Good news, but mixed expectations since the NFL license is for 'non-simulation' football. What does that mean exactly? An NFL Street or Blitz style game? A coach style game? It might mean team names/uniforms/logos, but no actual NFL players.
Top quote from a Polygon article about this:
It’s worth noting that 2K’s deal with the NFL only covers the names, logos, and associated elements for the league and its 32 teams — not the names, images, and likenesses of any NFL players. The two sets of rights are typically handled separately, and indeed, an NFL spokesperson told Polygon that 2K would need to sign a licensing agreement with the NFL Players Association in order to use real, current NFL players in its upcoming video games.
https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/10/21172310/nfl-2k-sports-football-video-games-deal-ea-madden
I'd be fine with generic rosters that can be edited. I would also have been fine if 2K Sports had gotten just an NFLPA license that allowed them to use player names and likenesses but not the NFL team names/uniforms/logos.
At the end of the day, good news that 2K Sports at least has a foot in the door. The first game or games are in early development and scheduled to start arriving in 2021.
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I suspect that it means an arcade style game without real players. Bare bones crazy time football.
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Alright, so this one kind of hit a nerve for me, as someone that deplores Madden and everything it stands for.
It's hilarious that 2K can't do simulation football. We wouldn't want to trounce on the toes of wittle baby EA Sports, now. If anything is more of an admission of their ****ty product, it's that they won't allow anyone to compete with Madden. What's that old, tired sports metaphor? "To be the best, you have to beat the best?" 2K hasn't even been given the chance in 10+ years.
2K would **** them up and take over, so EA will continue to pay the NFL big money to keep 2K from making a better game, which they would surely do. 2K, however, has not been squeaky clean as of late. They've been struggling with their WWE2K series, which released last year with an absolute tsunami of bugs and rushed product quality at the time of launch and an ever-creeping presence of micro-transactions in their NBA series, which leads me to a conspiracy theory I have below.
An aside: Yearly game installments are a plague upon the video game industry, see: Assassin's Creed Unity, it's consequent failure, and Ubisoft's peel-back on the yearly installment. These companies exchange some window dressing each year (talking sports games now, mostly) with no dramatic improvements to the core game play, resets every player's (yours and mine) assets in the micro-transaction side of these games so you and I have to repurchase them with each installment. It's so shady- but the sports fan market that buys these games and their associated micro-transactions don't know, and don't care. It's a multi-billion dollar element of the video game industry.
Which leads me to a conspiracy theory. Something tells me that 2K showed their micro-transaction figures from their NBA2K series (which they've been ramping up more and more with each installment) to the NFL and asked if they wanted another cut of that micro-transaction pie from an NFL-licensed 2K game. This may have been one of the main factors that EA used to convince the NFL to withhold the exclusive agreement ever since micro-transactions have been included in the Madden series.
Another aside: This news would have been exciting 5 or 6 years ago, when 2K was still making honest, really good sports games. Now, they're as focused on micro-transactions and the live-service model as some of the bigger companies out there, putting elements of their NBA series that used to be common and intrinsic to the game behind additional pay walls.
That being said, I'm all for competition. If I was 2K, I would treat this as a faux audition, and make a game that represents the sport as close as possible without being classified as a "football sim". Their development team is more talented overall than Madden's and almost always has been. They can be trusted much more in basic football to video game aspects like hit detection and realistic animations should they choose to make a less arcadey, non-simulation style football game. My guess is it will just be another vehicle for micro-transaction purposes given the company's most recent history, but I'll be optimistic until more details about it come out.
Also, I love how sanctimonious the title "simulation football" gets, but only when EA is threatened by competition, like they give 2 ****s about the quality and accuracy of their Madden series to begin with. I would LOVE to know the criteria for what defines something as a "simulation football" game in the eyes of the NFL.
**** EA. -
EA pays the NFL and NFLPA 50 million bucks each season for the exclusive rights to make a real game every year. So unfortunately, until that ends, we're not likely to get much of an improvement, at least not in the ways that are important to me as a offline only franchise gamer.
The league themselves won't really talk about it publically, other than making broad, bland statements.
The NFLPA spokesman George Atallah really ripped into fans a few years ago, saying point blank that the NFLPA doesn't care if people are unhappy or not, the players just want the money. -
Dol-Fan Dupree likes this.
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https://www.gamespot.com/articles/b...k-exclusive-licensing-agreement/1100-6114977/
This would have put their lobbying period in the midst of 2K's stride, probably around the time NFL2K3 and ESPN NFL Football were released.Unlucky 13 likes this. -
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I dont care if I bank billions for it, I'm not going to put my name on crap. -
I've seen some arguments that it's the success of the NBA2K games that has the NFL interested in bringing back 2K Sports. The NBA2K games went from selling 2 million copies in 2005 up to 12 million copies in 2019. The game attracts a lot of younger players who then become NBA fans too.
With the growing concerns about concussions there is a downward trend of kids playing football and thus a lack of interest in watching the NFL too. Madden players are older on average, with fewer younger players being added. The NFL may be thinking they can add a few million fans by expanding the videogame football options.
We'll found out the truth to all this in the next two years. For the record, I don't want to see 2K Sports with an exclusive NFL license, I want to see at least two competing football games on the market each year. -
Madden certainly doesn't market itself to older players! Not only do they mostly ignore the core experience of franchise mode now, they also have even stripped most of the stuff from online head to head. Everything is now geared towards the damn microtransactions modes.
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Sweet, sweet, comeuppance.
Hopefully the #NFLdropEA movement over the weekend gets the attention of the NFL.
Just general apathy and disdain towards their customers from the community managers. I'd posit the Madden community managers are the worst out there today.
Funny that a sport and league built on a meritocratic ethos has one company making the games with no direct competition.
I also love how EA secured the rights to "simulation football", relegating 2K to an arcade entry only. So what do we get? An arcade mode in The Yard and a neglected Franchise Mode.
**** these snakes.Unlucky 13 likes this. -
I'd love it if 'simulation' is defined by the exclusive license to mean that only EA can claim to be simulation on the box, but there is no restriction as far as game play goes.
As I've said before though, 'simulation' is probably defined as having the actual NFL schedule and Super Bowl in the game -that may even include the conferences and division names.
Hopefully we get some concrete details early next year as to what we can expect. -
EA Pays the NFL and NFLPA a crapton of money every year to be the only one allowed to make the game. As long as that continues, all of them will look the other way and not really care what gamers think about the product. The NFLPA rep has openly said so in blunt and dismissive terms.
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Unfortunately that is not happening. -
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It was getting to the point where console games were as good as Front Page Football Pro 95. Now they are barely better than Tecmo Super BowlUnlucky 13 likes this. -
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I dont mind playing online once in a while, but its not fun to me feeling like you HAVE to pick a certain team and run certain plays to be successful. I was always a much bigger Franchise mode fan, scouting, drafts, everything.Unlucky 13 likes this. -
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I used to be one of those people who lined up at midnight at Gamestop to pick up Madden. I loved the franchise. Heck, I would buy Madden and 2k because both of them were really good at something, and it felt like every other year one would be better than the other. It was fun to see.
I was crushed when EA got exclusive access and my predictions about what would happen were wrong because I never thought it would get this bad.
Gameplay wise new Madden is not as good as NFL Blitz or NFL Street. Heck, even the new Mutant League Football has better collision detection as I don't see people going through players on that game.Unlucky 13 likes this. -
Dol-Fan Dupree likes this.
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Well, any 2K football game is getting pushed to 2022.
https://www.sportsgamersonline.com/games/football/nfl-2k-delayed-to-2022-2k-announces/
I'm trying to see the positive of this: More time for them to build a game with depth and solid gameplay. Rushing a game out in 2021 with the expectations of the fans of 2K5 and/or APF 2K8 would be a bad move long-term. Better to delay and return in 2022 with a good-great product.
Still hurts to wait another year though.... -