Sports games not teaching the basics? What?November 13, 2012 by

I was on Google the other day looking for tips on how to become a better NHL 13 Be a Pro Playmaker when I came across an article. In short, it's basically about a guy, who knew very little about hockey, try and learn the game through playing NHL 13.  It was an experiment to prove or disprove another article about how sports games fail to teach newcomers about the sport.  That got me thinking that this may be right. Most of the sports games out there don't do much to teach people who have probably never heard of these sports before about how to play the sport, not the game.

I remember playing a hockey game for the first time.  NHL Faceoff 97.  I knew absolutely nothing about hockey.  Had no clue what I was doing.  I didn't know what a one-timer was.  I didn't know anything about a two-line pass or offsides or icing.  Hell, I didn't even know there were plays in hockey.  All I knew was that I had to get the little black puck into the net, but that took a lot playing to figure that out. Eventually, I got some books about hockey and I learned a lot more about the sport and that helped me out a lot.  But I can't help but wish there was something in game that at least explained what an Icing was.  It probably would have prevented some frustrating moments. . . and a couple of goals.

It's not like they haven't done it before.  ESPN NFL 2k5 had a Football 101 kind of thing.  It had all the terminology that most football fans know and explained some penalties if I recall correctly.  Now I wasn't a big fan of the game play for 2k5, but I did like the presentation that it gave us and the little things like the terminology hand book really made the learning the sport accessible to the newbies.

But it doesn't have to be a broad as that.  Madden did it subtly in Madden 03 and 04.  Both games had a kind of tutorial of sorts through a team's playbook through Madden 101. If I remember correctly, you pick a team's playbook and then you're given an option between a few formations.  Once you have chosen a formation, you are then given 3 plays to choose from. After you have chosen your play, Madden gives a quick overview of the formation, basically telling you that the formation consists of this many wide receivers and this many backs in the back field and tells you the advantages and disadvantages of the formation.  After that brief insight, he dives into the play, explaining what the play is good for and explains what each player is going to do.  After that, he runs the play to show you how it's supposed to be run, then lets you run the play.

It didn't teach you about the rules or anything like that, but it gave newbies (hell it gave me, someone who followed football regularly) an insight to the strategy (yes there is strategy to American football, aside from just hitting each other for 8 seconds then taking a break for 45 seconds) to the game of football.  This is where I spent a lot of my time at, trying to figure out when to use this play and when to use this formation.

Another subtle teaching tool Madden had was the Mini-camp.  Oh how I miss those beloved Mini-camp mini games.  Not only were they fun, they made you better at the game.  But, they also taught you subtle strategies that veterans will probably say is common sense, but would probably be helpful to a newbie.  What the mini-camp did was it would put you in a game where you have to use a specific position to accomplish a goal (ex. Rushing Attack, you had to use the RB to get in the endzone for points.).  Once you got a certain score, you got either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold trophy. Your score determined the trophy, the higher the score, the better the trophy (Silver is better than Bronze and Gold better than Silver). Once you got got Gold, you could participate in a special game time scenario where you were only allowed to use the position and plays used in the drill (ex. Rushing Attack you would only allowed to run the ball with your RB)

The scenarios taught another part of strategy that most veterans overlook - time management.  The scenarios usually put in you a close game late in the 4th quarter.  If you did the Rushing Attack, you were forced to use the running game to get a first down to run out the clock for the game, teaching you that running the ball was good for chewing up a lot of time.  If you did Pocket Presence or Precision Passing, you were forced to use your QB and throw the ball downfield in the allotted time and get a touchdown, which taught you that the passing game is a good way to move down the field quickly if you ever needed it.  The mini-games also stressed the importance of patience and following the play design in Rushing Attack, patience and utilizing your peripheral vision in Pocket Presence, and patience and stressing the importance of timing in Precision Passing (are you seeing a pattern here?). The defensive mini-games (Chase and Tackle, Trench Fight, and Swat Ball) emphasized on reading and reacting to the play and showed how important being in the right position at the right time can be.

But now, I don't really see any helpful tools like that in the current Madden or the 2k basketball games or NHL games.  Madden had (I don't know if they still do because I haven't really played a Madden game since 2010) a Madden Simulator that had a revamped version of most of the mini-games that I mentioned, but I don't think it was really a good teaching tool for newbies. I'm not saying that they have to go out of their way and try and teach a sport and give every little detail about it.  But just give people who have never seen or played the sport something to at least get a basic understanding of the game. You don't have to give an in depth tutorial, something like a simple rules explanation would probably be enough.  I think that could go a long way in trying to bring in a new group of consumers.


(Here is the article I was talking about.

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Teamwork makes the dream work (semi long read)February 5, 2012 by

Hey guys.  It's been a while since I made a blog post.  But I do have a couple of things I want to talk about. ___________________________________________________________________

First, I want to say that I love Battlefield.  I love the series. It really rewards you for being a good teammate and I really wish more FPS did a better job at allowing you to still contribute to the team, even if you don't have a pro trigger finger.

But the thing with Battlefield is if you don't have a good team or don't communicate well, you aren't going to win.  Simple as that.  I played BF3 today and I played Conquest.  I saw a Youtube video on rage quitting and I decided to take a vow not to rage quit as much as I had been because it's just bad sportsmanship.  But I played 4 straight Conquest games where we just got dominated right out the gates.  They had all the flags each game within 5-10 minutes and we couldn't get them back.  But it was a mix of their team being good and my team not really caring about getting the flags.  The other team had tanks and were just cramming them down our throat while everyone on my team was a class not an Engineer and couldn't take out the tanks.  They were the most frustrating 4 games I've played in BF3 in a long while.  I don't want to take away anything from the other team.  They did everything right to get the win.  It's just frustrating when you try so hard to win the game just to get absolutely slaughtered.  I wanted to rage so bad.   I guess what i'm trying to say is that if you want to do good at BF3, find some friends and clan up with them. ___________________________________________________________________

Staying in the realm of FPS, I've still been using the M16 in MW3 and I think I found how to use it effectively.  I was trying to use it as a Rush/Assault gun and I was doing it wrong.  This gun is made for defense.  It is made of for just defending objectives from medium/long distances.  If you can find a place where you get a good line of sight from a relatively long distance, you can ruin people's days as they'll be down before they even know it.  Also, you can pick off people's heads relatively easily with the M16, which is expected since it is a gun based around accuracy.  If put a RDS or Holo on it, you can rattle some domes easy from medium range.  I haven't used the ACOG yet, but I think it will pretty much make this a sniper rifle (except it'll be a OBK instead of a OHK) if you attached it to the M16.  I think this will be my objective based gun of choice when I want to play defense, and I may use the PP90 or MP7 for my rushing class.  But I think I found a use for the otherwise useless M16 and I'll try to stick with it. ___________________________________________________________________

Switching over to sports, I've recently gotten into Be A GM mode in NHL 12.  I wanted to build a team from scratch, so I created a whole new team and picked up a couple of AHL players as well as some average FAs.  But I wish that the create a team feature was more like the Teambuilder feature like in NCAA Football where you go online and create everything from the players on the team to the logo to the stadium/rink.  I wanted to create my local ECHL team, the Toledo Walleye, but they didn't have a name similar enough for the team nor a logo, so I went with my university team. Idk, I just feel like a Teambuilder function for the NHL series would be great and it'll be fun to see all the teams other people create as well. ___________________________________________________________________

Well that's all I really wanted to say.  I'll be watching the Super Bowl today, so I'll be watching it not only for the game, but for the commercials.  Hopefully they'll be some memorable ones this year because I thought the ones last year were meh.  But do you guys have any favorite SB commercials (for the ones that watch the Super Bowl because i know there are people out there that don't watch it)?  Let me know in the comments.  Until next time, friends.  Have a Super Sunday!

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Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. (Also, some quick thoughts on NHL 12)January 16, 2012 by

I know I'm a day late with his birthday, but I just wanted to show my appreciation for a man who pretty much changed the world.  A man who made it possible for people like me to get the opportunities that I am getting now, such as a decent college level education and the right to vote.  He was a great leader and I just wanted to take some time to thank him for what he's done.


Now that's out the way, I just want to say I haven't gone anywhere.  Just been busy with school.  As a matter of fact, I'm taking a break from studying as I'm typing this blog and as soon as I'm done, I'll probably be studying again.  Anyways, I bought NHL 12 this week because I've been wanting it for some time now and I have to say,  I'm blown away by how good this game is.  The game feels so fluid and feels about as close to the real thing than I've ever felt before.  I'm just loving this game.  When I'm on offense, I feel like I really have to work for my goals.  And it feels that much better when I finally put one home.  You should see me when I score.  I go absolutely crazy.  I'm probably more happy that I scored than the person that scored the goal lol.  I get more excited scoring goals (or even getting assists when I'm my BAP Playmaker LW) than when I score a TD in Madden or get a 10+ kill spree in CoD/BF.

This game rewards you for playing good hockey and not just taking shots for the sake of shooting.  If you work the puck around in the offensive zone and shoot when the goalie is not fully ready, you will score more often than if you were to just fire shots hoping to beat the goalie. If you can pass the puck to an open teammate sitting in the slot, he's going to more than likely bury the one time.  Traffic in front of the goalie is also huge in this game.  If there is a lot of chaos in front of the goaltender, it's going to be harder for him to react to the puck because it's harder for him to see it.  You can usually shoot it low and he'll give up a nice rebound for one of the other forwards to put it home.

For the people that have NHL 12, I'm curious in what positions you guys play as and what your play style is (2-way forward, offensive d-man, sniper, etc.).


But right now, I think it's about time I got back to studying.  Until next time friends.

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