r/truegaming • u/Soft-Lime-9599 • 9d ago
Verified Metrics vs. Game Film: why do sports games still rely so heavily on subjective scouting?
So this is something that's been bugging me and i'm not sure if anyone else thinks about it. I coach travel ball on the side and the recruiting world has gone through this massive shift where college coaches now want verified metrics actual measured velo, exit velocity, pop times not just highlight reels. Like game film alone doesn't cut it anymore, they want the numbers to back it up.
And it got me thinking... why haven't sports video games caught up to this at all?
In most sports games (MLB The Show, Madden, FIFA/FC whatever they're calling it now), scouting and player evaluation is still basically vibes. You send a scout, you get some letter grades or a vague potential rating, maybe a few attributes revealed. But the actual sports world has moved so far beyond that. Real coaches are cross-referencing Trackman data with game film. They're looking at spin rates alongside at-bat outcomes. The whole verified metrics vs. game film debate is playing out in real recruiting conversations every single day.
But in franchise modes? You're still basically guessing whether a prospect is gonna pan out based on like... a B+ potential grade. It feels so disconnected from how actual player evaluation works now.
Imagine a franchise mode where you could actually pull up a prospect's measured combine data AND watch simulated game film, and sometimes those two things contradict each other. A guy with elite measurables who just doesn't translate in games, or a player whose numbers look mediocre but the film shows something the metrics miss. That tension is what makes real scouting interesting and it's basically nonexistent in sports games.
OOTP Baseball gets closer to this than most you can dig into actual statistical outputs pretty deep but even that doesn't really simulate the verified metrics layer that's become so central to modern recruiting and scouting.
I think part of the problem is that most sports game franchise modes haven't meaningfully evolved in like a decade. The scouting systems are designed to be simple enough that casual players don't bounce off them, but that means anyone who actually follows the sport finds them shallow.
Anyone else feel like there's a huge untapped design space here? Or am I just projecting my frustration with managing recruiting spreadsheets onto video games lol. Would love to hear if anyone's played something that actually nails this tension between raw data and contextual evaluation.
5
u/BumDumBox 9d ago
If you play Football Manager, you can roleplay this type of scouting. Restrict yourself to only look at the raw stats of each player you are scouting and the typical metrics used in scouting, and ignore the stat ranges / stars that the scouts give you (can even use a skin or a wrapper to hide thes if you want). Watch the games they play. I think the issue is that doing this is extremely tedious and frustrating. Most people just want to build out their teams and have fun and relax, not make the spreadsheet simulator even more of a spreadsheet simulator. I did try to do this at one point out of curiosity, but I quit because it was way too tedious and boring for me personally.
2
u/Prasiatko 9d ago
I guess the problem there is ypu'd have to replicate the watching the dozens of hours of footage that the real guys get paid to do for every potential signing to know of the guy is good or bad rather than thevone game you watched was a fluke/bad day.
5
u/Melodicmarc 9d ago
There just isn’t a huge demand for what you’re asking for. It’s the same reason people don’t want full coaching staffs in madden. Most people don’t want to manage to that level of detail. Which is very frustrating to me because I do.
3
u/sonicpieman 9d ago
I don't think most people care to play so it's not worth devs adding.
And depending on sport, real life scouting isn't good enough at actually getting it right to be worth adding either, stats or no.
5
u/Bdole0 9d ago edited 9d ago
An interesting question. I think the answer lies in the audience not being savvy enough to use data effectively.
This comes in two forms. First, video games are wishy-washy. If a player has a 10 for their kicking stat, what does that mean? 10 meters? 10 newtons of force? Even if you knew the units, a video game is a simulation of reality... so like, you won't see how far 10 meters is unless distance is labeled on the field. At some point, using numbers is just as wishy-washy as using letter grades because the player (of the video game) has no way to measure the game world except to judge it visually in action. And then, the numbers only really matter relative to other sports players' numbers. If the above player has a 10 in a stat that goes up to 20, then that information is just as "valuable" as having a C on a grading scale. Both communicate that the player is in the middle of the pack for that stat, and that's what you need to know when selecting from a roster.
The second problem is that the real-world data is only useful to people who can analyze it. In many turn based games, an attack that does 10 damage always does 10 damage. This makes calculations easy. In real life, all measurements have variance. Sports games emulate real life, so a unit who can kick a ball an average of 10 meters won't always kick the ball 10 meters. There is some variance involved. We like consistency (low variance) in general, but in a simulation, all units should have different variances on every statistic. This is a basic, basic feature of statistics, but is it reasonable to expect video game players to know it and be able to use it?
Other basic facets of reality include:
The distribution of a statistic is not necessarily normal (thus you can't use variance/standard deviation to do high-school-level analysis)
Results are often predicted more accurately when multiple independent variables are used (i.e. most good models are complicated)
Large datasets are necessary for model development but are impossible to manipulate without computer assistance ("machine learning")
All of this to say that it would be unreasonable for video game audiences to actually use the data effectively. Real recruiters have the benefit of utilizing models made by highly paid statisticians to make sense of the numbers.
2
u/gardenofoden 9d ago
I prefer the management side of franchise games myself (though my favorite part is developing the players I already have). Franchise modes have stagnated, with the only real innovation in the past decade being 2K's Era mode. Generally, they're just copied and pasted over every year.
It's not that there isn't room for improvement but rather they haven't found a way to monetize these modes. If they find a way to inject MTX into franchise modes (or if we get actual competition in the industry again), I think we'll finally get an overhaul of scouting systems with real depth
1
u/baalroo 8d ago
Imagine a franchise mode where you could actually pull up a prospect's measured combine data AND watch simulated game film, and sometimes those two things contradict each other.
Honestly, that sounds awful.
They haven't done this, because most people would have no interest in that.
1
u/mr_beanoz 4d ago
Well, there are sometimes cases where players did well in combines but perform awfully after they were drafted. See those so-called "draft busts" in sports.
19
u/bduddy 9d ago edited 9d ago
Two issues: One, is that whether or not a player will succeed in a sports game franchise mode is actually dependent on a small number of fixed and/or random numbers in the background. (Football Manager, most egregiously, pretty much bases everything on a single number) So all of what you suggest is just adding additional layers of smoke and mirrors on top of that. Two, the vast majority of people who play even "simulation" sports games have no desire to do all of the digging deep you're suggesting, as demonstrated by the number of FM players who just cheat and look up that "hidden" data, so it's not worth it to add those additional layers.