February 25, 2009

MLB 2K9's Erick Boenisch and Jonathan Rivera Bring Back the "Wow" Factor
By Louis Bedigian

“Once people start playing our game, and you can tell by our pitching camera, a lot of people are already commenting on how it looks like the camera they show on ESPN. That's something that's already making people say 'wow.'”

"As most of you know, Visual Concepts took over the development of 2K Sports' Major League Baseball 2K this year," begins Erick Boenisch, Lead Features Designer. "This is the same studio that has in previous years developed the NBA 2K franchise, as well as the NFL 2K franchise. We have a lot of dedicated engineers, producers, artists and are very excited about bringing this IP to the studio."

"With Visual Concepts taking over MLB 2K, we had a lot of ambition with this title," he continues. "We wanted to flip things on its end and do things very differently in a lot of areas in the game. We're still bringing that 2K hook that we have with the online mode, franchise gaming, solid gameplay, those types of things."

But as far as the gameplay goes, Visual Concepts "wanted to make it more accessible. If you're familiar with last year's game, pitching could be really difficult. If you threw a meatball, it would cause the opposing side to hit out of the park almost every time. Even for me, that was really frustrating. That's not the game people want to play."

Boenisch believes that the biggest thing that separates MLB 2K9 from the competition is that in this game the pitching and hitting are fun. "We offer a lot of control and variety rather than just pressing a button hoping that what you intended on happening happens. We give that control to the user with our unique pitching and hitting controls."

Obviously the controls aren't the only difference. Boenisch also notes the importance of having a superior presentation style. "We have all kinds of exciting stuff this year," he says. "[Suppose] in the first inning [one of the players] goes off and hits a homerun. When he comes up later in the game, the commentators might go into a story about how what he did in the last inning changed the pace of the game while showing a highlight of that play. It's very authentic. Like something you would see if you were watching a TV broadcast. With that aspect, I think our presentation is probably the best. And not just that but everything in the game, not just the gameplay. It's very updated, very current."

Regarding the franchise mode, Boenisch says that this was a great opportunity to scrap what was there and build everything from the ground up. "We're really focused on the core issues. What I mean by that is, we added a brand-new simulation engine this year. So if you're playing a simulated game, stats are being generated in a realistic fashion as opposed to what they did before. We also added a brand-new progression system. It's very dynamic in that players will progress over their careers based on the playing time they get and how they performed during that playing time rather than pre-set linear curves.

"We have a new feature this year called player ambition. The short version is that [contracts] are not all about money. In previous years, if you had the money, the player would basically take the highest offer, which isn't really realistic if you're a star player signing with a low profile team. The way player ambition works is that we rate every player based on their desire for financial security, their desire for playing time, their desire to play for a specific team. Take all of these ambitions and put them together and put an offer on the table and he's going to look at the money, where the team is located, what kind of opportunities he'll have to win the World Series."

Many were surprised to hear that MLB 2K9 would be coming to the PC. "We're a popular franchise," Boenisch says plainly. "We're trying to grow the market with MLB 2K9. Going to the PC is (A) something that's easy for us to do, and (B) it's exciting a lot of users who might not have consoles but they have a nice gaming PC."

From a development standpoint, it wasn't even that difficult. "We took the 360 version of the game and ported it over to the PC while making customizations so you can play the game with a keyboard or customize your controller. The only difference between the PC and 360 versions is that we don't have online on PC this year. It's our first year for PC, and that's something we're going to be working on moving forward. The PC price point is only $19.99, and we think that's a steal for a fully realized next-gen video game."

Given the popularity of NBA 2K's living roster feature, MLB 2K9 will offer the same kind of experience. "The implementation of the living rosters is very similar to what we did [with] NBA 2K9," he says. "It's something we're going to be expanding on with our 2K10 line of games. But [in the meantime], getting those updates every time something happens is a huge bonus to our fans." Expect updates whenever something big happens. Otherwise, they'll occur every few days.

Totally Improved

"For pitching, the main change [was that] we took out the release timing, which was the third phase of the pitching process last year," said Jonathan Rivera, Gameplay Producer. "Now pitching is a simple two-step phase. You hold down whatever the first direction is till you fill up the meter and complete the gesture and release the right stick at any point. You don't have to wait until the ring reaches the inner green circle. We do still offer that option in the pause menu. If you like the way it was last year, it's still available.

"For for hitting, we added a couple different aspects that we're really excited about. The hit influence, which is now the left stick which you can control when you try to hit a fly ball, ground ball, or trying to hit the ball left side of the field or right side of the field."

Rivera says that hit variety has also been improved. "Being able to control where you're going to hit, it's all based on your timing and ball location. So you'll definitely see a big difference in the variety of hits." The hit mechanics have also been simplified, he says. "In last year's game it was really difficult when they needed to press back on the right stick. It just felt much more natural to push down and push up to swing, rather than having to wait for the perfect time. That just made it a lot easier. It's actually more fun the way it is right now."

The crowds have also been revamped to compete with MLB 2K7's memorable presentation. "We're proud of how they came out this year. [The crowd] reacts to intense moments. If it's the bottom of the ninth inning, if it's a crucial situation and the crowd is anticipating a big pitch, you'll see them get up as they do in real life to anticipate a big pitch. The way the crowds react in this game is significantly better than anything we've done before.

"I think we did a great job with our overall environment and the ambiance of making you feel like you're at a baseball game. We spent a lot of time watching baseball games, national broadcasts, and watching what they do and try to match what is commonly done for TV broadcast, shot-by-shot. Once people start playing our game, and you can tell by our pitching camera, a lot of people are already commenting on how it looks like the camera they show on ESPN. That's something that's already making people say 'wow.'"

AI is another area of improvement, thanks to the Inside Edge scouting data. "The Inside Edge data is our exclusive MLB scouting service where we get all our data from the players, what their tendencies are, how often players swing outside of the strike zone, slow balls, fast balls, and all that drives our AI."

Finally, Rivera says that all of MLB 2K8's stuttering problems are gone and that MLB 2K9 will run at 60fps.

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