When sports and role-playing games collide
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on “Western” role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. I’m in a tense conflict. My party of five characters faces off against another. The battle is balanced on the edge. I see a slight opening and make my move, pressing the X button and hoping that my attack succeeds. My character charges at the enemy, with his attacking stats and the enemy’s defensive stats seeming to be in rough balance, which tends to favor the defender. But wait! My character has the “Finisher” perk, which gives him a 30% bonus in situations like these! That’s enough for a critical hit, which gives me a massive advantage in this tense confrontation. It’s a layup and foul, allowing me to take the lead in my NBA 2K13 game. But it also feels like an RPG.
That nebulous feeling of similarity to RPGs isn’t one I’ve had with basketball games before, going back 25 years to Omni-Play Basketball. But I get that feeling here, with NBA 2K13, because, in an odd way, it aims for a realistic presentation. It wants to look and feel like real basketball. But there’s a lot of difference between the intensely physical real-world sport of basketball, and the abstract form of a video game. Compromises have to be made.Continue reading When sports and role-playing games collideWhen sports and role-playing games collide originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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