ESPN NHL 2K5 Gives Gamers Broadcast-Quality Hockey

by Louis Bedigian

“We had a huge marketing effort to make sure that everyone knew – all the consumers and the retailers – that this was not a cheap game, this was not a bargain-based game for $19.99.”

With so many budget games on the market, it's very risky to release a high-quality game for under $40.  Sure, the payoff seems great.  In theory more people will buy a game that costs less, which would in return increase overall profits.  But gamers are a picky bunch, and we perceive a low price as a sign of a cheap game.

That was one of Sega’s fears when strategizing for ESPN NHL 2K5.

"When we were strategizing the price point (it started with NFL), that was one of our big fears,” says Anthony Chou of ESPN Videogames.  “What we had to do was make sure that retailers knew all the features.  We had a huge marketing effort to make sure that everyone knew – all the consumers and the retailers – that this was not a cheap game, this was not a bargain-based game for $19.99."

ESPN NHL 2K5 has superior graphics and is $30 less than its biggest competitor.  It comes to you from the House that built the Hedgehog, Sega, and offers unique features – like true-to-life ESPN-style broadcasting – that you won’t find anywhere else.

Sega recently held a conference call for the game to celebrate its highly anticipated release.  GameZone Online was there, and with hockey sticks in hand, we delved onto the ice with the hope that humans can someday grow new teeth.

Improved AI

Nobody likes a goalie that won’t give up a few shots every now and then.  Even worse is a goalie that only lets you score with a quick shot like one-timer.  That’s why ESPN Videogames spent a great deal of time improving the goalie artificial intelligence.  They’re much more realistic this time.  Players will be able to use a wide variety of shots to score, but they won’t be able to find a cheap niche that allows them to win the game every time.

As Nike might say, just shove it.

Party Mode

The amount of variety in this game is pretty shocking.  You can expect different season modes and a quick play option from any sports game.  But ESPN NHL 2K5 brings something new to the table: an all-new Party Mode.  Geared toward the multiplayer audience, Party Mode is filled with numerous mini-games.

The hope was that with this feature more gamers would be able to pick up and play the game regardless of their skill level.  That’s why they included mini-games like an obstacle course, where your goals are different and easier to learn than the sport, but still hockey-themed.

After skating around the rink for a few moments, GameZone Online broke away and shot a few inquisitive pucks at ESPN Videogames’s Ben Bishop and Anthony Chou.

Tell us how you optimized the graphics so that the Xbox version would look even better than the PS2 version.

ESPN Videogames: We basically started with the Xbox and wanted to do as much as we could to harness the power of that system.  One of the things you'll see, which you probably saw in our NFL game as well, is [Triple Pass Rendering] which really adds a lot more detail.  Like wrinkles, you actually see the mesh, and things that really stand out.  It's little things like that that the Xbox is a lot better at handling than PlayStation 2.

They do a lot more with cut scenes.  You'll see a lot more variety in crowd cut scenes.  Things that we aren't able to do on PS2.  It definitely gives us the opportunity to add a lot more detail to everything from their uniforms to the arenas to the player heads.

This guy is totally trippin’.

What can you tell us about the Online Leagues?

ESPN Videogames: Online Leagues are really cool, definitely one of my favorite additions this year.  There's really so much you can do.  There's a lot of different options as far as how many people you have, how many games you play, to how long the playoff series are, to what interval you have in between each game.  There's a lot you can do in [determining] how your league is played.  You of course have all the options available so you can decide exactly which settings you wanna play on.

What's really cool is once you start playing you can go to ESPNVideogames.com and actually view your league online and see all sorts of stuff (standings, etc.).  It's a great system to track what's going on.  A lot of that can be viewed in-game.  Also of course we've got rosters that you can be trading with people.  You know, if you're not doing so well 10 games in and you wanna make a change you can.  The rosters will update automatically.  It's really cool because you have so many options and so many stats to look at.

Which hockey players did you work with when making this game?

ESPN Videogames: Of course, Martin St. Louis, he's our cover guy.  We actually have a pretty good relationship with Marty Turco.  He's been really helpful to us, we've talked to him quite a bit.  He's always really interested in what we're doing.  He's a pretty big gamer so we talked to him about different things.  We're hoping we can even more in the future.

Also, Chris Drury and Brendan Shannahan, two of our former cover athletes.  They worked with us on the Dream Team mode.  It's extremely important to get different guys like that.  It's really interested to see from their perspective as an actual NHL player what they think of our game.  We're always open to any comments they have.  We're already talking about the features and stuff for next year's version.

Chris Drury’s dream page.

How do you go about designing the physics engine for each game?  Is this current engine an update of the previous one, and if so, how did you start with that one?  Did you do a lot of research?  Did you actually get out there and try to play some hockey just for fun?

ESPN Videogames: That's a tough one.  I don't know if I can give you the best answer to that 'cause that's more of a question for one of our programmers.  It's not a new engine this year, but we're always optimizing it.  One of the big things we do of course is just research by watching tapes of games over and over.

As far as going into more detail, I don't want to give you incorrect information.  It's always something we're looking to improve on.  A little bit of it is hard too; sometimes there's hardware limitations that don't let us do everything we wanna do.  I know one thing a lot of people ask for is stick collision.  Something like that would take up a lot of memory.  We're always trying to do everything we can to make it as realistic as possible but there's always hardware limitations.

Are the rosters going to receive an online update?

ESPN Videogames: Yes, we will be doing an update this year.  What makes it tricky is that there may not be a season.  And if there's not a season there won't be any player movement going on.  The rosters that we shipped with in the game are already a little bit outdated because of the trades [that occurred] recently.  So we'll definitely come out with one roster update once it gets closer to...probably next month closer to the potential lockout date.  You'll get an updated roster with all the stuff that occurred since the cut-off date.

Basically what happens is as you log on the game will automatically update your rosters so that you're playing with them every turn.

Hey!  Where’d the puck go?  I just had it a second ago…

How do you personally feel about hockey?  As someone close to the industry, do you think it will be back this year?

ESPN Videogames: That's a tough question.  As just a hockey fan I really hope it does.  Them sitting out for an extended period of time is probably going to do some considerable damage to the sport.  I'm worried.  I don't know if they'll be able to recover.

That part of me is really hoping they'll come back.  I gotta think that this cannot be good for the sport.

The other side of me, you know we deal with the NHL and we get updates to what's going on, and it sounds like both sides are pretty far apart.  I think they'll probably end up sitting out for a period of time.  Again this is my personal opinion, but I don't think they'll be out for the whole season.  It looks pretty certain that they're going to sit out, but I sure hope they come through.

Why the inclusion of the crib items?  Were you trying to make the game more arcade-like and give the players rewards for doing different things?

ESPN Videogames: I think you're talking about the Sky Box, which is NHL's equivalent to NFL's cribs.  The idea behind that is kind of what you said.  A big part of the Sky Box is giving you more to do so you don't feel like you're just playing a game all the time.  With all the user challenges we have there are so many different things you can focus on.  Something that you normally wouldn't do.  Then when you've complete some challenges you can go into the Sky Box and buy all sorts of unlockables.  We have much more this year – fantasy arenas; you can play hockey in the desert, you can play hockey in outer space; big head mode, etc.  Hopefully something for everyone.

Thanks to everyone at Sega for having a wonderful conference call.