of them, especially skateboarding hae the ability to be portrayed in a virtual world environment, which team sports lack. to play a team sport, you have to meet up and play as a n organised group for a set period of time. I really don't ever see this as a big chunk of the market, given the lag issues involved and the nature of getting groups of folks together to play organised games.
People who play sports, play sports... like outside, in real life.
Games are games because they typically contain elements that you can not normally be involved in such as killing or using magical powers.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Also in real life if one idiot tries to mess up the game by running off with the football you can catch him and beat him to a pulp.
In online games unless you're playing with friends it only takes one person to mess up the whole game causing endless frustration.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Most sports are teams of 5 to 15, so less than 30 total players, with the ball as an object. As said by a previous poster, what is so freaking Massive about it? You can find UT or CS servers of 30+ easily and een 40 or 50 and i'd say a FPS is much more demanding in bandwidth/latency. Then, you'd need to implement the stats tracking, a bit like a clan/team victory keeping. It also has been done already in FPS games. You say it is difficult to get players to play well together? True, as in any sport... But do you think it is any easier in a team map of a FPs like Ennemy Territory or Assault in UT? You CAN have just a bunch of unrelated and uncoordinated players, but they will get swept by any real team. In conclusion, i dont see sport games to be a good setting for MMO (I mean it in the sense persistant world, constant on). You just need stat tracking. UT already does that. So, i guess it could be implemented. And sure, i'd say it has potential. Lots of people like to play the star, some like support (otherwise, you would not find that many medics or engineers in ET). A team needs all components and it needs them all to play together. So, bring back the coop, implement it online, eventually add stats tracking and if really needed experience. I'd say that would be a recipe for success...
Maybe the reason is that these types of "tiresome" games are not showing any sign of maturation and there really is no reason to try something that may or may not work. If the same formula keeps working and growing the consumer base, there isn't a reason to innovate yet.
There's more of a demand for online gaming in Asia, and particularly RPG games. Sports titles are more popular in the US, although I imagine multiplayer FIFA "soccer" would be the last sports title for US. This is pure marketing.
If you want to play sports, go out and play them! Computer gaming isn't the next logical step, Fantasy Leagues and the large number of other sport-fantasy outlets make computer gameplay redundant for sports fans. Learn to love Sword and Sorcery or stop posting on /.!!!
This idea would work great for games like basketball, hockey, maybe rugby.
I think that it could work baseball (and cricket) and football. There are a lot of positions where you need REALLY consistent play, like a nose-tackle or conerback. Even playing single-player, I would never choose these positions.
If you had 6 players come on a team of 11, they could then choose what positions they wanted to play. If they left (or were booted by the other members of the team or the admin), then that player would be taking over by the computers default player. The game is more FUN with more human players, but you can still play with people coming and going.
Think fantasy sports games.
Alright! This would be perfect medium for the rebirth of XFL!
that's the first logical thing I've read in the last 4.6 minutes.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Social interaction is one of the things that makes play fun.
One of the games I liked to play with friends was Hidden and Dangerous. This was partly because the atmosphere of the game definitely had an authentic WWII feel. Also, the added twist of the main characters being British soliders didn't hurt either (you played members of an elite SAS sqaud). However, the real gem was it's cooperative multiplayer game. The missions were in-depth (for it's day). It supported up to 4 players at once. Also, the game embraced the fun of Rainbow Six without the wonkish strategy. The game was fun. I enjoyed teaming up with other actual human beings.
Cooperative games bring human interaction into gaming. Gaming is no longer a solo activity. I know ubergeeky computer nerds (being a programmer, I probably qualify as well...) tend not to design socially enhancing games. However, that's what makes Monopoly or paper RPGs so popular. You get to "play" with friends. I don't particularly enjoy virtually killing some kid from Germany in Wolfenstein 3d. Alas, the hunt-and-kill FPS is so easy to design...
Suprisingly, I lack the necessary drive to wantonly kill my friends, even in digital form.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
People buy Madden so they can control Michael Vick or Ray Lewis. They don't want to control Joe Schmoe, even if they did bring him up from playground to the NFL.
Has no one ever heard of this game before?
http://www.ultimatebaseballonline.com/ (Warning: Very IE biased)
All the "technical limitations" mentioned elsewhere in this story aren't present - very rarely do you drop a catch from lag, or miss a pitch because of the same. Of course it helps if you're on broadband.
If you have the time to sit around playing a video game working your way up from some no-name street baller all the way up the an uber-professional, then you have time to actually go out and play a real sport.
This seems obvious to me. Anyone that into sports that they'd want to work their way up to some sort of superstar over the course of months or years should just get away from the TV and play their favorite sport for real, with all the associated health benefits therein.
Yaz.
Most of the posts point out the obvious problems (group management, lag, griefers, etc), but I think they are missing some important points.
1) This would be a niche market. An independent developer could probably get enough player support to make it worthwhile. Small communities are usually more loyal anyways, so it would fit the team sports.
2) Computers and networks are improving and you should be able to support the small teams. Don't waste time supporting dial-up. Hell, you could do LAN only as prototypes.
3) You can build online rankings and virtual leagues. There should be periodic (maybe bi-monthly) championships to promote competition. You could even have drafts if you work it right.
4) Maybe we will see small "sports" in the larger MMOs first. With instanced worlds becoming common, you only need to worry about small groups. Not sure about "Jump to Lightspeed", but I imagine its using a different network protocol for the space combat. Why not do something similar when you enter sports arenas?
5) This would be PC only for a while. The tools are already cheaply available and no fees. A con would be the keyboard/mouse, but players would get gamepads if they really want the best experience.
6) No need for licensed teams (especially for the indy). Provide virtual leagues and players decide what club to play for. If a large publisher is involved, licensing teams (not players) would be okay.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I've thought of this before and I think it *could* be very interesting.
To a certian degree, M$ tried to do an MMO online idea with XSN. Obviously it failed when they shut down their entire M$ sports section due to ... um, EA? *not too sure why to be honest*
I'm not sure if it was successful or not since they never released any details, as far as I know. I'm sure you can google it and find something out.
How about using concepts from 'Mutant League'(both the cartoon series and the video game series).
.
Each team could be completely unique. Players could be completely customized. The rules would be pretty loose about what you could do to the other players(like killing them). Also, I would make it so you wouldn't be limited to just one sport. You could challenge another team to whatever type of competition you wanted
Now that I think of it, EA does own the rights to the franchise. I wonder if they would be up to resurrecting it as a MMO?
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
The idea of MMO in Sports completed misunderstood by the person submitting the question. What is so different with the way that any online sports game (ie: EA Sports series) handles MMO than any MORPG?
Thousands of users log in to a server and can chat away, challenge others, track user stats, etc. Many of these games do support multiple users, typically with multiple users at each console but there is the odd title that will allow multiple consoles to connect.
Perhaps the submitter is looking to add Role Playing to Online Sports? In which case, the user would have to start a Quarterback and elevate his skills and abilities through gameplay experience. Despite what previous people have echoed, bandwidth is not a consideration and this is quite feasible.
The problems really stem from useability issues.
I run an "MMO", Meridian 59, so I have a bit of insight into what it takes to make one of these games.
There's two main reasons why there's no sports MMO games:
1) Teamwork. It takes team chemistry to really work together as a sports team. You'd have to get a regular team to work together. Playing on a "pick up" team isn't going to be as effective as playing on an organized team that has trained together. The online medium doesn't help.
2) Offline is better. You can go down to the park and play a real game of football if you want. You can't go down to the park and slay orcs and engage in PvP. Well, you can, but there's laws and drugs to stop people that try. Getting outside and actually playing the sport will likely never replace virtual sports. The reason why console sports do so well is because it's easy to pick up and you only need one person to play. This is the complete opposite of what an online sports "MMO" would be like.
Some thoughts from a professional.
Have fun,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
He's talking about what most people in the US call "Soccer", not what the rest of the world calls "American Football".
Get yourself a xbox with sports games playeble in xbox live.. Allthou, it would make sense if one hockey game would actually require atleast *five* players on each side, perhaps even 15 to cover all the chains and changes would happen as they happen in real hockey game..
yush
http://www.kiekko.tk/howto.cws?lang=en
Kiekko.tk is a multiplayer online ice-hockey game.
RPGs are Skinner Boxes. You learned about them in psychology 101. I've played enough MUDs to know this is true.
With sports this kind of leveling just doesnt apply well. I'd rather just spawn a new player and play ball than spend 50 hours trying to reach level 16. Not to mention demographics. Sports fans are average people who dont have the time to spend on MUD-like games. Sure, there are some, but probably not enough to convince investors, bean counters, etc that you'll make a profit. Best to focus on the nerds with all the free time we have from the lack of a well rounded social life.
How about some of the sports at the other end of the spectrum. An MMO of a golf game with many different courses, perhaps even player driven clubs and tournies. Could be easily played with 1 to 4 people.
Or what about an MMO of Tony Hawk. Massive skate parks, mini missions of some sort in the same style as the building missions in COH. Once again player designed parks and competitions with other players serving as judges.
In both of these you could theoretically build characters through practive (driving range or vert ramps) and upgrade based on skill (better clubs or boards). Admittedly, probably more of a limited audience, but with the already huge following the games like Tony Hawk and Links have, it could be viable.
But not quiet like a regular MMO an not a simple one-on-one and there are some issues to solve first. The first one is the technical problem as stated before there are many issues in real time sports play with many players but it could be possible in a near future. The other one is the gameplay it was stated that in all sports there are positions that no one wants to play so it would be a mixed game with controlled players by the computer a others by humans, so people would organize in teams, any one one could create is team and play alone if it wanted, them there would be a massive world wide league with many divisions and a possible annual world title.
You try getting 36-50 people together to play against each other, with one guy possibly as a reliever in the bullpen, potentially not playing. Never gonna happen.
I hate sigs.
Sports by their nature aren't Massively Multiplayer. I don't know of a sport where you have 40 or more people on the field at once. We had that many people in a server in Quake and no one called THAT massively multiplayer.
Everyone seems to be saying that because there are boring roles in a team, no one would play, which is rubbish, otherwise no one would play real amateur sports.
People will get together in clans and play as teams with their friends. They would probably rotate, so that everyone gets their fair go at being a star.
It doesn't have to be a real sport either. Five a side football (English football) would be better suited than some other real sports. But it could be a completely new game such as space football or football with elves and orcs (ie Bloodbowl), or something completely new.
It could basically just be a much better version of the league system currently around for some online sports games.
It also doesn't have to be realtime. There are plenty of us left who still prefer turn-based strategy type games. (Civ could be turned into an amazing MMO game with people battling over a solar system and forming huge alliances).
You also don't have to have all 22 (or whatever) people playing at the same time. This would be just as good in the style of four player console football games (such as FIFA) or even just one on one and it could be a manager type game (can you get your team to be the best in your country).
Just make the game a bit more of a sim than pure aracde play as the sports games currently are.
Great idea.
But would a sports inspired MMO actually work, it's easier to create the RPG-type MMOs...but maybe someone needs to try and start up a project about this.
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
The latency (ping) is the measure of how long it takes to send an update to each player, not bandwidth.
Networking: Bandwidth, Latency, Errors
http://www.ultimatebaseballonline.com/
Sure looks like a Baseball MMOG to me...
Unfortunately, this submitter used the wrong words. "MMO" means "massively multiplayer online", and "massive" typically means 200+. Obviously, no current sport can involve 200 players at a time. Also, "massive" normally implies "persistent", and that's not something useful for sports. MMO games like Everquest and CoH are too tremendously different from how any sport actually works. They are PvE.
MO (multiplayer online) games like Battlefield 1942 and Counterstrike are much closer to how a sport is played: in both cases, 2 teams of equal numbers compete to reach a victory condition before time runs out. It's PvP (really TeamVTeam)
Basically, an MMO sports game would face all the obstacles of an MO game, and then some more. So you should first design MO and then extend it to MMO later if it works out.
Imagine a hockey MMO, where the guy on your team who's supposed to be dealing with a faceoff goes AFK? Or worse, your goalie? For most MMOs, real life intrudes and can often be handled easily by finding a safespot and sitting there, or logging off entirely. How well would that kind of thing affect the enjoyment of all playing a MMO sports game?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Check it out..... http://www.ultimatebaseballonline.com/
Make an MMO based not so much on playing an individual athlete, but a franchise owner.
Have the franchise owners compete with each other. During the competition they can take the part of one of the athletes.
The thing is, this isn't really an MMO - it's more of just an online matching service.
MMO's are great for letting people be 1 person and doing stuff 1 person in that environment could do - so games along those lines will be more easy to work with and so on.
I, for one, would love to see MMOs with interestin g concepts behind them rather than just the same old "level yourself up", but it's going to take some doing to find a nifty way to do it AND appeal to enough people. Outside of the hardcore gamers, real novelty doesn't do too well in the marketplace.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I think sports MMO on it's own would fail outside of a (much) larger environment. An mmo with lots of other things going on (ala second life) would make it possible, however. This is especially true of single-player and small-team games (boxing, 2v2 basketball, tennis, etc.) Allow spectators, ladders, championship tournaments, betting, hustling, even regulations. That would all be necessary to produce a truely rich MMO around a sport. (An original sport would help too.)
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Everything posted here are issues that can be overcome by proper design.
Sports MMO games don't necessarily need to be an RPG experience. For example, each player can be a Team Owner/Manager instead of an individual player and create persistent teams that they control and update/upgrade playing much like they play online now, but with a persistent experience and upgradable teams/players. There would be multiple leagues and you have to win a certain amount of games to upgrade to the next league.
If one still wants to go with the Individual players playing individual positions in the game design then you don't need the full 22 players to play a game, computer AI can take over for the vacant positions.
So, if no one wants to play on the Offensive line, no one has to. Without constant training however, it will be a bunch of chickens running around with their head cut off, there is a good reason why there is so much drilling IRL, its to get down the plays. Same thing would be just as important in game.
~JOsh
I'd rather sit on my ass in front of the tv, eating a fat burger and playing online soccer than actually go outside.
There's scary people outside, the government told me so..
We played Brockian Ultra Cricket at University, although we substituted "cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis racquets, skis, anything you can get a good swing with" with water filled balloons.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Ultimate Baseball Online ? I participated in the beta test earlier this year (which may very well still be going on), and it is exactly what this article states does not exist. Apart from having to wait your turn to bat (which can be a bit frustrating if it takes 2 to 3 innings to cycle back around to you), the game was great fun. Graphics were a bit dated, but a game like this isn't a smuch about graphics as gameplay.
Trust me, if someone like EA Sports were to take this on, at least the US leagues (and probably the players' unions as well) would be lining up to issue licenses and collect $$$$ (and I doubt that FIFA and the other European leagues would be far behind).
AND, if the players' unions got in on it, then the game players could pretend to be the actual players, and get to use their stats and names ("I get to be David Beckham!" "I get to be Ted Washington, and you're unconscious now!")
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
http://www.netamin.com/products.htm They're developing an MMO baseball game, with other sports to follow.
Who wants to be one of the idiots running after the guy with the ball? Everyone would rather be the guy with the ball..
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
http://www.hattrick.org/ In Hattrick, you manage a soccer team. You buy and sell players, hire and fire coaches, then play in leagues. Just like most soccer leagues around the world, there's promotion and relegation. Your goal is to climb the ladder and stay on top. You basically be the next Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger but not Roman Abramovich. It's massively multiplayer with hundreds of thousands of players,the 'role' is of a soccer manager. I don't play the game, but my brothers do- and neither are huge soccer fans. Funny thing is that I'm the big soccer player and fan.
Your post is only accurate for "regular" multiplayer games. In a massively multiplayer game, the server already controls everything. A player's machine is only running a client interface that interacts with the server's game state.
The delay involved makes creating a reflex-dependent MMO game difficult, but it's quite doable. Case in point: Planetside.
Planetside is a first-person shooter, but still all the important code runs on the server. When you fire a weapon, of course you see bullets go flying immediately, but that's just a special effect generated by the client. Actually you're just sending a "fire gun" message to the server. The server does collision detection and damage based on where you're *really* standing and facing-- which may not be the same as the location your client has. It does take some input on what the clent thinks you're aiming at (to compsensate for network latency), but a client too far out of line gets ignored (to prevent cheating).
There's no reason a sports game couldn't use a similar method. The real problem would be convincing a major developer to invest the money in a new genre.
...just not as Action-oriented sports titles.
The closest thing to MMO sports games right now would be online leagues based on popular sports management sims.
I'm in two online hockey leagues based off EHM, where the other 29 teams are controlled by a real person as well and on person acting as a "commissioner" ties it all in together. Full financial model, player development, trades and free agent signings, entry and waiver drafts...
Out of the Park (OOTP) baseball also has a plethora of online leagues in much the same way.
Done correctly, these are about as close as you'll probably get.
Years ago I helped playtest an online football (football, not soccer) game where all the real players were in "skill positions". Technically it worked. It was impossible to play though, the twitch/reaction requirements mean there has to be no lag whatsoever, and it's impossible to organize a group of people online like that to just even run one play, let alone a 2-minute-drill offense or audible a new defensive scheme at the line.
-- Primis.
If you are suggesting that the players of the game would take on the role of professional sport players the first, and most obvious problem is cooperation. "Teams" would have to meet at regular times for games, and perhaps practices (which would add to realism, but be very boring). Then, players would have to cohesively work together in real time.
Grand Theft Auto multiplayer? Could you imagine a deathmatch across an entire state? Having your friend helping you on a mission rather than having Lance Vance wandering into your gunfire all the time? Only thing would be fighting over who gets to drive sometimes.