Sports Video Gaming Must Face Its Own Era Of Excess
Wednesday was supposed to be a day of no news in Major League Baseball. There are no league games in January, of course; pitchers and catchers report to spring training in 29 days. And exit polling had long foreseen the shutout ballot, for the first time since 1996, that the Baseball Writers Associa...
Of Course Penn State Is Leading EA Sports's <em>NCAA Football 14</em> Cover Vote
Ostensibly put up to a series of fan-voted Facebook polls, NCAA Football 14's cover also will be influenced by other, as yet unexplained, social media forces. A field of all 126 Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision teams was supposed to have been thinned to 32 candidates after Monday, but we don't...
Four Stories To Follow In A Pivotal New Year For Sports Video Gaming
2K Sports hasn't said specifically when its infamous exclusive pact with Major League Baseball ends, but it's a good bet that day comes on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. ...
The Year In Sports Video Games
What's up, buttheads. It's me, Biff. Look, I know my sports betting advice this year didn't play out so well. Sorry if you bet your adjustable-rate mortgage balloon payment on one of my lead pipe locks. How was I to know I had a printer's error? Really, that stuff was the Gray's Sports Almanac from ...
The Sports Video Games Of The Year
Rarely considered for overall video-game-of-the-year honors, the uncommon diversity of sports video games, and the unique demands placed on them to recreate both a real-world sport and the real-life experiences associated with it, support their own class of awards more than any other genre. These ar...
What People Said About the Piece of Shit Video Game the NRA Made Six Years Ago
Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere on the Internet. ...
Facing A Season With No NFL, <em>Madden</em>'s Ultimate Team Looks To The Legends
In any discussion of the greatest video game athletes, the Michael Vick of Madden NFL 2004 always makes the cut, and is usually the most recent name on the list. In the eight years since his appearance, sports simulations have fine-tuned their realism, closing the era of logic-defying performances b...
Sports at E3: A Postgame Report
Gameplay impressions are difficult to form under the lights, sights and cacophony of E3 in full swing, where you never have enough time to see all of what you want, and there's always an appointment five minutes from now. It's… [Kotaku] ...
The Top Talent Departs as <em>Madden</em> Nears Its Release
The executive producer of Madden NFL quietly stepped down this week after less than a year on the job. He is the third senior-level Madden developer to leave the title in the past two months. But Phil Frazier and his… [Kotaku] ...
Facing the Lockout, <em>Madden</em> and NFL Fans Seek a Common Refuge
At E3 this week, the sight I was least prepared for was that of Ray Lewis in full Baltimore Ravens uniform: eye-black, skullcap, gloves, wristbands, everything. This was an appearance for Madden NFL 12 but to him, it didn't look… [Kotaku] ...
It’s In The Game, Unless It’s Outside The Lines
Without fail, every time I bring up this job with folks outside the business, the topical jokes start rolling. Whatever the latest controversy or embarrassment is in sports, people ask if that's going to be simulated in the next edition… [Kotaku] ...
EA Sports Celebrates <em>NCAA Football 12</em> with the Sexy Sax Man
You may have heard of him. (This video, uploaded in March, has more than 6 million views.) Sexy Sax Man is quite the guerrilla artist, barging in bare-chested on food courts, laundromats, Walmarts and college classrooms to belt out… [Kotaku] ...
<em>Madden</em>'s Dynamic Performance Serves Sundays With More Flavor
Beat on a quarterback for 45 minutes of an NFL game and you'll see a different guy in the fourth quarter. Some start forcing every throw. Some will run like hell. Some go catatonic.… [Kotaku] ...
Reaching For The Brass Ring On <em>NCAA Football 12</em>'s Coaching Carousel
Ben Haumiller's got a job for me. Several jobs, actually, but they're all in NCAA Football 12's new career mode, the "Coaching Carousel." Haumiller, the game's producer, explains it all using an offensive coordinator named Owen O'Cain as an… [Kotaku] ...
You Can Have Any Sports Video Game You Want, But There's Only One
About this time last year, at E3, I was chewing the fat with a 2K Sports representative about NBA 2K11 which already looked to be the monster it would become. Long dominant in the pro basketball genre, the game with… [Kotaku] ...
Rename the Big Ten's Ridiculous Divisions in <em>NCAA Football 12</em>
The Big Ten's ridiculous division names will be getting a makeover—probably thousands of them—thanks to NCAA Football 12.… [Kotaku] ...
This Gaming Geek Shall Inherit <em>MLB 2K11</em>'s Million-Dollar Prize
Before setting off to claim a million-dollar bounty offered by MLB 2K11, Brian Kingrey did an analysis. He pored over batting averages, compared pitcher strengths and tendencies, examined the probable starters for the contest's opening day and the batting orders… [Kotaku] ...
My Workout Partner is a Role-Playing Game
Two hundred bucks. My health insurance company will give me $200 if I just go to the gym, 50 times in a six-month span. That's about two times a week. Coming into May, I only needed seven more visits to… [Kotaku] ...
A Walk-On Who Made the Team Wants You to Know What It Really Means
Alex Howell was the only freshman in the tunnel that Saturday, his chinstrap so tight it fused his jaw shut, 89,000 people packed into to the last row at Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium. Earlier in the week the graduate assistant… [Kotaku] ...
When Will the One-Year Career Come to an End?
It really doesn't matter how many times My Player is an NBA All-Star, nor how durable he is on the Road to the Show, or to Glory, or to the Masters. Every one of them will suffer a career-ending injury:… [Kotaku] ...