Sports Video Games Can Be Made More Fun by Editing Players Names
Most video games styled on professional sports give users the capability of changing the names and attributes of players. No doubt the first name change most of us make is inserting our own name into the game. With the recent advantages in imaging software we can even usually come up with a face and body that bears at a passing resemblance to ourselves. In the future, most games will probably come with photo-imaging capabilities that allow you to upload your digitized images of your actual face onto a player.
But back to the name changing. Especially in games with larger rosters and many players who either aren’t well known or aren’t real, it can be fun to create a little world featuring player names you recognize. The first thing you’ll probably want to do is insert the names of friends and family member. Unless you’re really popular or come from a huge family, however, this isn’t going to fill many of those rosters. This is doubly so if you play a baseball game with minor league players waiting to make it to the majors.
One thing I have enjoyed doing on my All-Star Baseball Game 2005 video game is to take a cue from the city in which the team plays and populate that team either with real or fictional players related to that city. For instance, my Boston Red Sox team features such players as Norm Peterson, Cliff Claven, Victor Ehrlich and Mark Craig. These, in case you didn’t realize it, are characters from Boston-based TV shows Cheers and St. Elsewhere. In fact, Sam Malone, who played a retired relief pitcher on Cheers, is the closer for the Red Sox.
The Chicago White Sox are another example altogether. I chose to stay away from any television series based in Chicago. After all, Chicago is known for its gangsters and the White Sox are known for throwing a World Series by players in league with gangsters. That’s why some of the players on my White Sox team include Bugsy Siegel, Henry Hill, Sonny Corleone and Al Capone, gangsters both real and fictional.
Another trigger might be the team’s nickname. For instance, the Devil Rays play in a city that doesn’t immediately come to mind as having a long and varied history of placement in books, TV or film. Ah, but the Devil Rays, now there’s a nickname! I decided to populate this team with real and fictional characters who have skirted the bounds of goodness. I personally wouldn’t go so far as to include someone like Hitler as a player, but the Devil Rays aren’t doing too badly with Hannibal Lecter, Keyser Soze and Auric Goldfinger on their roster. Bad guys playing for a team with the word Devil in their nickname. Pretty cool.
My favorite TV show is The Simpsons and as anyone who has watched it regularly knows this TV show probably is populated by more characters than any other in history. As such, I have many Simpsons characters sprinkled throughout my game–most of them on my expansion team is Portland which bears a remarkable resemblance to the show’s home of Springfield. Not just the biggies like Homer and Apu, but secondary characters like Troy McClure and Jimbo Jones and even characters who’ve only been mentioned and never seen like Pops Freshenmeyer. All Star Baseball 2005 has the added plus of allowing users to pick from over 600 different faces based on real life players to their created and edited names so part of the fun is going through and trying to find someone who looks like Apu or Krusty. And believe me, it ain’t easy finding someone who looks like Krusty!
Most games also allow users to edit their players’ abilities and you can take that into consideration when choosing names. For instance, Homer is rather powerful on the show at times, but he’s as slow as mud. Therefore I gave him good power but no speed. Same with my favorite literary character, the 300 pound Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. Sometimes it’s fun to kind of play around with what kind of physical attributes a fictional character might have if he were to play a game. Still keeping with the Simpsons motif, I edited a real life player so that he became town founder Jebediah Springfield. You may not know it, but in one episode Lisa Simpson reveals that Jebediah was once a thief known as Hans Sprungfeld. I decided to give Jebediah great speed so that could “steal” bases more easily. You know what I just thought?
I may just possibly have way too much time on my hands. Still, if you’re like me and you enjoy tracking the league’s leaders and season awards winners, it’s much more interesting to see names I recognize at the top of the list and winning the MVP than somebody I either don’t know or don’t like. Which is another great reason to edit names. If you don’t like Barry Bonds or Terrell Owens, but you enjoy watching their characters play, just change their names to somebody you do like.
