Worst Game Genre

[the_dengle]

joesampson said:

the_dengle said:
Single-player sports games are conceptually flawed. In a video game it is expected that if the player is skilled enough, they will defeat in-game opponents every time, or almost every time. But in sports, say baseball for instance, the very best players make an out more than half the time they come to the plate. The best teams win 70-80% of their games. Playing a season of a sports game knowing you'll win 90-100% of your games if you bother to play all of them is not fun. But if the games were balanced to defeat the player more often, the player would be investing hours into games lost by no fault of their own, also not fun.

Sports games are dumb.

Games like MLB the show have been developed to be as difficult as real life and simulate pretty realistic results. You won't be winning 150 games per season. The game can't really be mastered like some other sports games; at the same time I wouldn't say it's difficulty is cheap. You will make mistakes due to the absolute precision required pitch and hit well. I understand sports sims and games like MLB the show aren't for everyone but I think a lot your issues with sports games are steadily improving especially in games like The show. 

But it's not fun to play a game for two hours, lose a single "level," and make no progress.

Sports are not video games. If these games existed in a vacuum and could not be compared to real-life sports, there wouldn't be any question about how terrible they are from a purely game design perspective.