NBA Live 10

October 1, 2009 - Oren Nathan recently caught up with EA’s Senior Game Designer, Mike Wang to discuss the upcoming basketball title NBA Live 10 which is out later this month.

Below he asks questions about the upcoming NBA Live videogame, questions about the development process and more, we hope you enjoy the answers.

The latest edition of NBA Live is scheduled to feature many adjustments to the core of the game, such as the new size-up animations and the brand new freestyle passing.

As a gamer, these additions sound really good but I’m really curious about the A.I defense, what kind of adjustments were made in order to make the A.I react and adapt to players who will try to abuse the new passing system?

• 
One of the most important goals for us as a gameplay team was to make sure that every aspect of the 5-on-5 oncourt experience was properly balanced. To that end, we needed to upgrade our interception system so that AI players could properly deflect a pass if it was forced through traffic.

  The defensive AI logic as a whole also received a huge upgrade for Live 10. So this year, the AI defenders will play the passing lanes much better and position themselves in the proper spot when they’re away from the ball to make sure that the offense can’t exploit the upgraded passing game.

In recent years, play-calling has become an integral part of basketball games, in your opinion, in the next 5 years will basketball games become more and more like the real game (kinda like what’s EA has been doing with Madden)?



• The vision for NBA Live is to be best in class, not only in the basketball genre but sports as a whole, and we feel that a heavy investment in the X’s and O’s of basketball and continuing to build deeper strategy into the gameplay is paramount.

  I believe that over the next few years, people will not only see NBA Live as a game that’s fun to pick up and play, but as a tool to grow your basketball IQ and something that even NBA players and coaches will be able to use for scouting their opponents and evaluating different real life scenarios.

In Live 10, there is a lot of emphasis on the off ball plays, can you tell us how much affect will the new animations have on the game, and are there any specific animations for Playoff games who tends to be more aggressive?

• 

Offball play is so crucial to good team basketball and something that hasn’t gotten nearly enough focus in the past. We wanted it to be an important part of NBA Live 10, both visually and functionally.

  So not only will players move much more intelligently and with purpose, but they’ll also move with the athleticism and intent that real NBA players have when they’re working to get open away from the ball. It really opens up the floor and makes playmaking an important aspect of this year’s game.

Besides the improvements to the gameplay, both the presentation levels and the commentary have been addressed by adding pre-game rituals and lines to the commentators, when will we see some weekly recap show that will follow up the news from around the league, maybe with an integration to user uploaded content such as replays?



• Presentation got a nice facelift for Live 10, it really brings a level of depth and authenticity that was missing from the broadcast package. As for a weekly recap show, we didn’t have time to put one in this year but it is a popular request and something we’re looking into for future versions.

Although basketball games have some nostalgic feel with the whole retro jerseys, I’m wondering what are the main problems that prevent you from adding classic teams in their entirety such as the Bulls from the 90’s and the Lakers from the 80’s?

• The only thing preventing a feature like classic teams is licensing. As an NBA title, we have access to all the current players but the retired players are off limits. There is a separate license for rights to historical players, but it’s just something we haven’t had time to invest in. Also, when you look at the old school teams, not everyone is included in the license.

  So for example, we could build a 90’s Bulls team but MJ would not be available. We always felt that tainted the feature. That being said, there is a lot of value in capturing the nostalgia of those teams, so it’s something we’ve been discussing for future versions of Live.

Although there is a lot of depth into franchise mode, it seems to me that the whole scouting process and rivalries don’t get the proper attention. I mean that I would have loved to practice and learn how to play against a team before actually facing it in the playoffs, will Live 10, show some new training and scouting elements?



• Dynasty Mode isn’t really my game area, so I don’t like to go into too much detail on it. But I will say, the NBA Live Academy makes its return to Live 10, so you can continue to train your players and run team practices to gear up for those big games. Regarding scouting, that’s the beauty of the Dynamic DNA upgrades we worked on this year. There’s a ton of depth and new information that we’ve incorporated from Synergy’s massive database that really makes a huge impact on the core gameplay experience.

  So it’s more important this year than ever to really dig through the scouting report screens in Dynasty mode to dissect your opponents and figure out their tendencies. Once you get a good grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of your team and contrast that with your opponents, you can gain a competitive advantage and leverage the information to develop a good gameplan.

  NBA Live 10 is a thinking man’s game and matchups are everything. So it really is a thing of beauty to play the various teams and attack them in different ways based on the scouting reports.


One of the biggest features of your competition (NBA 2K), is the new “My Player” career mode, what’s your take on a player based career mode rather than a team based and will such a feature is considered for NBA Live?

• 

I don’t want to speak for the rest of our team, but I’m personally not a big “career mode” guy. For me, I enjoy the team aspect of basketball the most so I like to be in control of everybody rather than just being locked to one player. Not to take anything away from 2k’s “My Player” mode or any of EA’s own Be a Pro game modes.

  I know there’s a big market for career modes in NBA and it’s another thing that we’re looking into for next year or beyond.

On a personal note, as a game producer who worked on both NBA Live and NBA 2K, can you tell us more on what led into working on basketball games and have you ever played or coached a basketball team?

• 

I’ve always been a die-hard basketball gamer. From the first time I played Dr. J vs. Larry Bird on my monochrome PC, I’ve owned pretty much every basketball game ever released since then. When I was working in the web industry, I met the Lead Producer of NBA Inside Drive and we immediately hit it off. He brought me on as an Assistant Producer for Inside Drive 2003 and that’s where I learned the ropes of game design.

  From there I got the chance to work on the 2k series from 2k6-2k8, then to my present position as Lead Gameplay Designer of NBA Live. I just have a passion for making basketball games and love working with great minds on cutting edge tech. Since I first got into the industry, my one career goal has always been to just push the basketball genre forward and create the ultimate hoops sim. We’re not there yet, but I think we’re definitely on the right track with our long term plans of NBA Live. As for my real-life hoops background, I played a lot in college… probably too much.

  I went to Indiana University and they have some serious basketball fever there. My roommates and I played pickup at least 4 or 5 nights a week and in intramural leagues/tourneys. I still play a few times a week here at EA, but sadly, my game is slowing down as every year passes. At least I can still dominate in the virtual world though. Haha.

The global revolution is affecting the NBA during the 21st century and even brought the Fiba license into NBA Live, what about adding Euroleague teams such as Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Panatinaikos and CSKA Moscow?

• 

We’re big fans of FIBA and the Euroleague here at EA. And it’s great to see so much interest in our game overseas. I’m not ready to reveal our plans for expanding our gameplay into other leagues or tournaments but it’s something we’re very interested in pursuing.

During development, how much hours are spent on watching and implanting team based gameplay (triangle offense for example), and can you share some of the co-operations between the teams and EA, for example does EA have access to the Lakers official playbook?

• 

This is actually one of the most exciting things for me. In the past, countless hours were spent studying game tape and trying to “figure out” what teams were running in real life. It was a very arduous task. But for NBA Live 10, we were fortunate enough to work closely with NBA coaches/scouts to incorporate REAL team playbooks into our game.

  It really is a tremendous milestone in the basketball genre and brings a whole new level of authenticity to Live.

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