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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."
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!
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.
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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.
http://www.ultimatebaseballonline.com/
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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."
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).
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.
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Sure we wang, can.
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.
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
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
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....
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.
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
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
Actually there is one in development. Fronteir 1859 is a western based MMORPG which is also going to feature PvP that is policed by the players. It should be interesting.
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.
...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.
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