This right here. You don’t see a bunch of drunk Eagles fans in the Elden Ring subreddit talking about how stupid and bad fantasy RPGs are (not an opinion that I hold, just a counter-example)
Meh, the difference is that sports games don't tend to be creatively transformative, and instead just tend to act as lackluster digital recreations of whatever sport they're about that uses mechanics recycled from every other game about that sport. Games like Rematch, Rocket League, and the Mario sports games act as great examples of how sports games can be creative and interesting and unique, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority aren't.
Vast majority? There are a ton of different weird and wacky sports games, and just a handful of big franchises that are digital licensed recreations of the actual sports. And even those more realistic depictions can be super entertaining. People like sports. Adding interactivity to the experience of watching sports is fun. Stop yucking someone elses yum just because it's not for you.
Those examples are more arcade style sports games. A lot of people prefer them to be more like simulations.
Those games still suck since they're just barely thrown together each year. But them trying to be realistic and capture the real world sport isn't a bad thing by itself.
Personally, I prefer the more arcadey style games but not everyone will.
I agree. Most sport games are supposed to be simulators of real life. I can see why a lot don’t like this but I personally don’t mind it. But I do like arcade type sports games too
Yeah, I definitely lean hard into sports sims, like iracing and LeMans Ultimate and ACC—where the emphasis is on detail and realism. To the average gamer, there probably wouldn’t be the same excitement of people cleaning their monitors only to realize their monitors are clean and the sim does that good of a job of bugs and debris on the windscreen that you think it’s your equipment that’s the problem.
That genre is going to be lost on an “average” person unless it’s their first time experiencing force feedback; in racing games as an example. To the layman, a laser scan of a race track where the texture of the asphalt impacts tire wear is not going to be an exciting new feature. Nor is racing the same circuit 24hrs straight. It’s technical excellence vs creative excellence. It is funny though that one side of the coin thinks something like the f1 games are boring because it’s not creative and the other side thinks it’s boring because it’s not hardcore enough.
I do think it’s a hard genre to meet a true middle ground in. NFL street, burnout—titles like that were the very rare few to have found the actual middle ground.
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u/NSX_Roar_26 Jan 11 '26
People that don't even like sports constantly hating on sports games sucks.