Monday Tip-Off: The Importance of Injuries

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on the importance of injuries in basketball video games.

Just like any other sport or physical activity, injuries are an unfortunate inevitability in basketball. From hard collisions and rough landings, to dirty play and simple wear and tear, there’s a possibility of getting hurt. Injuries have altered the course of series, seasons, and entire careers. You could say that they’re one of the leading causes of What Ifs! To that end, because injuries have a significant impact on the NBA, it only makes sense that they’re part of basketball video games. I’m mostly referring to the simulation games, but there’s a place for them in arcade titles as well.

Sure, in the moment, you may not be exactly thrilled to see injuries occur. You don’t necessarily want to see your virtual players get hurt any more than you’d wish for the injury bug to bite your favourite teams and players in real life. There are undoubtedly times when you’d prefer not to suffer any injuries on the virtual hardwood, so you’ll switch them off in the gameplay settings accordingly. If they’re unavoidable – such as being a story beat in MyCAREER – they can be extremely frustrating. However, I can attest that injuries have actually enhanced a handful of my franchise and career mode games. As such, they’re conspicuous by their absence in titles that don’t feature them.

In-game injuries certainly aren’t a recent innovation. As far back as the 90s, hard fouls carried the possibility of scratching players from the lineup. In early NBA Live titles, players could be injured and unavailable for the rest of the quarter, or sidelined for the remainder of the game. There were no specific injuries as in later games, but it was a still a realistic touch that could make things difficult if we lost a star or another key player. Of course, because we wanted to see games become deeper and even more realistic, we dreamed of those in-game injuries carrying over to the following game in season play. In lieu of that, we had to use our imagination, and sometimes other tools.

For example, if a player was injured for a quarter, we might have him miss the next game or two. Also, since there was a rule at the time that any player placed on the inactive list had to remain inactive for five games, you could have him miss more time for added realism. If a player was injured for the rest of a game, he’d be held out for a few weeks to simulate a more serious injury. We created “injury generators” that randomly selected a player in your lineup and an injury for them to sustain, along with a number of games for them to miss. Other methods such as rolling dice, flipping a coin, or drawing slips out of a hat, could be used to determine multi-game injuries.

As self-imposed challenges, these were obviously all done on the honour system and at your own discretion, if you felt it might ruin the fun. I’m sure it sounds incredibly weird and laughably primitive to anyone who didn’t grow up with those early games, but they were effective solutions for injecting some more realism into titles that didn’t have that level of detail yet. While they’re certainly not preferable to players actually being able to sustain injuries that last beyond the current game, I do have nostalgia for those makeshift solutions. They speak to how passionate we were about the games, how much we wanted to see them improve, and how willing we were to improvise.

Eventually, we came to see that depth added to the sim titles. In addition to players getting hurt during simulation, injuries sustained during gameplay could have an impact on future games. Furthermore, the injuries were specific: sprains, fractures, tears, and so on. Some were minor and just affected performance, while others were serious and put players on the shelf. It was the realism we’d been hoping for, and had been trying to emulate. Injuries could still be a bit too infrequent, so we didn’t ditch those injury generators and other solutions right away. Once sliders allowed us to determine injury frequency though, we could usually just leave it up to the games.

Mind you, I was still employing some self-imposed restrictions and imagination for my Chicago Bulls Dynasty in NBA Live 2004. If a player was placed on the inactive list, I wouldn’t activate them until five games had passed. Jay Williams was on the roster, but as he’d suffered what appeared to be (and ultimately was) a career-ending injury, I kept him on the inactive list throughout the entire 2004 campaign. I had a couple of players sustain minor injuries, but even though they were listed as day-to-day, I opted to sit them in order to both avoid further injury and challenge myself to play short-handed. It was more interesting than having a healthy roster for 82 games!

That held true for my Chicago Bulls Dynasty in NBA Live 06 as well. Injuries played a huge role in that memorable game becoming one of my all-time favourite virtual hardwood experiences. Naturally, at first it was a bummer when Ben Gordon broke his wrist and was ruled out for 20 games. However, that led to me deciding to sign Latrell Sprewell as a free agent, and finding a way to remain competitive without my rising star. In fact, thanks to injuries, no player on my roster ended up playing in all 82 games; a first for any of my full-length seasons! Along with Gordon missing out on being named an All-Star, it really added to the underdog feel of that first title run.

Although I have mixed feelings about MyCAREER stories saddling us with injuries – especially in NBA 2K17 when a bug negated my All-Star selection – being hurt has added to the journey. From riding the bench for the first two games and then getting an opportunity when a teammate went down, to missing a few more games later in the year with a hurt ankle, to having your very own “Flu Game”, injuries and illness do make NBA 2K14 MyCAREER’s tale more interesting. As I’ve played through six full seasons, having Carmelo Anthony and Terry Hanson suffer season-ending injuries has definitely resulted in each campaign having its own vibe, narrative, and challenges.

The fun that I’ve had with basketball video games as the result of injuries – whether I’m controlling the entire team or just a MyPLAYER – is why I believe they’re an essential part of franchise and career modes; assuming that you desire that level of realism, of course. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with turning off injuries if you find that always having a healthy roster is more enjoyable, and there are plenty of scenarios and ways of playing through seasons where it would be. If you do want the realistic touch of injuries and they’re not part of the gameplay however, you really do miss them. To that point, unfortunately they ended up being removed from NBA Live.

I remember how exciting it was to see injury animations in the NBA Live 10 demo. Players would hold their head or arm, clutch their knees and ankles after crumpling to the floor, or limp back up the court following a hard fall or collision. The commentary would acknowledge that they looked hurt, and might have to come out of the game. Best of all, unlike in previous games, these apparent injuries didn’t just occur when there was a foul, which was far more realistic. Sadly, that was the extent of injuries in the demo and the retail version of NBA Live 10 alike. Players will appear to get hurt, but they won’t be forced to the bench in the current game, or sidelined for future ones.

This lack of injuries was one of the factors that made it difficult for me to get hooked on NBA Live 10’s Dynasty mode all those years ago. While I’ve since developed a new appreciation for the gameplay and enjoy dusting it off for all kinds of exhibition showdowns, a season without the risk of losing any players remains unappealing. My enthusiasm for the NBA Live 16 Dynasty that I started last year has likewise been dampened by the prospect of having my entire lineup available all season long. I’m not ready to abandon it completely, but the risk of injuries adds to the flavour of the franchise experience. Without them, it’s missing an extremely important ingredient.

Now, you might suggest that I fall back on some old methods here. I’d be lying if I said that they hadn’t come to mind, and part of me really likes that idea. It’d be a fun throwback, not to mention back up nostalgic boasts about my generation’s ability to enhance our gaming through imagination and improvisation! At the same time, I’m not entirely keen to go so old school here. My expectations are different now that basketball games have advanced as much as they have. Just as I’m not inclined to pore over a printed street directory when I have Google Maps on my phone to navigate, I’d rather just play a title that features a deep, robust franchise mode and in-game injuries.

As I noted, injuries can also play an important role in arcade basketball video games. Whereas they’re a vital component for authenticity in the sim games, in arcade titles they can add a strategic element to the gameplay. I’ll admit that part of the reason I prefer NBA Jam Tournament Edition to the original NBA Jam is because I actually played it first, but after comparing the two, I still believe that TE made some excellent upgrades. One of them is the injury level. The more a player is knocked down, the more nondescript injuries he sustains, causing him to slow down and suffer a drop in performance. Stronger players can weather more hits before they start to get injured.

The injury level made the gameplay in NBA Jam TE slightly deeper. There was now risk and reward to the physical play. Opting to shove your opponent would wear them down, like the Bad Boy Pistons beating up on other teams back in the day. Of course, your players could suffer the same fate if you couldn’t avoid the physicality. However, shove attempts can leave you out of position and behind the play with depleted turbo, so it wasn’t always an ideal approach. Moreover, injuries provided an incentive to make substitutions so that players could recover and perform at their best. This meant playing with some different faces, and trying to avoid being stuck with bad matchups.

It’s a factor that’s missing from later arcade releases, including otherwise fantastic titles such as NBA Hangtime, NBA Jam 2010, and NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. As there are no injuries in those games, there’s usually never any reason to sub unless you’ve got a mismatch, or you feel like switching things up. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean if you have an OP duo, you can just ride them through an entire game no matter how often they’re being knocked to the floor. Again, they’re still superb games and they built on NBA Jam Tournament Edition in other ways, but the way that injuries encouraged subs added to the strategy, balance, and challenge.

With that being said, whether by design or by choice, basketball video games can still be a blast without injuries. I believe that in-game injuries that can carry over to future games in season play are essential to include in sim games, but there should always be the option of turning them off. Similarly, as much as I think that injuries in NBA Jam Tournament Edition were beneficial and could’ve enhanced its successors, I’d also still nominate On Fire Edition as the best NBA Jam title, and a contender for best arcade hoops title, period. I’d never say that anyone is wrong for preferring not to lose any players due to injury, particularly as there are times when that’s my preference, too.

Nevertheless, injuries have been and continue to be an important part of the virtual hardwood. Their absence from NBA Live during the seventh and eighth generation releases is another example of how the series took a step backwards, and lost some vital depth. Strange as it may seem to desire such an unfortunate turn of events, the risk of losing players and adjusting your lineup and strategy is a crucial element of a sim experience that strives to emulate real life down to the last detail. They make the games in season play feel alive, and connected. As unlucky as they seem when they occur, injuries have been a fortuitous mixed blessing that’s enhanced my gaming.