The Sandlot

Often times the phrase "Invention is the mother of necessity," can be heard throughout various industries.  There's also one about idle hands being the devil's play things.  EA sports falls into the latter category. 


For too long now, EA sports, a video game developer/publisher which mainly deals with sports games, has had a monopoly on the sports video game market.  They have exclusive rights to make "official" games for the NHL, NFL, NASCAR and various NCAA sports.  With little to no competition year in and year out, there is no incentive to make their games as good as they can be.  In 2009, EA published 27 titles that sold over 1 million copies.  That's over 27 million copies sold in the US, where recent data shows that 72% of the US population plays video games.  Even more astounding is that kids age 2-17 make up 82% of the total gamer population.  51% of gamers also play online data shows.


Competition breeds success.  In the video game world, there are hundreds of publishers that make shooter games.  They compete with each other and innovate new features in a constant battle to out-do each other.  Halo, Call of Duty, Battle Field and Gears of War are just a few examples of the different AAA shooter series out there today.  With sports games it's a little different though.  See shooter games are fantasy for the most part whereas sports are real.  Real things cost money and money plays a big part.  The major sports leagues, who themselves are valued at billions of dollars, figured that they should get money to let a company make a video game based on their business.  They sold their rights to the highest bidder and thus only one company can make officially licenced games.  That means only one company has rights to the logo's, player names and everything else that goes into making a sports game.  Any other company that would want to make a football game for example, would have to invent a new league, with new teams and players.  The highly popular NFL Blitz series had to do just that after EA acquired exclusive NFL rights.


Here's a brief financial outlook.  The gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar a year business.  According to data from NDP, the industry netted a cool $21.3 Billion in 2008, a 19% increase from the previous year.  EA's take in 2011 was a net revenue of $3.6 billion.  That's a whole lot of money.  This month, EA released a little game called NHL 12, another of their yearly offerings like Madden NFL football.  First week sales for NHL were $27 million.  If a company makes that much money, why then are their games so fundamentally flawed?


Last night I played the new NHL 12 for the first time.  I have a good amount of hours logged into NHL 11 from last season so I am familiar with the series.  Since these games come out every year, there's not really a dramatic alteration to the game play style year to year.  They'll add a couple new features and attempt to change/revamp some aspect of the game that was flawed or people complained about from the previous installments but in the end, every iteration plays fairly similar.  One of the biggest issues I. along with others, had with NHL 11 was the terrible physics.  Things would happen in that game that defied the laws of normal physics and motion dynamics.  For example, if you poked checked from one direction, the puck would careen off in a direction directly opposed to where it should have gone based on the angles and positioning of the players.  I will say that NHL 12 seems to have fixed this issue.  I cannot easily recall instances last night where the puck went somewhere it shouldn't have under a similar scenario.  There is however, one giant red flag of an issue that was broken in 11 that is still broken in 12.


There was a play last night where a cross ice pass was made and the puck "went" directly through both of the pass recipient's skates and onto his stick blade which ultimately ended up being a goal.  Replay analysis of the play confirmed this event.  I'm sure there were other instances of events like this happening that went unnoticed as well.  There were also numerous instances where the puck would go through players bodies as they're lying on the ice attempting to block passes and we watched one players stick glitch through 3 defenders bodies while in the act of shooting.  Sure the AI may be improved, you can play in the Winter Classic, the checking is better and the game looks good, but when the game is damaged this badly at its core does any of that really matter?


Call me crazy, but these are major, major issues that should not be commonplace in a multi-million dollar title from a billion dollar publishing company that preaches this is our most realistic hockey game ever.  It shows nothing but complacency and a lack of caring because they know that no matter what, million of people will spend a billion dollars every year to buy their game because no other company can make a sports game with real team names and players.  NHL 11 had these problems as well, but that game at least felt fun.  Maybe because I played 11 so much I got used to all the glitching and just accepted that the game was broken but I could still have fun with it as long as I didn't have high expectations for quality and accuracy,  Maybe that's why my opinion of NHL 12 is that its terrible right now because I foolishly bought into the company propaganda that they fixed things so my expectation were too high.  I know I only played 3 games of it on one evening but right now I really could care less if I played it again.  Maybe if I play it for a month I'll get used to bad physics and glitching and be able to have fun playing it with my friends like we did for NHL 11.


 But then again that's the point isn't it?  We shouldn't have to get used to a bad game or deal with poor quality because there's no other viable alternative.  Unfortunately, that is the reality we live in.  EA will not be getting my $60 for NHL 12 I can tell you that much.

This past Sunday marked the end of the HBO series Entourage. That makes two shows this year that have ended which made up a substantial portion of TV that I have watched over the past 5 plus years, the other being Friday Night Lights.

To say that the final season of Entourage was weak is a bit of an understatement. It was only 8 episodes long and it seemed like they waited until the final 2 or 3 episodes to dive into any meaningful story lines and then they just crammed everything in or plain left things out.

A lot of people have said the last 3 season were crappy. I don't totally agree with that but I will agree that the first 4 season are the shows best. Season 7 was actually very strong with Vince finally getting into hard core drugs and trouble, something they could have done in previous seasons. Coincidentally, it was around season 4 that the nudity stopped completely. I'm not saying you need naked girls to have a good show, but it certainly helps when the show in question has no real substance anyways. Which brings us to the heart of the matter with Entourage.

The show had a very confusing identity. Is it a drama, is it a comedy? Which characters should I root for and are inherently good, which ones aren't? Entourage crossed these wires almost on a weekly basis with some characters. Take E for example. He's built up as this nice guy for most of the series and then he turns into the biggest D-bag ever. Ultimately, most of the characters are forgettable and we as viewers form no real attachment to them. Outside of Ari and Drama I really didn't care what happened to anyone so long as I laughed a few times and maybe got to see some titties.

The early seasons of the show were all about Vince. As he went through his trials and became established the show began focusing more on his "entourage," which is fine. I don't think 8 seasons of all Vinny chase would have lasted. Getting into Drama and Ari's careers was a good move. Turtle, while amusing never carried any real weight in the series. On that topic, Billy Walsh needed more time on screen than what he got.

So now its over. Allegedly there's a movie coming out which I would assume ties up the loose ends left by the finale. I'll most likely go see it just because I've already invested the time in the series. Id probably give the series a B+ overall as it was fairly solid and occasionally brilliant but ultimately came up just a little short.