How Will NHL 2K9 Bring the "Fun" Back to Hockey? Ben Bishop and Jay Iwahashi Have Answers
By Louis Bedigian

“We really took out most of last year's game and started from scratch.”

Since E3, 2K Sports has been touting the same few words regarding NHL 2K9: above all else they will bring the fun back to hockey video games. This might seem like a strange announcement or PR line when NHL 2K has delivered an entertaining experience for several years running, and it's doubtful that this is the first time you've heard a journalist ponder the necessity of 2K Sports' claim. But for these developers, "entertaining" just wasn't enough.

"This is kind of a different year for us," said Ben Bishop, Producer of NHL 2K9. "The game was developed by a new team this year. We actually brought it to our 2K Sports headquarters here in Northern California. In doing that it really gave us the opportunity to step back and get a different perspective on things and really try to see how the series had evolved and what we could do to change things. They take a different approach to a lot of what we were doing. Getting a fresh perspective from a different development team really made a big difference.

"One of the biggest things we're trying to do is bring the fun back to hockey video games. I'm sure you hear that term 'fun' a lot. I think a lot of us remember, back in the day, 10 to 15 years ago, just sitting on the couch and playing hockey video games with your buddies. It was really one of the more popular sports video games back then. That's one of the big goals for us, to capture some of that and bring back the fun into playing hockey video games. Recently it has been, not just with our game but other hockey games out there too, have gotten too complicated, you know, the controls are just too in-depth, and I think it ended up turning people off to the game. One of our biggest things this year on the gameplay feature side was getting a new control scheme in. We wanted to focus on the basics, not having to worry about modifiers or all sorts of crazy button combinations just to play the game. We also wanted to capture the elements that make the sport of hockey fun and unique. Things like, we have a new fighting engine. We have a Zamboni. We have a user-controlled Stanley Cup celebration."

2K Fun

I asked 2K Sports about their newfound dedication to fun, noting that this wasn't the first time we had heard a developer say this. "That's definitely true," Bishop answered. "You're always wanting to make a fun game." I also wanted to know their definition of fun. "In particular," Bishop continues, "you know, like I mentioned before, we wanted to make it more accessible to people. So with the control scheme, all you have to worry about is a pass button, shoot button and a check button. If you have that down you'll be able to have a good time, score some goals. Just getting that atmosphere back was really important to us, to make it really easy to pick up and play for anybody."

Changing Times

"We really took out most of last year's game and started from scratch," Bishop announces. "That was a really big undertaking for us. One of the nice things is, now that the game is developed at the Visual Concepts studio here, we get to work a lot more closely with our NBA team. So you'll see a lot of things in the two games, a lot of the online stuff, presentation, front end and art and navigation are very similar. To pull those resources and share some of the tech, you'll really see a lot more quality this year."

Regarding the new franchise mode, Bishop says, "With the Franchise mode in particular, and really a lot of the other modes, things have been built upon old systems year after year. We felt like this was the first opportunity to kind of get rid of some of that old stuff and get a new, solid foundation."

The Cycles of Development

Wanting to know about NHL 2K's development cycle, I asked Bishop how much more they were getting out of consoles now that Xbox 360 is approaching its fourth Christmas and PS3 is approaching its third. "Every year they get a little bit easier, we push the hardware a little bit more, and that's always a big challenge," he says. "Now that we're done with NHL 2K9 and looking forward to next year, and this is the time when we're finding out where we can push the hardware further, what can work better. It's always an ongoing process each year. At this point, like you said, it's the fourth [Christmas] for 360 and third for PS3. Our engineers have a pretty good handle on what the machines can do and we're in good shape to get as much out of them as possible. We're always trying to push the power of the machines as much as we can.

Underachiever, Overachiever

"To be honest, in the past I don't think we gave enough consideration to achievements," Bishop says. "That was one of the bigger things we did this year. We have quite a few more achievements than we had in the past. We really tried to touch a lot of the different areas in the game. There's a lot of online achievements, achievements related to the playoffs and Zambonis. I think it's a lot deeper this year and is something we look at as being important, is something we looked at from early in [in development] and will be something we look at in the future."

What about PlayStation 3 trophies? "We don't have trophies this year for PS3, although we do have a similar challenge system on the console where you can unlock the same achievements that you had on Xbox 360."

For You and Wii

Forget the scaled-down sports games Wii players are used to seeing. This year, NHL 2K9 would be the whole package. "We wanted a full-featured Wii game," Bishop assures us. "We wanted to offer everything that we had on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. A big challenge is trying to get everything ported to that console, and we're really happy we were able to get everything over other than online play. That's the one thing we didn't get in the Wii version this year. But otherwise it's a full-featured Wii game. We have a franchise mode, all the extras we've been talking about for the other consoles.

"One of the things we didn't want to do was go too far down the road of motion controls. We wanted to keep it pretty simple, which goes back" to their goal of wanting to make a pick-up-and-play hockey game. You do a basic shooting motion with the Wii remote for a slapshot. You do kind of a shaky motion with the Nunchuk for a check. And then the different buttons the Wii remote do different things. When you're fighting, for example, you get to throw punches. You actually balance with the Nunchuk and throw punches with the Wii remote. When you're driving the Zamboni you actually turn the Wii remote like you would a steering wheel. If you want to do a superstar move you actually shake the Nunchuk. We also added a pointer passing feature. With the Wii remote you can actually aim the cursor and push a button to pass the puck. This gives you a lot more precision as far as who you're passing to."

Favorite New Feature

"[It's the] user-controlled Stanley Cup celebration," Bishop reveals. "I think in the past, not just with hockey games but with all sports games, you didn't get any kind of reward for beating the game. One thing that's cool this year, if you put in all that effort, play through the season and make it through the playoffs, now you get a chance to get out there on the ice. You can skate around with the cup with your team. We have different buttons for raising the cup or kissing the cup or passing the cup to your teammate, all kind of following the tradition of the NHL when a team gets the Stanley Cup at the end of the season. And I think it's really cool to have that reward as something to play for instead of just a 'Congratulations!' message or something."

Always Surprised

When it comes to surprises, Bishop says that it's the way NHL 2K has evolved over the years that impresses him the most. "I think one of the biggest surprises is seeing how the game evolves. If you see NHL 2K8 and NHL 2K9 there's going to be a big jump. For someone like me who works on it on a day-to-day basis, it's just amazing to see where the game was six to eight months ago and where it is now. Getting that kind of feeling of how far we're able to take the game... And there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don't get to see, a lot of things that we wanted to do but couldn't do. Watching that process, for me, is kind of the most exciting thing. There are always different challenges and crazy things that go down."

Not Coming Soon: Ad Agency 2K9

Bishop's thoughts on in-game advertising: "That's a tough one because, it definitely does help with the realism, seeing actual ads for products [as they would be in a real hockey game] is a big thing. We also don't want to put it right there in your face so it's detracting from the experience. We try to implement them in more of a seamless way where maybe it's there in the background or part of an overlay or something like that. But not to the point where it's taking away from the game. We don't want to turn it into just a commercial the whole time you're playing the game."

Multiplayer Bliss

Though Ben Bishop could answer most of our questions, when it came to specific features about the online modes, no one knows NHL 2K9 better than its Online Producer, Jay Iwahashi. "We have the versus matches so you can go head-to-head," he says. "We do have seasons and tournaments that are playable online – 30-team seasons and 16-team tournaments that you can play online. You can play 'em on both 360 and PS3."

Iwahashi wanted to clarify the differences between the five-on-five and six-on-six matches. "We're going with five-on-five for ranked matches. We're removing the control of the goalie because they are ranked matches and those games mean a lot, so if someone gets stuck with controlling the goalie and doesn't know what they're doing you won't be effected by that. But in ranked matches, basically how it works is, you'll play up to 10 players. When the game starts you're randomly assigned to one of the teams and a position. You're pretty much locked to that position throughout the match.

"But in unranked matches we do allow for a full six-on-six and you get to choose what position you want to be locked to. And if you choose to you can actually be unlocked. So if you want to play on a particular team you can do that but you can choose to be unlocked so you can float around between center or defenseman. As far as what we've done to improve the performance, there was a server overhaul done this year with the team-up feature in mind. We basically needed to do that to ensure that we'd have a smooth-running game online. For anyone that's familiar with our NBA online, we're gonna run this at 60fps for gameplay. That's both on 360 and PS3. So we definitely had a lot of work cut out for us and we got that done."

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