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PC Games (Games)

Why Are There No Sports MMO Games? 176

Posted by Zonk from the mmo-madden dept.
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."
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Why Are There No Sports MMO Games? More

Why Are There No Sports MMO Games?

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  • Also... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hollismb ( 817357 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:18PM (#10506856) Homepage
    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!

    • Re:Also... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:54PM (#10507312) Journal
      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... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by c0bw3b ( 530842 )
        Yeah so football and baseball would make bad examples of this type of thing, but I could definitely see a Hoops style basketball game like this, or hockey or maybe even soccer MMORPG.
      • Heh at least you didn't call bench. Now that's a huge waste of time.

      • Yeah, I agree that sports isn't a good fit. But not everyone needs to be a star, they just need to be important. Take Planetside for example. You can have a blast just being a grunt in the army or a pilot who spends most of his time ferrying other people around.

        As long as you have a critical role to play, you're going to be entertained. That said, it's pretty rare that when you stumble towards a base in the middle of nowhere, you'll find anyone there. Noone's interested in guard duty when the odds of an at

    • Re:Also... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 )
      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! :-)

      • the online game I mostly play is Unreal 2004, and on the discussion boards, people are constantly complaining about lack of teamwork in Onslaught and Assault modes.

        And in those game modes teamwork is best but not critical, compared to a team sport like football or hockey.
        • I've played a lot of UT2004 Assault- (I'm a good player, not exceptional, but good- 200th worldwide).

          I find that if you are just playing ad-hoc, then yes, teamwork isn't necessary; although having the same number of good players in each team is critical.

          However, if you are a member of a clan, a *team* will nearly always win.

    • Fantasy and Sci-Fi...

      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.
      • There were some western-themed single player games (Gunman's Proof on the SNES (sorta westernish, anyway), Outlaws, etc), and they weren't really popular. Fantasy and sci-fi are the big sellers in single player or standard multiplayer, so they're the first picks for massively multiplayer.

        The fact that all the western-themed games I know of sucked terribly doesn't factor that greatly into the equation, of course, since non-MMO games don't have to be good to be successful, they just have to get lots of peopl
      • 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 [frontier1859.com] is a western based MMORPG which is also going to feature PvP that is policed by the players. It should be interesting.

    • Re:Also... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      what do you call battlefield then? or unreal tournament?

      16vs16.

      it's just that computer games allow simulated settings you wouldn't be able to have in a 'real' sport.

      (also, here's an answer: traditional sports would require people to stay in the game from start to end and a single bad player could ruin the fun for everyone. a bit hard to have the occasional fun in a game like that.)
  • Planetside is pretty close to what you are thinking about.

    You can answer your own question by looking at reviews/critics of this game (seems to be an issue with team quality and griefers) or even trying it for yourself.
    • Except Planetside has nothing to do with sports? It's a pure first person shooter, with some marginal character development added in. It's a fun game for sure, but I would never say it is a MMOSports game...
  • That'd be sweet if ESPN or Madden came out with a version of the game where a human could play every single position. Have 11 humans on each side of the field.
    • I have thought about this before. Sounds like fun at first until you realize that somebody would end up as a defensive lineman. That, coupled with the fact that most games pretty much require a computer player to run the routes properly anyway...
      • Funny- I always play D line in sports games. I love sacking the quarterback. I think my last season of NFK2K I had over 100 season sacks. Now offensive line- that would be boring.
        • Now offensive line- that would be boring. With current controls it is, but imagine 10-20 years when you have the ability to control a 3D player in a full immersion VR environment. People who have never played competitive O-line don't relize that a play call in the huddle mean you have to block in a specific way, with all 5 linemen having to execute in unison. Your footwork and hands are used to decieve and move your opponent to open a hole or get yourself free to make a downfield block.

          I would have a b

  • I agree (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SolarCurve ( 659906 )
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Enucite ( 10192 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:39PM (#10507140)
      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 (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 )
        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. Th
        • Except that as a cleric, you do lots of complex things. As a guard, what, you press 'up'?
          • Not really, you'd expect that, but in many ways this is one of EverQuests drawbacks. Really, clerics do two things: Heal and and buff hitpoints. If we're doing something that's easy, surely we can do some offense too (however our damage output is necessarily very small), or we could do some small crowd control, but really, just healing. We have many types of heals, and choosing the right one for the situation is "the skill", but it's obvious once you'e done it a while.

            But in actuality, almost all classes a
      • Also in real life if one idiot tries to mess up the game by running off with the football you can catch him and beat him to a pulp.

        In online games unless you're playing with friends it only takes one person to mess up the whole game causing endless frustration.

  • Why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:24PM (#10506940) Homepage
    Because sports games tend to require a level of strategy above and beyond that of current MMORPGs. Sure, guilds and clans with voice chat might be able to have fun, but it wouldn't be suitable for the mass market of individual gamers who just want to pick up the game and play.

    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.

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by numbski ( 515011 ) * <[numbski] [at] [hksilver.net]> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:28PM (#10506999) Homepage Journal
      There are technical limitations as well.

      There are huge amounts of problems with real-time sports games that require quick, split-second judgements. Most online games now rely on a peer-to-peer game-state. Two consoles, running the same game and occassionaly checking to make sure they're reading the same 'story'. If a divergence in the gameplay is detected, the game drops.

      It would require a huge rewrite, running the game server side, and the console only running clients.

      I don't see that happening soon. :\
      • Your post is only accurate for "regular" multiplayer games. In a massively multiplayer game, the server already controls everything. A player's machine is only running a client interface that interacts with the server's game state.

        The delay involved makes creating a reflex-dependent MMO game difficult, but it's quite doable. Case in point: Planetside.

        Planetside is a first-person shooter, but still all the important code runs on the server. When you fire a weapon, of course you see bullets go flying immedi
    • Playing a long time builds skill. There is very little innate, inbred basketball skill in anyone. There are perhaps a few traits that MAY help (i.e. being tall, having a fast metabolism, long legs), but most of the skill comes from practice, repetition and interest.

      Since there is no correlation to playing basketball in a video game, and on court, it should not surprise anyone if they get "schooled" in game, but are the schooler on the court.

      As far as strategy goes, that's pretty much what games like EverQ

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 )
        Allow me to restate some of my points.

        My basketball example was meant to highlight the "twitch" nature of most sports games. You can NOT simply translate the "hit a to attack, sit back and watch" technique in todays MMORPGs into a sports game. Implementing that correctly would be akin to implementing a MMOFPS correctly. And they tried that already with Planetside and we ended up with the oh so wonderful "cone of fire" (that was sarcasm btw).

        Now to address strategy. In EQ and others, the strategy revolve

  • 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.
    • 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

  • Neat concept but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Orome ( 159034 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:26PM (#10506963)
    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 .
    • Take the case of football again. Almost everyone, would like to be in control of the player who is dribbling the ball.
      I would much happier being in charge of passing/rushing/running/kicking the football as I would be if I were dribbling the football. Footballs don't bounce very cleanly. :)
    • 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.
      Look at EQ support classes like enchanters and clerics. People enjoy playing them, there is also a sense of pride when you do a good job. They aren't the center of the action, but when they do their job well they
    • Trust me, if someone like EA Sports were to take this on, at least the US leagues (and probably the players' unions as well) would be lining up to issue licenses and collect $$$$ (and I doubt that FIFA and the other European leagues would be far behind).

      AND, if the players' unions got in on it, then the game players could pretend to be the actual players, and get to use their stats and names ("I get to be David Beckham!" "I get to be Ted Washington [nfl.com], and you're unconscious now!")

  • note to self (Score:2, Insightful)

    by OwlofCreamCheese ( 645015 )
    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.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DJayC ( 595440 ) * on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:27PM (#10506979)
    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.
    • I don't think it would be bandwidth as much as latency (although there is often a tradeoff possible) that would be an issue. But games like Quake have already successfully made latency-sensitive gaming work, and things are getting better. I bet this will be possible soon, if not now.

      • Re:Bandwidth.. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DJayC ( 595440 ) *
        Yeah you're right.. I should have expanded on that. Bandwidth is an issue though, becaues the amount of seamingly "real-time" data that would have to go down the pipe to support, say, 20 human players at one time would be incredible. Plus, given the instability of a lot of home network connections, the likelyhood of one person causing a lag in the game would be high, so yes, latency would be a huge contributor to diminishing the gameplay.

        I do, however, agree that this capability might not be too far of
    • Whilst I agree this is a technical challenge, there are many online FPS games which work just fine. Likewise, I regularly play Project Gotham 2 online, where you are racing head to head. I haven't noticed any real problems.

  • Individualism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by matlokheed ( 602233 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:27PM (#10506996)
    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?

  • Latency (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jgoemat ( 565882 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:28PM (#10507004)
    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.
    • 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.

      Why not? Balls travel way slower than most rockets, bullets, etc. The athletes also run slower that those wacko UT characters. And Sports have a very simple terrain to play, and only 23 (in soccer) things to update. 22 players and a ball.

      The problem, I guess, is that it would take a lot to coordinate a eleven man team (for soccer again), to play at the same time. Yeah, va

      • Re:Latency (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Reapy ( 688651 )
        I was thinking they could have zones of control. I guess that rules out man to man, but have the zones as a toggle. Basically you say that a certain player in a certain position can only move his player with in a certain box. This would force pub teams to more or less play their positions and let newer players get to learn where they should be. More advanced games could have these rules turned off. Or you could maybe tighten or relax the size of the boxes. Maybe have a coach option where you can create you
      • Balls travel way slower than most rockets, bullets, etc.

        That may be part of the problem: they do travel a lot slower, so you can't instantaneously know they hit their target. The ball's slowness makes it practically another player.

        (There are sports-like games though already, such as UT's Bombing Run.)
    • 100-200 milliseconds isn't much when you're deciding whether to attack that orc or not, but when trying to intercept a pass...

      I dunno, but it works fine with Madden 2005 on my PS2.
  • MMO does not work very well unless you have lots of people hoping to ride the bench.

    But say, a 10 or 12 player hockey game, or Football, or Soccer might work a bit better. I dont see Baseball working very well for this, since the team currently on the offensive will have alot of players riding a bench.

    END COMMUNICATION

  • Two Links... (Score:4, Informative)

    by xaqar ( 112761 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:32PM (#10507056)
    http://www.ultimatebaseballonline.com/ [ultimateba...online.com]

    - and -

    http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/ [justfuckinggoogleit.com]
  • Gamers are allergic to even simulated physical activity...

    Seriously, sports fans have ESPN, Fox Sports Net, Speed Channel and even Outdoor Life for some thrilling trail walking escapades.

    The reason Madden, etc. are so popular is b/c they're just pick-up and play when you got your friends around and there isn't a game on that you care about.

    I could be wrong.
  • I know that one of the appeals of sports games (atleast on console, their prime location), is that you and your buddies can all enjoy a game together. I am not sure that sports gamers, who traditionally fall under the heading of casual gamers, would want to put in the time & energy that is often present with MMOs into the game. Realistically speaking, there seems to be bigger potential markets than this, however the one thing sports game have going for them is they have a very respectable market share a
  • I think MMO sports games would be a bit difficult to target the desires of most sports fans. First, most sports fans tend to think they know what's best for their teams and nobody can tell them otherwise. In a real-time environment, the competition for who would be "king" of the team, controlling the QB or calling the shots would turn off the majority who have no desire to be anything more than the exclusive one in charge/handling the ball. Good luck getting your typical sports fan to play left field or

  • Massive Multiplayer Online Game. (Score:5, Funny)

    by DA_MAN_DA_MYTH ( 182037 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:47PM (#10507229) Homepage Journal
    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...
  • Ok, I'd play a pulling guard (American football... acts as a lead blocker for a running play :), but few others would. It's kinda like the C-47 duties in a game like Aces High. Few of us want to play "supply chain management," even though I find the cooperative team concept entertaining. It has appeal to me (though the points about lag are well-timed), but I don't know if it has a wider appeal. I don't know a lot of Madden players who'd want to be the receiver who doesn't get the ball.
  • I think everyone has pretty much nailed all the problems.

    -Technology lacking, not enough bandwith to handle the control needed.

    -Boring, who wants to play right field?

    -Pub jerks, Xfool goes offsides, 5 yards. Xfool goes offsides, 5 yards. Xfool goes offsides, 5 yars...

    -Coordination, Can't run any plays without lots of practice.

    There are some ways around the bandwith limitation. You could run the sports game like some of those old tecmo games. Where you have a menu and the game pauses when the ball gets

    • -Technology lacking, not enough bandwith to handle the control needed.

      Debatable. Current - hell, even 1999 Half-Life - technology has proven that a single server can handle 20 or more players at a low enough latency to make realtime/fps/action gameplay possible. BF1942 servers regularly deal with playercounts two or three times that too. On the MMO side of things, Planetside seems to be able to handle large numbers of players in realtime fairly well.

      -Boring, who wants to play right field?

      True. No one

  • Sports games are by their very nature time limited.

    You need to agree on a time for all the players to be there, anyone who has worked with ameture clans in say CS knows this is difficult.

    You could create a persistent online character who's stats gradually increase but that isn't the same as say UO where you can enter and play any time.

    Face is video games are an entertainment of convenience and will never be more than that.
    • A way around timing would be to have "open" games. When a game is started, players join and are added to the two teams until the game is full (say with some extra "bench" players on each team who are substituted in to replace dropped connections and such), at which point the game begins. It would also be more fun that having fixed teams, since you end up playing with more different people. Fixed team games can be set up separately (sorta like private games on most multiplayer services) when teams have enoug
  • Why is 90% of MMO games (notablyu MMORPGs) are about wizards, elves, spells, warriors and assorted fantasy? City of heroes was a notable exception, but it seems like every new game is a copycat of the one before it.

    Something like the Fallout series [gamespot.com] translated to an online game would be quite nice.
  • 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 hav
  • If you look here [slashdot.org] there's an MMO baseball game [ultimateba...online.com] I played during Beta last year. It's actually alot of fun. Give it a try.

    Kleedrac
  • Because MMO rely on hard core gamers for most of their business. I don't mean to be mean but the dorks who play 8 hours a day and they don't much like sports.

  • Why real sports games? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dan_oppenheim ( 814645 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @05:51PM (#10507922)
    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 [bitmap-brothers.co.uk].

    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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @06:04PM (#10508062) Journal
    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.

  • It can't be done (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SirBruce ( 679714 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @06:15PM (#10508190) Homepage
    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
    • There has been organized team play, (up to 12v12) in FPS's for years. Prolonged seasons, tournaments, rankings, etc.

      There are glorious positions and non, (flag runner vs Basement D). There are organized matches, bench players, practices, strategy sessions, etc.

      This could be done.

      The biggest question is...why hasn't it? Why hasn't it even been tried on a smaller scale.

      There are many sports mods (mostly soccer) for FPS, but I've never seen a commercial product for it. Check this out. http://www.pla

  • Come on people... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @06:38PM (#10508431)
    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.
    • Mod the parent up. Surely this is the main point. Certainly these days as yet another desk jockey getting some real exercise when doing something is much appreciated.

      Then again, I wouldn't mind playing soccer, a sport which I can read tactically way beyond my ability in a virtual game with other players. When playing games with other sports fans we've often played soccer games together.
  • Most sports are teams of 5 to 15, so less than 30 total players, with the ball as an object. As said by a previous poster, what is so freaking Massive about it? You can find UT or CS servers of 30+ easily and een 40 or 50 and i'd say a FPS is much more demanding in bandwidth/latency. Then, you'd need to implement the stats tracking, a bit like a clan/team victory keeping. It also has been done already in FPS games. You say it is difficult to get players to play well together? True, as in any sport... But
  • 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."

    Maybe the reason is that these types of "tiresome" games are not showing any sign of maturation [netcom.com] and there really is no reason to try something that may or may not work. If the same formula keeps working and growing the consumer base, there isn't a reason to innovate yet.

  • Think fantasy sports games.

  • XFL! (Score:2)

    by Taulin ( 569009 )
    Alright! This would be perfect medium for the rebirth of XFL!
  • 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
  • People buy Madden so they can control Michael Vick or Ray Lewis. They don't want to control Joe Schmoe, even if they did bring him up from playground to the NFL.
  • 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.

  • If you have the time to sit around playing a video game working your way up from some no-name street baller all the way up the an uber-professional, then you have time to actually go out and play a real sport.

    This seems obvious to me. Anyone that into sports that they'd want to work their way up to some sort of superstar over the course of months or years should just get away from the TV and play their favorite sport for real, with all the associated health benefits therein.

    Yaz.

  • Speaking as a game designer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Psychochild ( 64124 ) <psychochild AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday October 13, 2004 @02:29AM (#10511316) Homepage
    I run an "MMO", Meridian 59 [meridian59.com], 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,
    • Most people can got to the park and play a real game of football. Some can't. So then I guess the question is whether the physically-limited-sports-loving market is big enough to support development.
  • Get yourself a xbox with sports games playeble in xbox live.. Allthou, it would make sense if one hockey game would actually require atleast *five* players on each side, perhaps even 15 to cover all the chains and changes would happen as they happen in real hockey game..
  • You try getting 36-50 people together to play against each other, with one guy possibly as a reliever in the bullpen, potentially not playing. Never gonna happen.
  • Everyone seems to be saying that because there are boring roles in a team, no one would play, which is rubbish, otherwise no one would play real amateur sports.

    People will get together in clans and play as teams with their friends. They would probably rotate, so that everyone gets their fair go at being a star.

    It doesn't have to be a real sport either. Five a side football (English football) would be better suited than some other real sports. But it could be a completely new game such as space football
  • Imagine a hockey MMO, where the guy on your team who's supposed to be dealing with a faceoff goes AFK? Or worse, your goalie? For most MMOs, real life intrudes and can often be handled easily by finding a safespot and sitting there, or logging off entirely. How well would that kind of thing affect the enjoyment of all playing a MMO sports game?
  • I think sports MMO on it's own would fail outside of a (much) larger environment. An mmo with lots of other things going on (ala second life) would make it possible, however. This is especially true of single-player and small-team games (boxing, 2v2 basketball, tennis, etc.) Allow spectators, ladders, championship tournaments, betting, hustling, even regulations. That would all be necessary to produce a truely rich MMO around a sport. (An original sport would help too.)
  • 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 neit

  • They Exist.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Primis ( 71749 )
    ...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

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