How Justified are Annualised Sports Games?

Millions buy sports games every year, but which ones really need annual updates?

Every year we buy millions upon millions of sports games, from FIFA to Madden to NBA and Formula One. Many of us buy every annual update for our favourite franchises, but as we head into the next-generation critics and fans alike are becoming less tolerant of iterative updates and demanding more authentic representations of the skill and drama that real-world competition provides. However, whether it’s review scores or sales, some sports titles are treated more harshly than others. Do we demand less progress from the video game versions of more popular sports?

There is no better example of a successful annual sports series than Madden NFL. The dominance of EA’s football game is based on over two decades of quality, but its more recent history has been a total monopoly. EA Sports has been the exclusive holder of the NFL license for years. With no rivals to compete with, the quality of Madden has dropped significantly in the last five years. Madden 10 reached a Metacritic score of 85, but by 2012 this had dropped to 78. Since then, things have begun to improve as EA Tiburon has responded to criticism.

However, EA Sports has called a timeout on its other football game, NCAA, after the National Collegiate Athletic Association pulled the license due to legal issues with player likenesses. Arguably, this could be a good thing for the future of football games as the time and money required to make NCAA can now be put to use to improve the core Madden game instead of making two football games out of the same studio every year. IGN’s review of Madden 25 shows that the series badly needs to be reinvigorated: “The real issue with the series is that other sports games have improved so much faster that Madden 25 looks and feels dated by comparison – fake Twitter streams and pre-game montages are already old news.”

Surely the long-term survival of Madden depends on EA’s relationship with the NFL.

EA Sports’ NFL license expires at the end of 2013 and is yet to be renewed. Can the Madden brand continue to exist without it? Without NFL backing, EA would need to license each team individually for future football games, a mammoth task that’s hard to comprehend. Surely the long-term survival of the series depends on the continuity of EA’s relationship with the NFL. It would be a huge shock if the license is not renewed, but we should find out in the next few months. Ideally for fans, the license would be split between two or more publishers to create more competition, inspiring more innovative games. Many football gamers would love 2K Sports to provide a rival to Madden once again, after the much loved NFL 2K series was buried by EA’s exclusive NFL arrangements in 2005.

EA Sports’ other big sports franchise is going through its own set of issues this year. FIFA 14 is suffering both critically and in-terms of sales compared to last year’s game. Metacritic reported a six point fall in average review scores for FIFA in the last year, from 90 to 84, which is a huge difference over just 12 months. Fans have been even more harsh, with user review scores dropping as low as 43 out of 100. “FIFA 14 isn’t a major landmark for the series in terms of innovation,” said our own review.

In previous years FIFA has gotten away with repetition of features and minimal updates because of the sport’s popularity. Interest in soccer around the world only gets bigger each season. In the UK, perhaps FIFA’s biggest market, there have been huge, exciting changes in the Premier League this season, with legendary managers retiring and huge amounts of transfer activity to get people excited about seeing these things in the game. However, for the first time in years, there was a major drop in sales of FIFA in the UK. Week one sales for FIFA 14 were down 25% compared to FIFA 13. EA will be hoping that this is because some of the franchise’s hardcore fans have decided to wait for the next-gen versions of the game, but a quarter decline in year-on-year launch sales is a huge shock regardless.

Like Madden, FIFA has been able to rest on its laurels with almost none-existent competition. Pro Evolution Soccer has largely failed to keep up with the pace of FIFA’s development. When FIFA took a massive leap forward in 2008, Konami’s rival series was treading water with tiny updates that were frustrating its fans. The soccer licensing nightmare has also been a huge problem, with PES unable to license the Barclays Premier League, the most popular league in the world, because it has an exclusive deal with EA. All of this has allowed EA Sports to dominate soccer games and take things a little easy while its only rival series is struggling badly. “It's as if there’s still a touch of nostalgia that’s holding the series back,” we said.

Nowhere are EA Sports’ bad habits more clear than in the PS Vita, Wii and 3DS versions of FIFA. Each version of FIFA on these systems for the last three years has been nothing more than a roster update, with no new modes or gameplay tweaks. EA has admitted this but made no apologies to fans and no attempts to add to the portable versions in any way. All EA has had to say on the matter is, “It's the same great gameplay and new kits.”

Like Madden, FIFA has been able to rest on its laurels with almost none-existent competition.

It seems that having had so much success throughout the current generation, the FIFA team is running out of ideas for each new version, but the series continues to be carried by the massive worldwide interest in soccer. However, the beginning of this generation inspired a revival in FIFA that saw it catch up to the once leading quality of PES and then surpass it in almost every way. Perhaps PES will find a similar revival when the first next-gen version arrives to create genuine competition once again.

Away from FIFA and Madden, EA Sports’ behaviour with some other brands is a bit of a mystery. While FIFA and Madden offer small, incremental annual updates, at the other extreme, the publisher will cancel multiple versions of a franchise at the last minute because it doesn’t believe the game is good enough. NBA Live has been pushed to the side in this way for several years. Normally, EA seems happy to rely on a big sports license for sales, even if a game isn’t always the best that it can be, but its treatment of its NBA license shows quality concerns that some people would not normally associate with this publisher.

Since 2010, EA has not released an NBA Live title, despite continuing to pay for the license. NBA Live 11, 12 and 13 were all cancelled just weeks from release. There have even been scattered reports of retail copies of these games making it onto eBay as some stores in the United States actually received stock of the games before they were cancelled. NBA Live 13 was cancelled just six days before its release date.

Unlike other sports, which have arguably suffered at times due to annual releases, NBA might actually benefit.

This unusual decision making from EA Sports opened the door for Take Two to use its own NBA license to grab all of the market share and win over basketball fans with its NBA 2K series. Critics have praised this series for being one of the best sports games on the market. It’s hard to see how EA can win back the audience when NBA Live 14 launches on next-gen systems. EA Sports isn’t used to letting its rivals dominate a particular sport, let alone monopolise one, but that’s exactly what has happened thanks to its unusual concerns about NBA Live. Unlike other sports, which have arguably suffered at times due to annual releases, NBA might actually benefit if EA can finally get back to releasing regular NBA titles. Some genuine competition between two rival NBA games can only be a good thing for basketball fans.

One area of sports gaming which often goes against the trend of annual sequels is motorsports. The leading titles in racing simulation, Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, usually see at least 2 year gaps between sequels. The difference is that they avoid the pressure of working to a single league or association license. GT and Forza attempt to simulate motorsport at a variety of levels, from grassroots amateur racing to professional multimillion dollar racing cars.

This gives the developer and players the freedom to explore a variety of motor-racing disciplines without obsessing over the rules of one particular championship. The developers can also have partnerships with multiple racing series, rather than just one. For instance, Gran Turismo 5 featured NASCAR and World Rally Championship modes, while Forza Motorsport has a long relationship with the American Le Mans Series, without being tied to creating an official game for that championship.

In contrast to this approach, racing games that license a single major series are forced down the same old path of annual releases, with no competition and limited development time to improve the game each year. The biggest examples of this are the official NASCAR games and the official Formula One games. Whereas games like FIFA have found huge success thanks to constant interest in soccer, the Codemasters F1 titles have suffered because of complex issues in that sport which can alienate the more casual racing fan. “May underwhelm returning owners of F1 2012 and still leave fans of classic F1 a little wanting,” said IGN’s F1 2013 review.

Real Formula One cars haven’t changed noticeably since 2010, making it more difficult for fans to justify purchasing each annual update. Codemasters is also fighting an uphill battle against one of the most restrictive licenses in sport. Everything from the damage model to the editing of a trailer requires approval from Formula One Management, making it incredibly difficult for the developer to make any significant improvements each year. Codemasters has claimed that it took two years to arrange all of the appropriate agreements for F1 2013’s “F1 Classics” feature.

Racing games that license a single major series are forced down the same old path of annual releases.

The length of the annual approval process also appears to dictate when Codemasters can release its F1 game. Whereas the vast majority of sports games release at the beginning of a real-world season to capitalise on fan excitement, F1 games traditionally appear in stores at tail end of the championship, partly because it takes months for each team and Formula One Management to approve all of different features. The F1 franchise has also been affected by falling interest in the real sport because some fans have been left bored by the current dominance of the Red Bull Racing team.

Official Formula One games are an example of the difficulties that arise when a license holder places too many limitations on game development. We may complain about incremental updates to the likes of Madden and FIFA every year, but at least those games have the freedom to develop, improve and respond to fans. They aren’t limited by the sport they choose to portray. Codemasters has said it has big ambitions to make F1 become the FIFA of racing games. If any studio can achieve this, its Codemasters, but it faces an enormous challenge to pull it off.

It is clear that licensing agreements with the governing bodies of major sports force developers to produce annual games.

It is clear that licensing agreements with the governing bodies of major sports force developers to produce annual games. It’s a simple way for publishers to spread the risks of massive licensing fees, while capitalising on the excitement of every new season, whether it’s soccer, football, basketball, or motor-racing. This approach has now been adopted by most other blockbuster games as well, from Call of Duty to Assassin’s Creed. Releasing a game every year means that you can recoup a huge development budget on a more regular basis even if, as we’ve seen in sports games, the short development cycle limits innovation.

The biggest problem though with annual sports games is the lack of competition. We all like to complain on forums and in comments sections about how boring it can be to see the same big brands on store shelves every November, but at least most of these big names have rivals. This year, Call of Duty: Ghosts has Battlefield 4 and Killzone: Shadow Fall to compete with. Gran Turismo 6 will go up against Forza Motorsport 5 and Need for Speed: Rivals. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag launched close to Batman: Arkham Origins.

Competition drives innovation and creativity. So even if all of our biggest games are annual sequels, at least they have to one up each other to become worthy of our hard-earned cash. In sports games, this sadly is rarely the case. If you want to play virtual football this year, you have to buy Madden 25. If you want to play virtual basketball right now, you have to buy NBA 2K14. In the sports where there is competition between games, like between FIFA and PES, the bigger publisher can often limit its rival’s appeal by tieing up exclusive licensing deals. This anti-competitive behaviour will hurt the quality of sports games in the long-term. It is up to us as fans to demand more from our favourite franchises to make sure that developers continue to improve them.