Monday Tip-Off: Changing Views on Automatic Replays
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 reflections on changing my views on using automatic replays.
As I noted when I reflected on going back to manual substitutions, our basketball gaming habits and preferences can and do change. Maybe a particular game has a bug that requires a workaround, or perhaps you suddenly find that a specific feature is actually quite useful after all. You might discover that you change your mind again, or keep switching things up as you see fit. That’s basically how I now approach manual and automatic substitutions. There was a time when I’d always turn auto subs off and I’ve been gravitating towards that preference again, but sometimes I’ll still use them.
Automatic substitutions weren’t the only option that I used to adjust shortly after getting a new basketball video game. When automatic replays debuted in the NBA Live series, I ended up turning them off; usually after forgetting and skipping a few replays before heading into the options menu to save me the trouble! However, these days I usually leave automatic replays enabled, though I may still skip them if I feel the play wasn’t really worth watching again. Much like my evolving preferences with manual and automatic substitutions, my changing views on automatic replays came down to how I was playing games, and what I wanted out of the virtual hardwood.
When I was a kid playing basketball video games back in the 90s, I certainly found automatic replays to be a sensible and necessary addition to the NBA Live series. Young as I was, I understood that even if I didn’t necessarily want to make use of them, they should still be in the game for the people who actually did. Besides, I had the option of switching them off, so they were hardly an annoyance for very long. Of course, looking back, it’s interesting that I wasn’t more enthusiastic about them. As an obsessed basketball fan keen to see the games become deeper and more realistic, you might think I’d be in favour of automatic replays, especially following huge dunks.
It was probably just youthful impatience. As cool as it was to see an aspect of a real NBA broadcast represented on the virtual hardwood, replays can interrupt the flow of a game. Additionally, a smaller variety of animations and a tendency to show replays for baskets that weren’t altogether spectacular made them less exciting than one would hope. Even as I got a little older, I still had some quibbles with automatic replays. In fact, I remember being annoyed that replays in NBA Live 2003 would cue up while players were still hanging on the rim after a dunk. My criticism was that this was too soon, and that there should be a longer delay in cueing it up so as to be more realistic.
In hindsight, that’s an incredibly petty and pedantic gripe! The bottom line however was that for me, automatic replays were interfering with my enjoyment of games rather than enhancing it. With that in mind, it only made sense to turn them off; that’s why it’s vital to have those options in basketball games. At a certain point however, I began leaving automatic replays on, and simply skipping them if I didn’t want to re-watch a particular play. I can’t recall a precise moment or game where I consciously chose not to switch off automatic replays, but thinking back, my views were changing in the early to mid 2000s, so it was likely around then that I stopped turning them off.
Again, it wasn’t really a deliberate choice, but thinking back, there are a few reasons why I stopped bothering to disable automatic replays. Improvements to animations and presentation made replays more interesting and exciting to watch. I was a getting a bit older, so some of that youthful impatience was beginning to evaporate. Replays triggered faster and could also be skipped quicker, so they didn’t bring the action to a screeching halt as they once did. To that point though, depending on the age of the title I may still switch off automatic replays, or at least reduce their frequency, while retro gaming. While I’ve come to like them, they are still a hindrance in some games.
Funnily enough, I’d also suggest that having manual control over instant replay – i.e. triggering a cinematic replay on command – ended up making automatic replays more palatable to me. Once again, this goes back to around the mid 2000s, particularly with the Freestyle Superstars replay in NBA Live 06 PC. It was too tempting not to watch some of my most exciting plays again, and it conditioned me to be more comfortable with interrupting the action. Not that I wouldn’t pause the game and enjoy a highlight in instant replay mode before or after games began including those manual replay triggers, but it was a more convenient method that I still ultimately had control over.
Unfortunately, those manual instant replay triggers haven’t become a staple feature, so I’ve ended up relying on automatic replays. Of course, they don’t always trigger when you want, so it’s important to have robust manual instant replay functionality as well. Indeed, even if an automatic replay does trigger, sometimes the game will choose an awkward angle or straight up obscured view, or only show the end of the play, leaving out the slick move that set up the spectacular finish. In those cases, the manual instant replay is a handy and indeed essential fallback option, as are the highlights accessed through the game track, and the reels that we can view on the player statistics screen.
That brings me to why I’ve not only become more open to leaving automatic replays enabled, but also enthusiastic about it. Obviously the aforementioned improvements have gone a long way in making them more enjoyable, and thus an immersive aspect of the virtual hardwood for me. However, there’s another reason why I’m inclined to use automatic replays nowadays: content creation. Whether it’s capturing a screenshot from an angle that’s easier to get using an automatic replay, or recording footage of a highlight with TV-style presentation, they’ve proven to be very useful. When I wasn’t capturing as much media, I didn’t have that secondary use for the automatic replays.
Once again, automatic replays aren’t always perfect. There are still times when they’ll annoyingly be triggered on a very basic play, but then not after a spectacular moment. As I mentioned, occasionally they’ll get a bad angle or miss part of the play that you really want to capture or watch again, which is where manual instant replay comes in. The problem with instant replay mode in many games is that we don’t have sufficient control over the camera, making it difficult to get the TV-style angles that are used in automatic replays. Getting the right speed or making camera cuts can also be difficult. If nothing else, it brings gameplay to a halt as you set up all the angles and playback.
For a few generations of basketball video games now, automatic replays also have the benefit of removing details such as player indicators. You can’t always get that clean, TV-style presentation in manual instant replay mode. Although many games do allow us to hide the target indicator underneath the ball or designated player, others titles are missing that functionality. It’s not the end of the world, though for me it’s a bit of a distraction whenever it’s there in playback. If some of my screenshots or manual replays ever look oddly angled or zoomed in, it’s because I’m trying to hide that indicator! Again, it’s why automatic replays are so convenient for media capture.
Having frequently disabled them in the basketball games I played growing up, I absolutely understand the preference for switching off automatic replays. Dee and I almost always play our co-op sessions with them turned off or toggled to the lowest possible frequency, especially if we’re revisiting an older game where they really slow down the action and can’t be quickly skipped. When I’m playing solo though, I’ve definitely come to rely on them as a convenient way of generating a replay of my memorable moments. It wasn’t something that was on my mind when I didn’t have the means or need to capture media. Content creation has a way of changing your habits!
Furthermore, contrary to the popular stereotype, I’ve become less stubborn about my basketball gaming as I’ve grown older. That’s not to say that I don’t have settings and games that I prefer, but I’m certainly far less of an NBA Live fanboy with too many inflexible opinions on how basketball video games should be played and designed! Options and functions that I once considered undesirable, or felt I had no need for, have become useful and more appealing as I’ve branched out into other games and modes of play. As I said, the games themselves have also improved over the years, leading to certain aspects becoming more viable and enjoyable than they once were.
I think a big part of growing up is giving second chances to the things that you once turned your nose up at out of fear, unfamiliarity, or just plain stubbornness. That’s not to say that maturity means changing your mind about everything, particularly when it comes to matters that are more serious than basketball video games. However, there have been a number of things that I flatly rejected when I was younger that I’ve come to enjoy as I got older, leaving me to wonder how it took so long to open my mind to them! I suppose it’s something that many of us have to grow into. I’ll also suggest that it helps when we’re being encouraged, not forced, to step outside of our comfort zone!
Of course, to coin a common phrase these days, it isn’t necessarily that deep. When it comes to automatic replays in basketball video games, for me it was a matter of the games improving and their implementation becoming more desirable, as well as the need to capture media for content creation. At a certain point, I forgot to switch them off, realised that I enjoyed them, and ultimately found them to be useful. Still, much like manual and automatic substitutions, it’s a good example of how a firm preference can change rather organically, without a conscious decision. Sometimes it’s a matter of necessity, but I enjoy when new basketball gaming habits arise due to serendipity.
The post Monday Tip-Off: Changing Views on Automatic Replays appeared first on NLSC.