The Daily Grind: Where are all the sports MMOs?

With the advent of the college football bowl season and NFL playoffs, it's likely that you know someone caught up in the hysteria that surrounds a favored sports team in the thick of a championship chase. You may even be a sports fan yourself, and you also may have wondered -- as we did -- about the discernible lack of sports-based games across the MMO landscape.

MMOs and sports would seem to be a match made in heaven. After all, fantasy football is a huge pastime for millions of people, and a box-score-reading sports geek is one of the few folks on earth who could give a stat-parsing MMO min-maxer a run for his number-crunching money. Aside from the occasional F2P game or a beta that few are aware of, MMO sports titles are rarer than a mythical national championship. Today's Daily Grind asks: Where are all the sports MMOs? Would you play one?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Reader Comments (36)

While both EA and 2k keep putting out their Maddens and NBA 2k?s, there's not much point in developing a fully fledged sports MMO.

I think and hope that the closest you'll see to this is either Franchise mode in Madden or Fantasy Football. But then again if they could keep the dev cost down maybe you could make a buck on it.

Ugh, nope. 0 interest.
Last sports game I played was NBA Jam at the arcade..

@TheGreatMachine TRUTH! That was essentially the last sports game i played too(on the SNES though).

@TheGreatMachine

Yep. I have absolutely no interest is a sports game at all, nevermind an MMO version.

I believe the demographic for sports games and (non-WoW) MMO's do not overlap very much. I say non-WoW because with 12 million subs it blows everything else out of the water and is not your typical MMO.

I don't play sports games normally, so I don't see me playing an MMO based on one.

And how do you suggest a sports MMO working?

What would be the fun aspect of it? Would it be playing the sport in question? Or would it be living the life of the sports figure?

What would the classes be? "Athlete" "Manager" "Trainer" "Trophy Wife"?

You can quickly see what a ridiculous idea this is, and what a ridiculous writeup this was.

@Lethality

"What would the classes be? "Athlete" "Manager" "Trainer" "Trophy Wife"?"
I'm still laughing =] MMO news must be slow today... Ooh!! How bout a hello kitty MMO ... O' wait......

@Lethality

This.
What a ridiculous question.

@Lethality

Its a valid question, nothing "ridiculous" about it..........

If the ball is a quest, and my team are my guild. The opposing defense is some dragons, and the field goal is a boss fight ;) Then it'll survive .

I'm a big fan of football, and by that I mean the sport where you kick a round ball with your foot as opposed to 'American Football', but I could never see myself playing some kind of MMO version, I don't see the need to when I can play the latest FIFA game online already, and for Manager style games I prefer offline play anyway.

If you include motorpsort though then I did play iRacing since launch until very recently and that could certainly be classed as an MMO, it was a fantastic simulation but I just found I didn't have the time required to put in the practice to be in any way competitive.

Well, there is one, maby not aimed at the american market though.
It's the live version of the hugely popular Football manager game series.
http://www.footballmanagerlive.com/

I could see a well integrated Management type of online experience working...but it's hard to categorize something like that an "MMO" per se. Games like FreeStyle online or FreeJack may be as close as we get to something like that.

As far as the picture is concerned:
I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer! HEY!

a Sports MMO was hinted at Years ago unfortunately the specifics behind it were such nonsense it was ludicrous to even think something like that would work
It would've been a baseball MMO where users would be the team players
The more I saw it then more I questioned whether or not that would Realistically work

I'm not a big sports fan myself but my kids are. They showed me this f2p football mmo (linked below) that is endorsed by the NFL and I believe it is fairly new. I believe you take on the role of the coach and tell the team what plays to make and then watch the plays happen. Something like that anyways, I only watched them play it a bit.

http://www.quickhit.com/

Would Bloodbowl count? It's about as close to a sports league based MMO as I can think of.

@Issmir I love this game.

The reason fantasy football and madden are so popular is the use of real players. Unfortunately that licensing is stuck with EA and they don't even produce nfl games on the PC anymore.
I dont think it would work without that aspect, even if it had some sort of gimmick like 'mutant league football' (for those who had a genesis). This is coming from someone who loves those games.

As was mentioned by Bub there is already a game based on the wildly popular Football Manager series, there's also FIFA online in Korea and a shitload of manager games that are browser based and involve thousands of people.
But don't expect an MMO about sports where you are the player soon.

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The Daily Grind: Where are all the sports MMOs?

Reader Comments (36)

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:13AM DraneceusRex said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:17AM Pewpdaddy said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:18AM TheGreatMachine said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 9:33AM mttgamer said

Posted: Jan 12th 2011 10:21AM drakon said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:24AM Greyhame said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:28AM Lethality said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:30AM Pewpdaddy said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 1:04PM milk steak said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 3:21PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:30AM Pojoh said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:32AM markt50 said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:32AM Bub said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:35AM Syesta said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:40AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:51AM Dianoga4 said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:51AM Issmir said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 3:24PM Lateris said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 8:56AM sn0wblind00 said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 9:09AM Gaugamela said

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