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."

Comments

I agree

[SolarCurve]

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? :)

Re:I agree

[Enucite]

Yeah, I'd love playing a Nose Tackle... or maybe Guard! Then I can block for people I don't even know so they can make that big play! That'd be fun for all of about three plays.

Most people play video games to be the hero. There's a lot of positions on a football team that aren't exactly "exciting" but they're necessary. It's fun when playing with a bunch of friends outside. But to even approach that type of play in an online game you'd have to have a well-coordinated guild. You're not going to just log in have a fun pickup game with 20 people you don't know.

So to answer your question: Not nearly as cool as getting your friends together and going down to the park.

Re:I agree

[Austerity Empowers]

Sure, being a guard is analogous to playing a cleric in EverQuest. Your job is only to keep the tank alive so the other guys can go kill the bad guys. The goal in EverQuest is the same as in football: have fun and beat the bad guys, with "have fun" being optional to many. The group or guild who does all this first, gets the dubious luxury of being the heroes of the server, regardless of their role.

Similarly if you're on the football team that consistently beats everyone else, you can share in the glory. That you're not hte quarterback or wide receiver is more or less irrelevant. They can't win without you.

Because you need a TEAM

[Toxygen]

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.

Re:Because you need a TEAM

[EngineeringMarvel]

There are enough gamers out there to make teams for this. Battlefield 1942 (Desert Combat), and Battlefield Vietnam have 12-man leagues that play year round. The top leagues will have between 20 and 40 teams fielding 12-man teams atleast once a week. Organization would not be the problem for a 11 or 9 man league as Battlefield has proven. I'd be more worried about gameplay for a MMO Sport Game.

I would not want to play the same posistion for an entire game, especially an offensive lineman in football or a catcher in baseball. One of the best parts about sport games is that you get to do it all and not just play one posistion.

Neat concept but...

[Orome]

Well, the idea is pretty neat. There are a few things about it though that might turn off _regular_ sports games players
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 ,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 .

Re:Neat concept but...

[DrSkwid]

Speaking as a Everquest Master Fisherman, obviously you don't know the stat building satisfaction of levelling.

Sure, it's only point is to change slightly the gameplay of the game, but that's enough.

hey EverQuest, 1999 called, they want their graphics back

Everquest is a 1999 game, it graphics engine has been updated since then, you should be kind to your wife and buy her the expansion pack.

What do you do with your spare time that's so worthwhile? You're here interacting with no-one save for this store and forward nonsense and then we'll probably never converse again. Heck, I don't even know who you are.

You are underestimating the power of a chatroom with avatars and graphics and pointless stuff to do and friends to do it with.

Sometimes you can get out a pack of standard cards and a pack of beer and some friends and have yourself a game.

Clearly your expectations of passing time are different to mine, but there's no need to be beligerent about it.

Re:Neat concept but...

[HTH NE1]

What about basketball?

Another aspect to consider is spectating. I don't like computerized sports games because I'm not into playing sports, I only like to watch them. I don't want to be a player; I want to be a fan in the stands and being treated to a performance by good players. And with voice communication, you could get vocal crowd participation. Have real people cheering you on instead of a cheer-track.

And perhaps you could get such MMO sports games going by first starting out with teams against a computerized league to build up the teamwork of the human players, then open it up to team vs. team play.

The system can come with rules enforcement to include establishing a team, enforced benching by coaches, and even ejection from the game.

And if it proves that team play doesn't work, then fall back on the typical games of Brockian Ultra-Cricket.

note to self

[OwlofCreamCheese]

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.

Bandwidth..

[DJayC]

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.

Latency

[jgoemat]

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.

Re:Also...

[Jerf]

I call first baseman!

BOOOOOOOOOORING!!!

I'm serious. Actually, first baseman is a bad example. Who is going to play right field? Or blocker in football?

Everybody wants to be the star. Since we're talking about computer games, everybody should be the star. MMORPGs have enough trouble with this. Sports would be even worse.

Re:Also...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Actually, most online games have team modes.

Quake II, Half Life, Unreal, Unreal tournament etc. etc.

But, for some reason, you seem to mean 'stick and ball team games'.

Why? This isn't real life! You simply don't have to be bored like that online. You can have fun! :-)

Half Life International Online Soccer

[tprox]

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).

Why real sports games?

[dan_oppenheim]

A lot of posters have pointed out that whoever has to play the less glamorous roles in the team would have little fun, which I can certainly understand. However, I can also see how the whole career development side of such a game would be a lot of fun and certainly rewarding, at least to a certain demographic. The concept certainly has the potential for containing all the traits of a typical MMOG: stats development, levelling up, long periods of bashing out horseshoes, etc.

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 ! :)

I'll play DT or OG or C

[AvantLegion]

From a football perspective, I know a problem with this kind of game is that too few people will want to play the less glorious positions.

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.

Come on people...

[Mustang Matt]

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.

Speaking as a game designer

[Psychochild]

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,