It’s a tough time to be a gamer. While we’ve all had the pleasure of enjoying mega hits like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2 and indie darlings like Balatro and 1000xResist, we’ve also seen a worrying trend of big companies chasing live-service dollars, attempting to shove microtransactions down our throats like we’re kids refusing to eat our greens.
While some of these games have quite clearly been conceived in spreadsheets and pie charts, they’re rarely games anyone has actually asked for, and many don’t live long enough to recoup their considerable costs. However, I want to focus on one section of the market that has become irreparably infected by this live-service obsession, to the detriment of the genre itself – the sports sim.
Live Service Sports Games Deserve Better
I’ve been poring over the various sales going on for a bargain or two I can add to my already ridiculous backlog. Something I can pick up and play for a bit without too much of a time or energy investment, or something for when I fly to Hong Kong in the new year. Sports games should be ideal for that, allowing you to play a couple of matches, drive a few short sprint races, or partake in a round of golf. I absolutely love golf sims.
However, looking through the sales depresses me. At the top of every list are the usual suspects – EA FC, Madden, the many 2K variants. I have no interest in picking up any of these titles, even if the latest PGA games are less than seven quid each, because you just know what you’re getting with those games: rehashes of the previous year’s titles with a barely-new coat of paint, premium price on launch, and microtransactions out the wazoo getting in the way of gameplay. I tried to play an F1 game on PlayStation Plus recently, and quit within an hour.
Now, don’t get me wrong here – there are a lot of exceptional sports games out there, especially coming from indie devs. I adore Cursed to Golf, the OlliOlli series is skateboarding at its purest, and Football, Tactics & Glory is an innovative, XCOM-like take on football management. Then there are Nintendo’s offerings, like Mario Golf, Strikers, and Kart. But there’s a theme here – these games are often built around gimmicks, unique mechanics, and alternative takes on the sports.
Nobody wants to take on the behemoths of EA and 2K with a proper sports sim, unless they’re also attempting to shovel in microtransactions. Konami’s once-mighty Pro Evo series has become the lame duck eFootball, while the in-development Goals has opted for a free-to-play Fortnite-like aesthetic but will still need to make money somehow. The FIFA license is up for grabs, but guess who’s rumoured to be taking it? Yup, 2K.
The Sporting Sim Genre Has Too Much Baggage Right Now
It’s no better in the racing field, with EA purchasing F1-maker Codemasters to control that license while controversially shuttering the popular Project Cars series, and Ubisoft seemingly forcing players into The Crew Motorfest by revoking access to its already online-only predecessors. Games like Gran Turismo and Forza Horizon might not be as predatory, but they’re still loaded with microtransactions if you want the coolest cars.
Racing games are sports games. There’s a reason the term
motorsports
exists.
The live-service bubble burst a long time ago, but it’s sadly not going to change anytime soon. Nowhere does that feel more pronounced than in sports. Sure, you could say there are far more live-service shooters being made (and shuttered), but then there are plenty of alternatives being made that aren’t live-service. Doom Eternal, anyone? It’s not the same in the world of football, NFL, basketball, or F1. Licenses rule, and the cost of them guarantees they’ll be live-service games forevermore. In sports, the risks of taking on EA and 2K are too great to even greenlight a project.
All this is to say that I miss the times of real choice in the sports sim world, of games I can just pick up and play without pressure to spend. I might be old and going back a bit, but on my original PlayStation I could choose from Actua Soccer, Adidas Power Soccer, Pro Evo, This is Football, and even Viva Football as alternatives to FIFA. The list of golf sims was nigh-endless, driven by ports of fantastic arcade games.
I’ve been a sports nut my whole life, and sports sims were always my gaming comfort food. Now I don’t play anywhere near as many as I used to. It feels like a passion has been ripped away, and thanks to the suits and their spreadsheets, I don’t think I’ll ever get that back.