Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five annoying file management issues encountered in various basketball games.

Saving our progress in basketball video games is something that we take for granted. Even going back to some of the oldest titles, the ability to save games and rosters was a common feature. After all, it’s impossible to finish a lengthy season in one session. Editing the rosters each and every time you boot up the game is a chore, though there are a couple of old games that required you to do just that. As technology improved and storage space increased, basketball games evolved beyond having just a couple of save slots, and a lone custom roster file.

As such, for several years and console generations now, we’ve had file management functionality that is pleasingly accommodating. There will be times when certain needs aren’t met, but generally speaking, it’s easy to preserve saved games and custom rosters, and manage them accordingly. Of course, technological improvements mean little in the face of poor design choices or subpar coding. Some games do err when it comes to their file management functionality, or are simply undesirably limited. From inefficient utilisation of storage space to technical issues, these are some of the more annoying problems that we encounter in basketball game file management systems.

1. Inability to Name Save Files

Most basketball video games do allow you to name your files, whether you’re editing rosters or saving your progress in a mode. Even if they don’t, games often assign a useful description based on the status and contents of the file. In a franchise mode, that will usually be the team(s) that you’re controlling, and the date you’re up to. In a career mode, the team, date on the schedule, and your Overall Rating are quite often utilised. There’s no issue with that, as those descriptions are straightforward and as informative as any that you’re likely to give them. The issue is with games that don’t assign descriptions, or allow you to name save files, leaving their contents a mystery.

Sure, it usually isn’t a long process to load up a file and see what it is. If you’re the kind of person that doesn’t bother naming their saves even when it’s possible, you can also end up putting yourself in this situation, and it’s all on you. You can also make a note of which file is which, though you shouldn’t have to do that, and it’s far from a foolproof system if you start overwriting files. This issue doesn’t present itself in too many games, but there are some that limit their file management in this way. NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360 is one such game. While I was on my retro basketball gaming kick with it, I became very aware of that annoying limitation when saving rosters.

2. Limitations on Number of Saves

Here’s a riddle for you: how many save slots do you need in a basketball game? As many as you need to have! In other words, the number of save slots that we need is always going to vary from person to person, but it’s naturally preferable to have too many rather than too few. There are technical reasons for enforcing a limit of some kind, instead of just allowing as many as the storage device can feasibly hold. Ports can also result in limitations applicable to one platform affecting another where it wouldn’t be such an issue. While this is understandable, it’s still frustrating when a game provides a very limited number of save slots that are quickly exhausted.

One of the most egregious examples is the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of NBA 2K14, which shared five save slots between MyCAREER and MyGM, and had only one custom roster slot. This was actually due to a poorly designed user interface. Not only was the frontend infamously cumbersome to navigate, but the backend resulted in the need to limit save files. Similarly, the limit of ten saved rosters in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of NBA Live was extremely easy to hit, especially if you were keeping backups. A choice between losing your existing data and not being able to start anew is an unappealing prospect, and an annoying file management issue.

3. Profile-Locked Saves & Custom Rosters

Thankfully, this issue isn’t as prominent as it once was. It was also more common on specific platforms, so it wasn’t a universal problem. Nevertheless, saved files being locked to the profile that created them was a hindrance to sharing them with your fellow gamers. In any situation where files had to be shared the “old fashioned” way – i.e. by distributing the original file rather than uploading it to in-game sharing services – it was either impossible to use someone else’s files, or you had to modify them to be attached to your profile. This process could be complicated and fiddly, assuming that detailed instructions (or even just a note that this was necessary) were provided.

Notably, the Xbox 360’s save files were notoriously inconvenient to distribute, as they needed to be “rehashed” in order to work with the end user’s profile. The tools are readily available, but it does mean extra steps, and the process can be intimidating to gamers who aren’t as technically savvy. Sharing functionality was introduced for titles that came out on Xbox 360, but they were only available as long as a game featured online support. NBA Live’s sharing function – the EA Locker – also required you to be friends with someone in order to share files, which compromised privacy. It’s nice to have in-game sharing, but it’s great when we can still fall back on the old methods.

4. Undesirable Order of File Listings

This becomes an issue once you begin to amass a large number of saved files. To that end, it’s not something that everyone ends up dealing with. Once you start working on custom rosters or installing mods, or starting a few different games and perhaps have a few backups on hand, the file management menu will become a lengthy list. As long as it isn’t a game where you can’t name the individual save files, you can find what you’re looking for without too much trouble. Knowing that a game orders saved files alphabetically, or perhaps by the date they were created, is obviously also helpful when browsing a long list. It’s not an impossible task to find what you’re looking for.

It can be annoying though, and those are the file management issues that I’m looking at here. Even if you know how a game orders saved files, it may not be desirable to you. Unfortunately, unlike file management in Windows and other operating systems, there are no options to sort and reorder files in a way that reduces scrolling and makes what you’re looking for easier to find. It also doesn’t help that there isn’t a consistent approach employed in the genre, or even within games from the same series. This is a situation where having a limited number of save files can actually be useful, but as noted above, that approach to file management results in annoying issues of its own.

5. Lost & Corrupted Files Due to Official Patches

The increase in official patches for basketball video games has been both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, we’re less likely to receive a patch in December that leaves the game broken for the rest of its life cycle. Additionally, modern consoles are also able to accommodate official patches, which were once more or less exclusive to PC. On the other hand, modding tools and plugins need to be updated in order to work with the patched version of the game, and certain mods may stop working. We’re also more likely to lose files – both custom rosters and saved games – when a new patch comes through. It isn’t a modding issue, as it will happen with a vanilla game as well.

Needless to say, this is the worst of the file management problems I’ve covered here. We can work around the others, and still find enjoyment in the games if it’s difficult or impossible to do so. Losing all the work you’ve put into a custom roster, or all of your progress in a franchise or career mode save, is a tremendous disappointment. It’s an event that will turn you off spending any more time with a game, if there’s no way of restoring your files. In the best case scenario, that may be possible via a backup, or by working with technical support. Unfortunately, the former can be ineffective due to online content, while the latter is frustrating when support staff unhelpfully shrugs.

Has your gaming or modding experience been impacted by these file management annoyances? What other annoying issues have you run into when it comes to file management? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Annoying File Management Issues appeared first on NLSC.