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I've been working in sports game journalism for over a decade, and I've spent almost three times more time playing these games than I've been working on. Whenever I talk to someone about the latest game in the Madden Football or NBA 2K series, the first question people ask me is always " If I've already bought last year's work, is there a need to buy a new one?" Over the past few years, sports game series have been constantly being innovated, and I have to think more about whether it is time for a amway sports game enthusiast to buy the latest "New Year's goods".
By now, I have a definitive way of answering people's questions like, "Are the new elements in this year's new work important to you?" Does the latest lineup of athletes make sense to you?" If the other person feels that one of these two questions is not answered, then my advice is to "wait for the discount" or "continue to play with the previous work". As the number of "New Year Goods" works continues to grow, such questions and answers will only become more and more frequent.
My colleague, Game Informer editor Kimberley Wallace, once wrote an article about the troubled nature of sports games, and I couldn't agree more with him. The development team of Madden Football is increasing the emphasis on the game's business model (but this was only after the massive complaints of fans), and the multiple upgrades and changes of the "Professional Hockey League" series have only achieved a mediocre response, while the "NBA 2K" series, which once had a good reputation, is becoming more and more repetitive and insincere.
Due to the need to release before the start of each season, shorter development cycles have led to sports games always being more conservative. However, this reason affects the developer of the game more, and the developer is usually less involved in the final decision-making, which is often made by the copyright owner or the game publisher.
Sports games aren't the only genres on the market, and EA and 2K aren't the only vendors that have been criticized for their "New Year" model, and some series, vendors, and game genres that have had this problem in the past have found ways to mitigate or avoid it. Capcom has been criticized for the way new works from the Street Fighter series were released.
So how did they solve this problem? They used Street Fighter 5 as a platform and then iteratively optimized the game over several years, which wasn't my favorite title in the series, especially when it was first released, and I didn't like it, but the development team continued to update and improve the game, which proved that this time-honored game IP can also move from a traditional model to a platform-based way of operating.
What about other manufacturers who have been criticized for their annualized games? When I think about it, the first thing that comes to mind is the Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed series. In recent years, Assassin's Creed has moved away from the one-a-year model, in favor of creating a grand game world from titles such as Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Assassin's Creed: Temple of Heroes, and then refining on the existing ones through a large number of DLC (both paid and free) released in the subsequent time.
The Call of Duty series is often developed for different or even multiple studios, and while new titles are still released every year, the entire series follows a similar model to Assassin's Creed, with Activision taking turns developing the series in a yearly fashion. And with Call of Duty: Warzone, the previous year's work in the series can still be passed on to the next year.
As has changed in recent years for various genres of games, the "New Year" genre is outdated. Developers can now make large-scale iterations of games that have been released for a while with a large number of updates. Madden Rugby 22 used this approach to make all-round improvements to the scouting system in the business model a few months after its release.
So why can't we change the status quo of the annual work in this way? Why can't I just buy a copy of Madden And then buy new squads and updates and more in the form of cheaper season passes the following year? This will not only prevent the player community from being forced to divert, but also make players feel that the new game has indeed improved when a new series is actually launched a few years later, rather than looking like it has not changed much, as it is now.
When I talked to a number of sports game developers before, I found that one of the big problems facing this field is that the sports world itself does not change much every year, which makes it difficult for sports games developed based on these sports to show their innovation. And the platform-operating model can make people less expect how much the game will change every year.
EA's UFC4 has long been operating in this model, and the series is generally a new work every two years, each time innovating elements such as career mode or online content on the basis of the past. While it's true that UFC games don't have a clear season distinction like football, ice hockey, baseball, or basketball, at least from the game, it's clear that the biennial release of a new product can indeed be used in sports games, and it can make a new series more obvious about innovation and progress.
Of course, there are also some things that developers can't control. For example, licensing contracts with sports event copyright holders (especially exclusive, restricted contracts) are likely to require publishers to implement a one-year model. In addition, although it has been criticized, many sports "New Year goods" works have actually sold well. Madden Football 22, for example, quickly became one of the best-selling games of the year after its release in August 2021, and became the number one game sales game of the month when it was released.
The same goes for FIFA 22 and NBA 2K22, both of which sold well at launch, with only Madden 22 slightly higher than them in terms of monthly sales. In addition, Madden Rugby 22 continued to win the first place in sales for the month in the second month after its release. However, these games received lower ratings on Metacritic than the series usually performed, and the PS5 version of Madden Football 22 received only a rating of 68.
If you want to change the release cycle and how new sports games are being run, there must be enough examples for these publishers or rights holders to see that change is imminent, or that change can actually lead to better results in some way. Unfortunately, with no major IP changes in the sports gaming world at the moment or flagship sales not significantly lower than expected, I don't think they're aware of it. Unless this happens, we are likely to continue to see this kind of "annualization" since sports games became gold-sucking machines.
We may have to wait a long time to see the big publishers in sports games change their current practices, but it's clear that there is a growing trend in this space where something needs to change. Several non-sports game series have proven that abandoning the one-a-year model is a lucrative approach, and it stands to reason that this model can also work well in the sports game world. The problem now is that no major publisher or copyright owner is willing to risk changing the decades-heavy "New Year" model to try other methods.
Translated by 丨 Liu Sheng Non-Love Sword
Edit 丨 Zoe
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