Monday Tip-Off: Padding & Politics in Player Ratings
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on the padding and politics involved with player ratings.
Although the discussion has seemingly turned to MyPLAYER builds and figuring out the meta, I’d suggest that real player ratings will always be a point of interest. They’re still vital in accurately representing the players’ abilities and skill levels, and if you play franchise modes or with retro teams, you’ll notice mistakes and inconsistencies. There’s also still an interest in which players are top-rated in key categories such as dunking and three-point shooting, as well as where everyone ranks with their Overall Ratings. Again, it may not be as much of a focus now, but there’s still a discussion.
To that point, it’s clear that personal opinions and politics do play a role in both our view of the ratings, as well as how they’re assigned in the first place. Lest I sound like a grumpy old head grumbling about modern games, let’s make it clear that this has been going on for many, many years! Indeed, I’d suggest that as long as basketball video games have had visible ratings – and in some cases, where there have been some sneaky hidden mechanics – player abilities have been subject to padding and politics. There are times when it’s been fairly benign or even enhanced the experience, but it can certainly be problematic and damaging when it leads to widespread inaccuracies.
I’m sure the term “padding” is clear when it comes to player ratings. It refers to little boosts here and there so that a player ranks higher in a specific category, or overall. “Fudging” is another term that is often used here. Generally speaking, these boosts aren’t totally inaccurate or inappropriate, but they might be slightly more generous than what other players are given despite similar statistics and other criteria. As for “politics”, I’m not using it in the governmental or party sense. In this context, it means an agenda, such as hyping up a player’s skill level and/or their standing in both the current NBA and league history, which may be highly debatable to say the least.
As I noted, this is something that’s been happening in basketball video games for a long time. If we go back to the original NBA Jam and the Tournament Edition sequel, you’ll find a handful of questionable ratings. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is back then, it wasn’t as easy to quickly gather detailed information about every player in the league, or watch every team play. To that end, the developers have admitted that some ratings were mostly guesses. Beyond that though, other ratings ended up being fudged in the name of balance, such as ensuring that every team had a great shooter, flashy dunker, strong defender, and so on, in order to be fun and viable.
Gameplay mechanics naturally played a role as well. The original NBA Jam games didn’t have a rebounding rating, making it impossible to accurately represent Dennis Rodman’s greatest strength. He instead had a high blocking rating, despite not being a prolific shot blocker. This allowed him to play tough interior defense, as per NBA Jam’s mechanics. Similarly, Freestyle Superstars in NBA Live 06 required set ratings to qualify for those abilities, which some players didn’t meet based solely on their stats. This is why Bruce Bowen and Tayshaun Prince were better at steals and blocks than they should’ve been. The boosts were necessary to qualify for the FSS movesets.
This is a good example of the politics (and optics) that lead to the padding of player ratings. As one of the toughest defenders back then – if not always the cleanest – it would’ve looked out of place if Bowen lacked the new Outside Stopper designation and moveset. Lowering the threshold for the steal rating would’ve allowed too many other players to potentially qualify, so fudging his abilities was preferable. The same goes for Prince’s reputation as a lockdown defender. It’s an idea that’s been done much better with Badges and Signature Skills. While those concepts have their own issues, the ability to assign them independently of ratings means that less padding is required.
The takeaway here is that while it can be an inelegant solution at times, padding player ratings and the “politics” behind such decisions needn’t be a bad thing. Classic NBA Jam wasn’t ruined by player ratings that had been fudged in order to better suit the gameplay mechanics, or balance teams so that they’re more enjoyable to use. Even stacking the deck against the Bulls made for a fun Easter egg! Likewise, padding the ratings for Freestyle Superstars didn’t lead to too many inaccuracies, with boosts such as Bowen’s tending to be rare. As for Overall Ratings, some fudging here and there has allowed them to accurately rank players at a glance…well, most of the time!
That’s all well and good. However, sometimes politics do have a negative influence over padding player ratings. Take the maximum 99 Overall rating, for example. In theory, it’s intended to be rarefied, reserved for the best of the best and candidates in the Greatest of All-Time discussion. In practice, there have been games with far too many 99 Overall players. The All-Decade teams in 2000s NBA 2K titles were quite bad about that, and NBA 2K9 also had way too many active players rated 99 Overall. Even in games where the player ratings are generally better balanced, it’s becoming more common to see stars with 99 Overall Ratings, or certainly close enough to it.
There have also been stunts such as the roster update for NBA 2K16 that made Steph Curry 99 Overall for 30 hours, in celebration of him winning his second MVP award. Obviously, Curry was already one of the top-rated players in the roster and flirting with a 99 Overall Rating at that point, so it wasn’t outrageous or game-breaking. It was still a publicity stunt to promote the game’s cover player though, treating the mark of a player being rated 99 Overall as a marketing gimmick rather than a true representation of their skill and abilities. Mind you, the same could be said of the inflated Overall Ratings outside of promotional stunts like 99 Overall Steph Curry.
Consider that prime Michael Jordan on the 90s All-Stars and in the Legends Pool of NBA Live 2000 was “only” rated 95 Overall. Indeed, back then, 90+ Overall Ratings were only for all-time greats and maybe a couple of standout contemporary stars of supreme skill. Over the next few years, MJ became the standard for 99 Overall, while other Legends saw a jump in their ratings, as did current All-Stars who were bound for Springfield some day. That was fine and ultimately the right move, but politics soon led to the league-wide inflation of player ratings. There was some merit to that, but it also devalued ratings scales that were intended to differentiate all the players.
In the mid 2000s, it wasn’t uncommon to see the bottom-ranked players in the NBA with Overall Ratings of 50-60, or even less in some games. While this emphasised the gap between the top stars and benchwarmers clinging to a roster spot, we can’t deny that it must’ve been incredibly insulting for the latter, who are still pro players at the end of the day! Developers have told stories of players taking issue with their ratings, in basketball games and other sports titles alike. There’s no doubt that raising the floor for lower-rated players is a move to placate them and avoid hurt feelings. I understand it, as any NBA player is going to have too much pride to accept a 30 Overall Rating!
Of course, while it’s understandable, it’s also had the side effect of inflating everyone’s Overall Ratings, so that benchwarmers, valuable role players, borderline All-Stars, and superstars can still stand apart from one another. It means the top current players often have Overall Ratings on par with Hall of Famers with much better resumes, skills, and historical significance. That’s fine if they’re a sure-fire future Hall of Famer themselves, but it’s all too easy for a Top 50 current player to be at the same level as someone who’s widely considered Top 50 all-time. There are also benchwarmers with comparable Overall Ratings to superior role players on some of the classic teams.
Inflated ratings also make the grind in MyCAREER even worse. At 60 Overall, our MyPLAYER’s starting ratings don’t even match the worst real player in the game, let alone those of the top prospects that they’re supposedly meant to be among. Here, the agenda that keeps those ratings so low involves the profit-driven recurrent revenue mechanics. As I’ve noted on several occasions, those mechanics have sadly become so normalised that people will readily defend them as a necessity, not to mention a status symbol among gamers (see the whole discussion about being “broke“). Too many people have bought into the suits’ agenda of poor value and predatory mechanics.
As for basketball politics, inflated ratings also push the narrative of today’s players being more skilled and better athletes than ever. It’s why we see some tremendously athletic historical players with insultingly low speed and jumping ratings. It’s why we see LeBron James boasting better midrange ratings than some versions of Michael Jordan, despite it statistically being one of LeBron’s weaknesses and one of MJ’s greatest strengths, even earlier on in his career. Politics and agendas lead to such padding; of course, so do a lack of care and attention, and sloppy copy and paste jobs. At least some inaccuracies are clearly intentional though, and really shouldn’t be.
Once again, there are benign examples of padding player ratings, and yes, oversights do happen. Some of the inflation and inaccuracies are clearly driven by an agenda though, and that’s unfortunate. I understand promoting the current league, and not wanting to insult professional athletes that will likely be dropping by the studio for a face scan. There are egos to soothe, and league directives as far as marketing. Still, in a sim title, accuracy and realism are the name of the game, and anything more than slight padding to accomplish a desirable result runs the risk of ruining player ratings. It may be wishful thinking, but I’d love to see fewer agendas in the official rosters.
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