Sports Games

The sports genre is currently one of the most popular in modern gaming. In early days, sports-related video games were limited to those shown on major television, such as baseball, football, and hockey. The sports genre has benefited significantly from increases in technology. When playing original sports titles such as Atari Football on the Atari 2600, viewers had to stretch their imagination to see the star quarterback as a tiny pixel. Although it was a fun game to play, almost everything was left to the imagination. Newer technology sparked an increase in overall complexity of sports titles, allowing for league play as well as trading and customized player creation. Current versions of sports titles are likely to have almost a perfect tie-in with the current season with regard to team rosters and player stats, as well as startlingly realistic depictions of the stadiums and the players’ images.

Over time more niche sports such as the X-Games have become popular. Some have even achieved greater fame due to the video game adaptations of their events, such as Tony Hawk: Pro Skater by Neversoft. This game not only allows players to execute crazy tricks that defy the laws of physics completely but also defies the main characters in the game for their seemingly unlimited skateboarding skills.

Sports Genre and Java

From a purely developmental perspective, Java is a good development platform to use to create a sports title. One of the aspects that set most sports games apart is the cataloging of data related to plays and players. This data is particularly important for the hardcore fans and those who like to keep track of current players and team statistics. Some games allow players to play old all-star teams against the current player rosters. This feature requires strong organization and rapid access to the data during the game. Java is particularly strong when using database management, which can either hold this information locally or store it on a remote game server.

Another popular element in sporting games today is the multiplayer networked aspect. The ability to play head to head has significantly expanded the sports market as well as created great experiences for the throngs of fans. Sun Microsystems™ is a company that sells high-end servers and server technology. One of the important aspects of Java’s development was that it needed to play well with Sun hardware. For this reason, Java is notoriously powerful in server-based applications and can handle databases containing sports data.

A key criticism related to Java is that the most successful implementations of sports games occur in the console space. Though PC ports of many sports games exist, they are usually afterthoughts for a successful console release. Java currently has no implementation with major console providers. It is important to note the console market dwarfs the PC market by an estimated factor of 10 to 1. Whereas this is a goal for the future, limited progress has been made in making Java available for console developers. Part of the delay is the lack of Java compliance on the current generation of hardware, particularly related to floating-point restrictions. From the commercial standpoint, this limitation continues to hurt Java’s play for a larger acceptance from game developers working on sports titles as well as other typically successful console titles.

In summary, Table 1.1 lists the major benefits to using Java and the drawbacks for sports titles.

Table 1.1 :  PROS AND CONS OF JAVA IN SPORTS GAMES

Pros	Cons
Offers strong network libraries	Lacks a standard performance timer
Provides a scalable database foundation for use in custom playbooks and rankings	Lacks Java ports to major console platforms