The Biggest 5 Ways Sports Franchises Improve From Year to Year

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    • Realism
    It is a given that graphical fidelity has improved over the years, but how about fidelity to the truth of the game? Sports games now let you simulate entire careers, playing as a team, a coach, or a player, taking part in all of the same mundane and frustrating trials that show up in Twitter and SportsCenter tirades (we talkin bout practice!)

     

     

    Embracing Online Play
    As sports games began to use the online capability of consoles, the image of the headset-wearing, controller-clenching alpha-male became commonplace (see: Madden 2003’s introduction of online play.) Even if it’s not always seen in the best light, the image has at least put an end to the idea that only socially awkward nerds play games with internet people. Sports game developers have recognized the inherent desire among regular people to play with strangers, and more importantly, to defeat strangers and tell them all about it over a headset.

     

    Those are the most significant things that we found about new sports titles. Do you have have a favorite change that you look forward to each year? Let us know in the comments.

     [Top graphic courtesy of EA Sports]

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    Founded by a former Wall Street Journal culture reporter, Kill Screen is a videogame arts and culture company.  At its heart, we’re interested in the intersection between games, play, and other seats of culture from art to music to design. To that end, we publish a website and a magazine as well as organize events such as our groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, film festival with Rooftop Films, and programming for the New York Film Festival.  We’ve teamed up with writers from GQ, Esquire, the New Yorker, Colbert Report and others and the press has been great so far — Wired, Ars Technica, and NPR have praised us and the New Yorker called us “the McSweeney’s of interactive media.”  TIME said our writing was so “polished that they might help convince doubters that games are worth taking seriously.”

     

    Richard Clark
    Richard Clark
    Richard Clark is the managing editor of Gamechurch, the editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture, and a freelance writer for Kill Screen, Bit Creature, Unwinnable, and other outlets. Kill Screen is a videogame arts and culture company.

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    • Steven Sukkau

      I get that incremental improvements are happening, but do we seriously need a new iteration from EA every year? Technology moves at a rapid pace i admit, but is it enough to warrant $60 EVERY year? However, I am pretty impressed with the always connected stat updating. And a Wii-U Madden utilizing the tablet for making your own plays on the fly or saving favourites would be reaaally cool.