A short post.

At the end of a long weekend, I had not thought up a great topic for a post, so I thought I would leave you this week with a short opinion piece. I hate sports video games. I hate how they have no originality. I hate how they keep getting more and more complicated with every iteration. I hate how a new one must come out every year. I hate everything about them. Why, you ask?

Sports games are everything wrong with the video game industry. The video game industry is one of new and immerging talent and ideas. It is one that strives on innovation every second. Sports games tend to always be a step backward. Every year a new game will come out with the same premise: play the sport. Play football, or play soccer, or play basketball. No innovation. No new ideas. It is just the same video game concept repeated every year. The lack of true innovation in these games is alarming. If you take a copy of Madden 06 and compare it with 09, the differences are minor and nothing close to innovative. Has anything been done in Madden to create an engaging experience? No. It is football again. Only minor things have been changed to "justify" the new game. Down to the core, it is the same game.

Games like Madden also are repetitious in release, too. A new one is released every year. This is bad for consumers and producers. The producer is forced to create a new game every year. Studies and reports in the last 3 years show that employees of EA Tiburon and other primarily sports game-orientated developers have been overworked. A group of wives in 2006 released a statement on the internet complaining about their spouses workloads, stating that they have been working upwards of 85-100 hours a week. Just to pump out another sport game. No other types of games create this much of a strain with its workers. This comes from sports games' dependency upon high numbers of sales every year. Missing a year would be detrimental to the studio's success and cash flow. Sports games have become money creators. Not games for enjoyment, but money makers. This is where the consumer becomes screwed. If you are a fan of the NFL or NHL, every year forces you to buy another game. Although the differences between games are few, the differences create a very detrimental situation for previous games owners, forcing them to buy the next game of the series. Take Madden 10, for example. In order to play franchise mode, owners are forced to pay an additional $10 to take part in a fantasy franchise. This new feature is enticing, and will grab many players. But the hidden payment is cruel and should never be done in a game, especially a console game.

Sports games also have a steep learning curve. Only dedicated players of previous games are able to play these games. Recreational watchers of football or baseball can and will have difficulty playing the game. It requires knowledge of the game itself. You need to know what buttons to press to do certain maneuvers. This is most relevant in wrestling games. A game like UFC Undisputed serves as a great video game for fans of UFC. But the control scheme and the amount of knowledge required to play this game is ridiculous. No game can be successful if it doesn't appeal to a broader audience than this. Without the ability to grab newcomers, games just continue with the same crowd. This is stupid. It stops the amount of people able to become part of the game's community, and it limits the amount of time the game can even have a crowd.

I hate sports games. Period. My rant is very opinionated and very harsh, but I believe them to be all true. What are your feelings on the sports genre? Am I wrong in my claims or did I hit the nail on the head? Let me know. Sorry for the short post again. Long weekend. I'll be back in full force next weekend. :)