Press Pass: Do Sports Games Have a Sporting Chance?

Columnist Kyle Orland looks at the one gaming genre that just can't seem to get a fair shake from the gaming press: sports games.
10/9/2008 8:06 PM | 1 Comments | Page 2 of 3

The resistance is so strong that Zuniga at first had to record his Sports Anomaly podcast on his own time, just to prove that there was a market for sports-centric content. "One day I just decided to record one, under the radar, and it went live. It ticked some people off, but now it's listened to by a growing audience. We were at 5,000 downloads weekly a few months ago. So it really just took initiative, because there's so much going on to cover the big games."

Part of this resistance might come from the perceived gulf of separation between sports gaming fans and fans of other games. "I think sports games are looked at being a bit outside of the hobby," Abner says. "You have sports gamers who play nothing but sports games. It's one of the genres that brought in the mainstream player. I think that is why they are looked at a bit differently, and why it's also hard at times to find a critic who can review them properly."

Whatever the reason, sports gaming fans definitely notice when an outlet isn't giving their genre enough attention. "To a lot of folks, those [general gaming] sites are run by 'geeks' who know nothing about sports," says Chris Sanner, an editor at sports gaming megasite Operation Sports. "It is getting better as time goes on, but the hardcore community as a whole just doesn't trust reviews from anyone, really."

And why should they? When general gaming publications do cover a sports game, the results are often incomprehensible to those who really follow the genre. "Sports games by and large get a free pass with critics," says Abner. "You can pretty much guess what the review scores will be before the game even ships. ... The reviews for NCAA 09 and [NFL] Head Coach 09 are prime examples. Some of those reviews literally make no sense to me."

Of course, some of the problems affecting sports game critics are the same ones that affect all game critics. "So few sports reviewers take the time to play these games over the long haul to see if they have staying power," Abner says. "There are good sports critics out there; I don't mean to imply everyone is a hack. But we need more people to really test these games and not just play them for a few hours and write a review. ... I just wish critics would take these games to task more than they do. I want sports games to be reviewed like any other genre and right now it's not the case. ... It makes us all look bad."

For some sports gaming fans, though, treating sports just like "any other genre" isn't sufficient. "I think game sites that try to lump all games into one pot and score them on the same scales and on the same basis just [don't] work," Sanner says. "Sports gaming fans are looking for something completely different than RPG fans. Trying to lump everything into five or six categories [that act] as a catchall for games will not give you the most accurate reviews going forward. You have to treat each genre differently if you want to give each game the most accurate score possible."