Xbox 360 Gets Nothing But Net With NBA 2K6

by Louis Bedigian

“This is the groundwork for what the future of sports games is going to be.”

It's taken just under one year for Visual Concepts to take their concept for the next generation of basketball and turn it into one of Xbox 360’s hottest launch titles.

"It kind of coexists with Microsoft's release of the hardware,” said Jeff Thomas, VP of Sports Development at Visual Concepts. “Launch games are always tough. You work with the hardware manufacturer to try to take advantage of what you can of the system. The systems come out, they work on alpha, then beta kits then final kits.

"The timing, just to give you an idea of how that goes, we start out with what they call an alpha kit which is a very buggy version of the hardware. We probably had it for six, seven, eight months of development. Then we got the beta hardware and finally we got the final hardware.”

Jeff is referring to their first step toward next-gen basketball: NBA 2K6. 

"Just to kind of let you know how our development went, we completely re-wrote the game from the ground up,” he says proudly. “The way it works at Visual Concepts is we have a library group and a library system that supports different systems. That enables us to bring elements from other systems onto [another] system fairly easily. That helped us a lot in helping us bring the whole feature set for NBA 2K6 from the previous versions on PS2 and Xbox.

"The graphics engine was completely re-written. We've barely touched the surface of what can be done with the 360. We're taking advantage of the system at a full level. We're using all the different cores of the system. But we're barely using the power. I know that as the future goes we're going to continue to tap into the power of the system and really find what it's capable of doing.

"To really push the hardware with our cross-simulation, with our advanced lighting techniques we're doing. Other things like being able to run at 60 frames per second is a big plus for us. It give us more frequent checking of collision detection and [enhances] the physics of the ball. The user control when you're running at 60 frames per second is a big plus.

"Pushing the graphic technology on this machine was really on our forefront for this year. It's a lot of work to re-write a graphic engine and it was a huge undertaking for Visual Concepts. What it is, is the base work for what we're going to build upon for the future." 

Shooting Time

“The shot stick has been refined on the 360. One of our approaches this year was, we worked on the PS2 and Xbox version and then we continued to develop on the 360, but with an emphasis on refining things. We’ve added new animations. We tuned a lot of things for the 360 version, including the shot stick. Some of the feedback we got early on from the PS2 and Xbox versions was [fans] not always getting the shot [they] wanted or expected at certain times. We spent a lot of time refining that. We spent a lot of time refining the whole game mechanic to really take advantage of having 60fps to make it feel better, to make the AI more balanced. The 360 version is a much more balanced version of the game.”

The Newest Polygon Fashions – Fully Simulated!

“The cloth that is on the players is fully, physically done. We didn’t use anything from an old-gen approach where you actually bind the uniforms to the [character] model. It moves completely independent of the player underneath it. The player models are also big much more complex on the Xbox. It’s driven with a skeleton and a full muscular system, which then draws a skin layer over the top. This is the groundwork for what the future of sports games is going to be. This is going to allow us to really develop characters and develop so much more technology. This is the year to really break in and utilize what the hardware is capable of and build upon that in the future.” 

A Review of Reviews

Jeff took a moment to address some of the negative comments found in preliminary reviews of NBA 2K6.

“What they [the reviewers] failed to address was the amount of tuning and the amount of balancing and things that were actually done in the game to make this a much better gaming experience.

“This time frame is shorter than you’d imagine for a developer. We worked closely with Microsoft to take advantage of what the hardware was capable of, and for the future we’re going to develop more and more key features that are only possible on the 360.”

“You’ll see even with the competition how they seem like they’re falling short on delivering things.

“I just don’t think they [critics] spent enough time with the game. I know those guys are really busy right now, they’re reviewing a lot of games. There were other comments in there that are not true – they’re just false facts. I know they’re under a lot of pressure to deliver reviews on time. I think that when the public actually gets the game and sees the additional amount of work that was put into the 360 version, from a core gameplay standpoint, they’re going to be surprised and happy with the game.” 

Jeff challenges anyone to boot up the 360 version and perform a direct comparison to the standard Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions. “Put the two games side-by-side and take a look for yourself,” he insists. “You’ll see that all the cut scenes have been re-done. We’re showing the fans with next-generation graphics. The coaches, the cheerleaders, everything has been re-done.

“One of the things I think is going on here, when I see reviews, I think it was 1up.com who made the comment: ‘What is next-gen? Is it real or just a hyper-realistic thing that some people were expecting?’

“For us, we were really trying to capture realism. We were trying to capture what it looks like to watch a game on TV. When you sit down, what does the broadcast look like to you? That was really our challenge that we put forward, and not to make some over-the-top hyper-realistic game that has blown-out graphics that maybe look ‘more next-generation,’ but to us next-generation equals reality. That’s the path we want to go down.”

Q&A For 2K…6

Can you tell us more about the 24/7 mode?

Jeff Thomas: 24/7 is a mode we re-did this year with a partnership with Nike, they're one of the partners we have in the game this year. The game is about developing your character and being able to export that character into a franchise or a quick game and play with him. You start out at a really low-base level. You do a lot of drills and a lot of training. There's a lot of different games along the way. You're on this way to a tournament, the EBC, which is Entertainment Basketball Classics. We have different celebrities, we have Flava Flav, and different guys that you play along with NBA stars in different challenges to get development points and to get items that you use for your character to develop. You end up with Nike shoes, they give you bonuses and things like that. You develop your character through this mode and then you can export 'em and play with them in the game. 

What do the training games involve?

JT: We have different training games. They’re also in our franchise mode that you can use to train your player. You know, all the basics of basketball: shooting games and three-point games, things like that.

Some of the other challenges that are in 24/7, there [are mini-games] of 21, stealing the ball, and all kinds of different games you play along the way.

What’s this about animated clothing?

It kind of goes back to the movie industry. It’s been done in video games in the past on some level. I don’t think it’s been done on any other sports games at this level. The cloth is completely done physically. There are no graphics that are bound to the player model. The cloth actually has two straps on the jersey that holds the cloth to his shoulders, and it moves completely independent of the player model underneath.

Did you have to design this from the ground up, or do you have some kind of resource to pull from? Or at least prior experience from film that could help you design this?

It really did come from different sources. We did consult with some of the people who do a lot of the movie stuff. We have some in-house people that came from the movie industry. A lot of our development tools have the same capabilities. We’ve learned a lot from what they do and brought it to the game side. It was a big R&D effort. Most of the resources went into that effort. It’s a system we’re going to continue to utilize in all our sports games going forward.

Thanks to everyone at 2K Sports and Access PR for having a wonderful conference call.