Monday Tip-Off: Sim Heads & Inaccurate Stats
In this week's Monday Tip-Off, Andrew reflects on how sim heads like himself try to make peace with inaccurate stats.
The post Monday Tip-Off: Sim Heads & Inaccurate Stats appeared first on NLSC.
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on how inaccurate stats can be a real turn-off for those of us who are sim heads.
Even though sim basketball gamers have somehow come to be considered “casuals” by gatekeeping denizens of the competitive online scene, there are still plenty of virtual hoopers who prefer the NBA side of video games. Sim heads are more likely to prefer franchise play and the traditional career mode experience, where a realistic style of play is more viable. Of course, opting for realism across the board is easier said than done. After all, in franchise and career modes, that means playing a full 82-game season on twelve minute quarters, which can be a daunting prospect.
It’s something that I’ve done in multiple games now. In my ongoing NBA 2K14 PS4 MyCAREER, I’m playing on full quarters and have yet to simulate a game as of my sixth season, and it’s been a more rewarding journey as a result. That’s how I feel about all of my games where I’ve played through at least one season from start to finish, but to that point, I can attest to it being a lengthy process. Even if you never feel bored, it can still be challenging to find the necessary free time. This is why the simulation function and shorter quarter length options are so useful, but for hardcore sim gamers, the inaccurate stats they produce can be difficult to get your head around.
I was reminded of this when long-time community member tinpanalley posted in our Discord, reflecting on a season he’s currently playing. He noted that while he prefers shorter quarters from a gameplay standpoint, like many of us sim heads, the resulting inaccurate stats – even when they’re automatically adjusted for quarter length – are bothersome. I absolutely know where he’s coming from, as it’s the reason that I’ve always preferred to play with regulation quarter and season length settings. Once again, I know all too well how long it takes to complete a full season that way, but the prospect of inaccurate stats is off-putting, leaving sim heads with limited options.
As I wistfully remarked in the discussion in our Discord, if playing twelve minute quarters and all 82 games isn’t an option, we really have to pick our poison, and try our best to ignore the details that nag at – as tinpanalley aptly put it – our realism-nerd-brain. Easier said than done, as that means ignoring aspects of the games that add the depth that’s so appealing to us! And so, we ask ourselves where we can comfortably sacrifice realism. Can we ignore inaccurate minutes per game? Are we fine with lower scores? Will an abbreviated season bother us? Can we accept the results of normalised stats? Is it possible to make peace with simulating, or using an accelerated clock?
Ultimately, we sim heads need to find a way to be OK with stats that are inaccurate in some way. Mind you, this can also happen when playing the entirety of an 82-game season on twelve minute quarters! Not every game has a well-designed and balanced sim engine, resulting in the players on CPU-controlled teams producing strange and unrealistic numbers. Indeed, while I miss the alternatives and competition we used to have in the basketball gaming space, a staple of the more mediocre titles was seeing the wrong players rank among the league leaders in franchise and season modes, with numbers that they’d never come close to posting in real life. In short, it wasn’t sim!
For those of us who have been playing basketball video games for decades – and let’s face it, a lot of sim heads do tend to be at the upper end of the demographic – we were conditioned to expect realistic stats by those early games. If you go back and simulate through a season in an old NBA Live game, the league leaders will be surprisingly accurate. It undoubtedly helped that some games used dummy stats or the players’ previous season stats as a rough guide. To that end though, there were also issues in the early franchise modes where the dummy stats allowed players in decline to keep posting career-peak numbers, but the point is that sim heads came to expect realism.
That’s what we enjoyed about sim basketball games, and our expectations for season play have persisted as the genre has evolved and expanded the depth of its modes. The best NBA Live and NBA 2K titles continued to deliver in that respect, but needless to say, accurate stats require realistic settings. That brings us back to having ample free time and patience to play on those settings, and that’s not always feasible as you get older and have more responsibilities. Even if you do have the time to spare, you may prefer to keep your gaming sessions short, or speed up the process of playing through a season by simulating. It doesn’t mean your inner sim head has to like it, though!
Another interesting point that tinpanalley noted during the conversation on Discord is that this issue affects basketball games more than other sports titles. The reason is that basketball has so many statistics that are the result of a game’s length and pace, from final scores to an individual player’s numbers. Compare this to a soccer game, where an accelerated clock doesn’t prevent realistic scores, or produce inaccurate stats that will be distracting for passionate sim heads. I’m sure that hardcore fans of other sports can identify inaccuracies that I’m not aware of, but it’s seemingly easier to streamline said sports in video games without compromising the realism or statistical accuracy.
This isn’t the case with basketball. Over the years, it’s usually been possible to lower the quarter lengths to ten minutes, and sometimes even as low as eight minutes, and still see relatively accurate scores and stats. Of course, the total minutes and minutes per game figures will still take a hit, though the normalisation option in NBA 2K can be quite useful here. Lowering the quarter length settings below eight minutes will rarely produce realistic raw numbers, and any normalised figures are likely to end up being inflated. Depending on the settings, these stats may also be wildly out of sync with CPU-controlled teams, further breaking the immersion that sim heads want.
And so, once again, for sim heads playing shorter games, the only real solution is to accept stats that are inaccurate in some way. That usually means ignoring minutes and minutes per game numbers on 8-10 minute quarters, and basically everything from the final scores to league leaders on anything shorter than that. It’s all about the on-court experience, win-loss records, and completing the season, ideally winning the NBA Championship. It’s antithetical to the mindset of sim heads to ignore stats – accurate or inaccurate – but it’s the only way to be comfortable with playing quicker games; at least in season play. For exhibition/Play Now games, it’s much easier to take liberties.
With that being said, although that’s my advice, I’m not yet able to follow it myself! I still want to play every game of a full length season on regulation quarter lengths in all of my franchise and career mode games. Even when I’m allowing players to put up some exaggerated stats – especially a MyPLAYER – I still have a desire to see some degree of authenticity in those modes. It’s why I prefer to begin franchise games from a realistic starting point and allow an alternate reality to develop more organically. It’s probably why I’ve also come to really enjoy exhibition games in recent years, as I’m less concerned about realistic stats for everyone, since the results don’t have to count.
To gamers who aren’t hardcore sim heads, caring about inaccurate stats and scores no doubt seems incredibly strange. And, to be fair, you won’t get much of an argument from me or any other sim head that it’s incredibly nerdy, but that’s what we enjoy! It’s what drew us into sim titles all those years ago, before the online competitive scene became the focus. To that point, is it any less nerdy than caring about your online record and being a top-ranked player? Is it stranger than having opinions about what your fellow gamers are wearing in the online team play modes? There are many ways to enjoy basketball video games, and as long as you’re having fun, that’s what matters.
Unfortunately, we can lose sight of that in gaming communities, where comparing notes and inevitable competitiveness too easily encourages us to care too much about what other people think. This goes beyond the eternal debate between single/offline players and competitive online gamers, as we end up gatekeeping our preferred modes of play. It’s why we see people questioning each other about their chosen difficulty level in franchise and career modes, or their slider settings, or anything that calls into question the legitimacy of what they’re doing. It’s fair if someone is bragging about their skill, but if it’s just about having a fun time, then leave the gatekeeping out of it!
In case it’s a thought that’s occurred to any of my fellow sim heads who are struggling to make peace with inaccurate stats, it doesn’t make you any less of a sim gamer if you make some sacrifices to enjoy your time on the virtual hardwood; especially if the goal is to complete a full season with limited free time. Again, it’s easier said than done, but if you can ignore inaccurate minutes or inflated stats and just focus on the on-court action, the results, and the sense of completion, all while having a great time, then that’s what’s important. Unless you’re interfering with someone else’s fun, you don’t have to defend or justify your preferences on the virtual hardwood to anyone.
Besides, for sim heads that are very particular about inaccurate stats and accuracy in general, it’s challenging enough to justify breaks from reality to ourselves! To that end, it’s important to keep in mind that most of us take liberties here and there, and that broadly speaking, the gameplay isn’t much fun if we have to try too hard to force realistic results in every facet of the experience. Of course, if you do enjoy that, more power to you! For my part, playing shorter quarters and simulating in any games that count is an approach that I’m yet to adopt, but it’s one to keep in mind. As for all my MyCAREER games though, regardless of quarter length, realism is out the window!
The post Monday Tip-Off: Sim Heads & Inaccurate Stats appeared first on NLSC.