It’s fair to say that the storylines are the main selling point MLB The Show 24 highlighted this year’s marketing blitz by examining both the Negro Leagues and Derek Jeter stories which will be come to the game. But storytelling takes many forms.
The savings from year to year have since disappeared MLB The Show 21but it’s a hot topic beyond even the removal of online franchise mode years ago because Y2Y saves were unique to The Show. They set The Show apart and created connections that were probably even deeper than the ones you made with friends in an online franchise.
Operating system user country boy created a topic weeks ago about Y2Y saves and have been diving into this topic of storytelling, so I want to post a lot of what he wrote below to use as a jumping off point to delve a little deeper into the topic of storytelling and sports video games.
Here is countryboy:
It wasn’t until MLB ’16 that I really took advantage of this feature, and over the next 5 episodes of MLB The Show, I went through 13 seasons in a single franchise. And it was glorious!
I still remember vividly the stories that unfolded during those 13 seasons. Like the Yankees never made the playoffs (sorry Yankees fans) to drafting a player named Juan Fabregas, who was an outfielder who wasn’t the best in the field, had a lumpy arm, but could hit. He was a potential C who eventually made it to B, and went from a last minute pick to an All-Star and National League MVP contender in the span of 8 seasons. I watched the Marlins go from bottom player to World Series champions and “rivals” to my Cardinals for 3 years as we battled in the playoffs, twice in the NLCS, each winning once. I’ve seen players hit their 500th home run, earned their 1,000th strikeout, and I’ve seen rookies rise through the ranks of tomorrow’s stars to become today’s stars.
And it all happened one game at a time, one pitch at a time over the course of 13 glorious 162-game seasons, plus spring training, All-Star Games and the playoffs. Each game told a story that would continue the next day. Each season told a story that would continue into the following year. Each draft marked the start of an All-Star caliber, and dare I say Hall of Fame career that would unfold over time.
And now all of that is gone, or at least extremely condensed.
It’s a nice thing to read, and it’s a reminder of how interesting sports video games can be in creating these kinds of ecosystems for people to create their own stories. Y2Y economies were the merging of time and engagement within a sandbox. None of the stories Countryboy explains would be possible without great gameplay, a suitably dynamic franchise mode, and a development team that did everything possible to keep Y2Y’s saves alive season after season – until they didn’t anymore.
But that’s just one way of telling a story. When creating Storylines, it’s not about commitment, time – but not longevity at least – or creating a sandbox. Telling the story of Derek Jeter’s career or that of the Negro Leagues is in a sense more “traditional” and fits more within the framework of cinema or television. When it works, it’s because of the charisma of its storytellers, and its film focuses as much on history and education as it does raw entertainment. Of course, the Negro Leagues is much more about education and history because it’s a lesser known story, it’s more important as a time capsule, and it happened much longer ago than Derek Jeter playing for the most famous MLB franchise in the 90s.
Regardless, the fact remains that Negro Leagues storylines would fail without Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick, without his obvious love of history and natural ability to tell a story. Without that charisma, it’s a mode that gives you a history lesson, but it’s framed around a Moments feature that is the same gameplay and much of the same presentation we had years before Storylines existed. In other words, it wouldn’t have the juice to be as engaging. This isn’t to shortchange the developers – they need to create the layout, the architecture and realize that Kendrick is perfect for the role – but Kendrick is what ties it all together and it works.
Whether the Jeter Storylines feature will be as good remains to be seen, but there is an obvious love for this feature on SDS’s part, and it shows in their art and their appreciation for New York and this moment in time, so it comes down to Jeter’s ability now to tell his story.
Sticking with MLB The Show, another way to tell a story is a sort of fusion between the traditional elements mentioned above and the sandbox. Whether it’s RTTS or March to October, you’re placed more in a sandbox, but you’re fed narrative beats and things to overcome that are different depending on the mode. In Road to the Show, it’s more about in-game podcasts, cutscenes, and directed choices mixing with how you want to shape your player. March through October is about trying to bring things like the trade deadline, the draft, and what type of team you even want to be to life, all on an accelerated schedule where you play the biggest moments of your season.
Nothing I describe is meant to say that one storytelling device is better than the other, rather it is to highlight how powerful time can be as a storytelling device. We have a Dynasty headquarters on the forum which houses the stories people want to tell about their franchises, career paths, etc. In a way, these are OS saves from the year 2008, because these people spend a lot of time sticking to one version of the game for several years (or porting the same story into a new game). They enrich their experiences in games like NBA 2K or Madden through the power of their own imagination and their ability to write articles and create media.
It’s a lot of work to do that. This is why many of these stories on this forum end up ending. But it reminds us that storytelling comes in many forms, and that video games are unique. I don’t intend to bring this up or say “this is what makes video games special compared to books/movies/whatever” because they all have their place, and they all do certain things better than another medium.
Instead, it’s more about explaining that the people who want their 2009 savings back aren’t because they’re pushing for something just because it’s gone, but rather they want it back so bad because that’s the power of something that seems so simple. It’s not a feature that takes a lot to explain (even if it’s absolutely painful to implement on the developer’s side), and it could conceivably appear as a single point in a press release. Yet what these Y2Y saves unlock is a powerful form of storytelling.
And if you want to put that into dollars and cents, implementing a storytelling device that creates such a strong connection then creates a consumer that will continue to climb that hill to give you money year after year.
