NLSC Your source for basketball video games.
This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at Hot Spots in NBA Live 08.
The goal of implementing an increasing amount of realism in basketball video games has resulted in developers experimenting with a variety of mechanics and attributes. Some of these ideas have worked out better than others, or laid the foundation and evolved into better concepts. This is important to remember, as it can sometimes seem as if certain ideas were only implemented for the sake of adding something new to an annual release. It may be a sign that we’ve forgotten the reasons behind those ideas, and that poor execution doesn’t necessarily mean there was never any merit to them.
Case in point: Hot Spots in NBA Live 08. It was a solid idea that paved the way for more nuanced shooting attributes, but that first iteration in NBA Live 08 also had negative effects on gameplay mechanics. It’s all too easy to focus on the undesirable results of that first implementation of Hot Spots, and conclude that there was no value in the idea. However, future games proved that when implemented correctly, it was a step toward achieving the realism that we desired. Let’s take a look back…way back…
By the mid 2000s, it was clear that to accurately portray a player’s shooting abilities, simply assigning players a two-point rating (sometimes just labelled their field goal rating), three-point rating, and free throw rating, wouldn’t be sufficient. After all, there is a large area within the arc, and a player that scores most of their points in the post needs different ratings and attributes to one who mostly goes to work in the midrange. As such, games began to expand their shooting ratings, on top of including attributes such as shooting range and preferred scoring area. In the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of NBA Live 08, Hot Spots were intended to add further depth to shooting.
Now, many basketball video games have featured spots on the floor that offer higher percentage shots. One of the most infamous examples is the “Corner Three Glitch” in Double Dribble, though the game also featured other such “hot spots”. Obviously, the key to success in those games was to discover those areas on the floor, and shoot from them as often as possible. In some ways, the idea of Hot Spots in NBA Live 08 was based on that, but with more realism in mind. Rather than generic parts of the floor, each player had their own Hot Spots – sometimes called Hot Zones – where they were more effective from. These attributes were based on real life data and tendencies.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the court was divided up into different areas. If you’ve looked into stats regarding shot locations, or perhaps glanced at the relevant tab on a player card in NBA 2K, this breakdown will be very familiar. The different colours represented a player’s abilities for that zone. As you can probably glean, red indicated areas where a player was most effective from, yellow indicated areas where a player tended to at least shoot a decent percentage, and blue indicated areas a player struggled from, or tended not to prefer. If this sounds like Dynamic DNA, it’s because it was basically a forerunner to that concept, which of course debuted the next year.
Of course, the Hot Spots in NBA Live 08 weren’t quite as sophisticated as Dynamic DNA, but they were an attempt to realistically represent the players’ shooting abilities and tendencies. To that end, they were meant to encourage gamers to use players to their strengths, while the CPU would also try to do the same. Unlike the secret hot spots of more primitive titles, gamers could use LB/L1 to display the Hot Spots for the player with the ball. This could be done while shooting around in the practice arena, or during gameplay. Memorising a player’s Hot Spots was obviously beneficial, but you could always bring up that on-screen guide without interrupting the action.
You’re probably thinking that this sounds like a fantastic idea, and on paper it was. A good shooter would be reliable regardless, but they were even more dangerous when you made the effort to get them the ball when they were open in their preferred spot to shoot from. Role players like Bruce Bowen, who liked to spot up in the corner, could also be effective in the same way they were in real life. That aspect was great, but the first implementation of Hot Spots in NBA Live 08 also made a controversial change to shooting mechanics: timing was no longer a factor in shot success. Just press the button, and the combination of player ratings, airspace, and Hot Spots did the rest.
There was a precedent for not utilising user timing in NBA Live’s shot mechanics, but it was always optional. Going back to NBA Live 95, we were able to switch between User and CPU shot control, with the former requiring us to properly time our releases, and the latter trusting the dice roll. It was also notably impossible to travel when using CPU timing as the shot would always be released, whereas continuing to hold the button with User timing would result in the player landing without releasing the shot. There was always disagreement and debate as to which was preferable, much as you’ll find competing opinions about the Shot Timing and Real FG% options nowadays.
While there’s no correct opinion or method – then or now – what we can (or should) all agree on is that as long as we have both options, we can all play the way we want, and that that’s ideal. However, with the removal of shot timing in NBA Live 08 in favour of utilising Hot Spots, control was taken out of our hands. Even though it’d been done in the name of realism, and even if you understood that it was now about getting open in the right spots, if you preferred your shot timing to matter, then it wasn’t desirable. Gamers who had always preferred User Timing felt that it dumbed down shooting, being too easy on lower difficulty levels, and artificially challenging on higher levels.
Interestingly, if you go back and shoot around in NBA Live 08’s practice arena, it may not be immediately obvious that there’s no shot timing. Your muscle memory will cause you to hold the shoot button and attempt to release it at the appropriate moment, but it won’t have any impact. It may not be until you try to intentionally trigger the very early and very late release animations from previous games that you’ll realise that the shooting animation plays out the exact same way, regardless of how long you hold down the button. One could argue that it addressed an issue found in previous games, but it was likewise an inelegant and undesirable solution in other respects.
Although there had been some clunkiness to the early and late release animations – especially in NBA Live 07, where they interfered with the new signature shots – they had a use. Removing shot timing and those early and late release animations resulted in smoother, more consistent jumpshots, but it was no longer possible to put up quick shots to beat the buzzer, or delay your release in an attempt to elude a shotblocker. The inability to commit a travelling violation also removed an important challenge, particularly when taking a risk on a late release. Again, understanding the underlying concept didn’t make it a preferable solution, as many gamers wanted that control.
Hot Spots lasted beyond NBA Live 08, but shot timing returned in NBA Live 09. The new Dynamic DNA also expanded on the concept, innovating with updates powered by Synergy Sports. It stands as proof that Hot Spots were a great idea by themselves, but entrusting shot success to them without the challenge and control of user timing was clearly the wrong direction. To their credit, the devs quickly changed course, but it was an unfortunate misstep to make, especially with the series losing ground to NBA 2K. Indeed, NBA 2K9 outsold NBA Live 09. The reasons for that went beyond the Hot Spots and removal of shot timing in NBA Live 08, but they likely didn’t help.
I should also note that Hot Spots were implemented in the Current Gen version of NBA Live 08, which included the PC port. However, it was in a very limited manner, and they didn’t benefit from any official roster updates. Interestingly, the Current Gen version didn’t remove shot timing, but did rework Freestyle Superstars into a mixture of the existing concept and the new Go-To Moves from the Next Gen release. The inclusion of these elements was done to give something new to gamers on PC and the now-outdated consoles. Unfortunately, their half-baked implementation meant that they were useless at best, and led to some sloppy, arcade-like gameplay at worst.
The same can’t be said for the Next Gen version. Contrary to what is often claimed, NBA Live was definitely striving to be a realistic sim game during this era. The expansion of shooting attributes with Hot Spots, addition of signature moves and enhanced post play, and the pace in general, all demonstrate how the game was aiming for realism. That it fell short in quality, or erred in decisions such as removing shot timing, doesn’t change the aim or the style. It does speak to the difficulties the series was enduring, especially in the wake of the disastrous NBA Live 07. NBA Live 08 was a marked improvement over its troubled predecessor, though that is a low bar.
Hindsight may be 20/20 as far as realising something was a bad idea or not quite what it needed to be, but we can easily overlook the reasoning and circumstances behind it, as well as the parts that had merit. I believe that’s happened with Hot Spots in NBA Live 08, at least to some extent. It was a concept that furthered the efforts of player differentiation and accurately representing their abilities, thereby striving for a more realistic style of play. Unfortunately, removing the shot timing took away too much control, arguably overshadowing its good intentions. Still, it paved the way for deeper tendencies and attributes, continuing to innovate even beyond the series’ Golden Age.
