It was refreshing this year to see such a focus for Online Social and Persistence Worlds at E3 this year. For so long sports games have suffered because of a lack of the latter. Its difficult to simulate the risks and difficult decisions teams face in real-life, because there are none when we play. Think about it, if I play Madden online and my RB Chris Johnson gets hurt, if I have the choice of bringing him back, why wouldn't I? I'd have to be some kind of idiot to handicap myself for the sake of realism/big picture when there aren't any risks involved. In online sports games every game is essentially a one-game season where its winner-take-all, no holds barred. Why not go for every 4th down? Or quit every game i'm losing? Its not like anyone is keeping track...Not really.
Its one of the reasons you see rampant disconnects and other non-sim behaviors in sports gaming. The lack of persistence essentially "breaks the game" and frees us from considering the consequences of bad decisions. Botch an early 4th down conversion on your own side of the field? Just quit and start over. So what if Jason Kidd has played over 40 minutes in the last three games? With no persistence there's no eye on his fatigue level. Why would I consider "the long run" when every game is a essentially a championship over the other person.
The alternative is joining a league right? Where other guys will play their games in an organized fashion and we'll do playoffs, a championship, the whole nine. Anyone ever done this? Its like actual completed seasons are like the elusive Gaming Unicorn that people have heard of but no one has actually ever seen. Between the difficulty in getting games completed, scheduled and organized, There's always some 0-5 guy who loses interest/quits resulting in the season actually getting finished like 1% of the time. FACT: Online seasons and leagues are such logistical nightmares that even UPS won't touch them.
So how do we do it? How do sports games add opt-in, persistent, "individual but still varied" experiences to the genre. Persistent Seasons that's how.
The idea came to us while reading about the organic matchmaking Bungie is using for Destiny. In a nutshell, they will allow you to pair with friends, but also to complete objectives with unfamiliar players who happen to be in your vicinity as well. This all happens on the back end so it occurs naturally. We thought to ourselves how an effective organic matchmaking system could improve many of the issues that prevent persistence in today's sports games.
A Persistent Season would allow users to complete a season on our time/pace using other players already doing the same thing, who are also playing our sports games to help us. The system would Sim the outcomes for non-user teams, combined with a mixture of intelligent matchmaking for users to give us the variety of teams we never see online (anyone who plays online knows that you see the top 3-4 rated teams over and over) but also the persistence, attrition and progression we see in a real sports season. Even though our season would be personalized and individual, the matchmaking would select other players who had progressed similarly in their seasons.
We'll explain what we mean:We select Persistent Season and choose our Seahawks and the schedule is generated. Our first game is with the Panthers. The matchmaking system would look for a Carolina user who was in the first quarter of his season, but would have a preference for finding someone who also was in their first game. Its important to have a threshold and parameters so that players aren't waiting too long for their scheduled games. At the same time the same level of progression is important. A person playing in the 14th game of their NFL season will have a completely different mindset, level of fatigue and injuries on their roster than someone playing in their first.
So we play our first game and we win, but Russell Wilson gets hurt and is out 3 weeks. This means he'll miss games against the Niners, Jags and Texans in our season no matter if we play the games that night or three weeks from now. Its our season and its persistent/completed on our time. At the end of our game we'll get updates from broadcasters and newspaper clippings from local media including updates on our stats, records and other milestones including how we compare with the rest of our league. All of our progress would be saved on our system so that the matchmaking system would get updates from the progress of our seasons and match us accordingly. If we win in Carolina, we'll be looking at going 2-0 when San Fran comes to town. There won't be any need to quit games we're losing in a Persistent Season as the losses, injuries and other setbacks will still be recorded and could prevent us from going to the playoffs and result in a horrible year.
If we advance to the postseason, the matchmaking then selects from other players who are in their playoffs as well. Giving us better competition and making it so that we can truly play a championship game against high-level competition. Imagine using the Clippers and playing a championship game against a highly skilled Miami Heat user. Few things in gaming would be more challenging. In the same sense, struggling through a poor season would cause the matchmaking to select from average and lower-skilled users so that we are always playing people at our skill level, and isnt that what we all want anyway ?
We happen to think Persistent Seasons and an intelligent matchmaking setup has the ability to change sports gaming as we know it. It has the potential to eliminate many of the bad mechanics and dated elements that are in dire need of repair. Let us know what you think about it. As always, we'll continue to attempt to help push and publish ideas that help establish, enhance and grow the sports gaming community as much as we can. Have any ideas that need sharing? Would you like to join our staff as a writer? Be sure to contact us at magww@live.com
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