Starting Over (reprise)

Well now that I found out what it takes to win a championship, I thought that I would return to my moral, honest ways. I let Lebron James return in free agency the following year when I couldn't afford him, and signed one of my two young superstars to a legitimate, real contract. My team doesn't have the depth that it had the past few seasons, but I know now what it takes to win. Now that I have "mastered the game" in terms of winning a championship, I want to find out if I can win the right way. I want to honestly build a dynasty without cheating, without taking advantage of user settings or cheats. I have spent the entire semester playing this game and I have made a myriad of connections between 2K10 and the real world. I want to capitalize on them, put them to the test and see over the next two weeks whether or not I am a good enough gamer to succeed.

We are the Champions

Well it took all year, but I can finally say that I know what it takes to be a champion. The key ingredients: hard work, dedication, a little bit of financial strategizing, and a little bit of cheating. I hate to admit it but I think the cheating factor made all the difference for me. The realism of my players progressing to the point where I couldn't afford to have 4 all-stars on one roster was a legitimate problem that General Managers face every day. That's why it is so hard to have a dynasty in sports. If you think about the history of sports, dynasty's happen very rarely because of the influence of money and the power of free agency. Think about baseball for a second. How many times has a team repeated as champions? Very rarely. There are the same number of teams in the MLB, NBA and NFL so that can't be the reason. It has to do with the fact that baseball is the only sport without a salary cap. Teams can pour however much money they want into their teams and baseball players seem to prefer lucrative contracts over the prospect of winning a championship.

Until sports becomes more about the love of the game than money, it will be very hard for a dynasty to be built. The only time in the real world where we see superstars willing to sacrifice money for championships is when aging veterans out of their primes change teams at the end of their careers when they weren't able to win on their own. Think about Karl Malone. Why else would the second highest scorer in NBA history leave the Jazz, the team he built with his bare hands to live in the shadow of Kobe Bryant, Shaq, Derek Fisher and Gary Payton on the Lakers. It truly is great for society that the sporting world has developed into a billion dollar enterprise but the system as it stands now just sets up General Managers to fail. Unless you are the New York Yankees and have an unlimited payroll, you will never be able to have an equilibrium of wants and resources. I learned this the hard way in my own playing, and learned a valuable and extremely realistic lesson that costs General Managers their jobs every year. The world of sports is the most competitive field whether you are operating in the front office or playing on the field. There is little room for error, and we must keep the big picture in mind when making daily decisions.

Big Trouble

So not only did my team blow it in the playoffs, but I managed to do a poor job of screwing up my teams finances. I got so caught up in the fact that my team was having a successful regular season that I forgot to renegotiate the contracts of my 3 superstars, Lebron James, Ryan Simmons and Sadrunas Sankovic. When I began to re-sign my players in the offseason, I quickly realized that I didn't have enough cap-room to re-sign all 3. We spent a lot of time in class talking about cheating and why games need cheats. Barry encouraged us to try experimenting with cheats, so I figured I'd give it a try.

I found a way to manually edit my players so that I could increase their ratings and fix their contracts without taking into consideration salary, morale and personal wants. I manually added years onto the original contracts of Sankovic and Simmons so that I had enough money to sign Lebron and another marquee free agent. I haven't began the next season yet but I am curious to see how the game responds to my actions. When you simulate games, your team doesn't perform as well as it should and even the best teams don't have the best records. I'm curious to see if that same principle will stand with my team considering that all 5 of my starters have rankings above a 90.

While cheating goes against my primary objective to learn how to be a successful General Manager, it just goes to show how tempting it is to cheat and how greed can corrupt an individual. I'll be sure to write in my next post about the status of my cheating and how the game and my team is effected by it.

Almost There

After a long struggle, my team finally made it to the Eastern Conference finals where we faced the New Jersey Nets. After the worst season in NBA history, the Nets made moves in the offseason to acquire future NBA hall of famer Kobe Bryant. The series was epic from the start. Lebron against Kobe. Although my team accomplished a season sweep of the Nets, we didn't get off to a hot start. The Nets jumped ahead 2 games to 0 in a best of 7 series. In the third game, we made an unbelievable comeback but ended up losing in double overtime. We were down 3 to nothing and found ourselves in the inevitable hole that only the Boston Red Sox have ever been able to accomplish. The next three games, we dominated our opponent, proving that maybe video games aren't as realistic as we think they are. If only one team has ever won 4 straight games in a playoff series in the history of all the major sports, what is the probability that my team would be the second?

I began to doubt the system and resent the fact that my team could have such tremendous success. I would have almost rather my team lose just to prove that video games have some sort of reliability then to reach the goal that I had set when I first started playing. This was a defining moment in my video game playing because i proved to myself that i was willing to sacrifice success for reality. When I was younger, I was so anxious to win that I would do anything (including cheat) just to be victorious.

I find it so interesting that my opinion has shifted so dramatically over the course of the past few years. I am beginning to learn that life is more about "the process" than "the answer", and that by playing this video game, I am learning how to be more patient in my daily life.

The video game gods must have answered my thoughts because I ended up losing the next game, failing to reach my goal of winning a championship. Instead of hanging my head and questioning myself, I was relieved that video games can still be realistic.

Starting Over

So last week I talked about my struggles and boredom with the game. Instead of continuing my helpless dynasty, I decided to start fresh using the information that I learned from playing the game the first time around. I stuck with the same team (the Chicago Bulls) and used real life information such as salaries, prospective free agents, and expiring contracts as the basis of my strategy. When I picked my team, I immediately shed as much salary as I possibly could. I decided that I would sacrifice one winning season to obtain a high draft pick and make a run a premier free agent such as Lebron James, Dwayne Wade or Chris Bosh. My lackluster season earned me the first pick in the entire draft, and through the trade wire, I was able to obtain the second pick in the draft as well. I selected a shooting guard from Greece, and a power forward from Syracuse. After the draft, I had a glaring hole at Small Forward and 45 million dollars in cap room to work with. Fortunately enough for me, Lebron James couldn't resist the money and opportunity to play in a large city such as Chicago. After the first day of free agency, my starting lineup was Derrick Rose, Lebron James, Johkim Noah, and my two prized rookies.

Having the rookies play alongside 3 veteran players has boded exceptionally well for my team. While they are still young and make youthful mistakes, they are progressing nicely with the veteran leadership. The two things that I am doing better this time around is playing more games and simulating less, and saving more salary for role players on the bench. I noticed that players get tired very easily in the game and every team needs strong bench players to carry the load when the starters have to come out of the game.

I am finding that since I have more experience playing the game, I am enjoying the game much more the second time around because I am learning from my mistakes. Learning from your mistakes is probably the most essential part of playing video games because the game doesn't change. Levels and conclusions are predetermined in virtually every game. Thus, in order to keep progressing, we need to learn from our mistakes and correct them. One might ask, how are sports games predetermined if every game can result in either a win or a loss? While wins and losses certainly aren't predetermined, winning a championship and having a successful dynasty requires a particular formula that I am just beginning to uncover. Hopefully in my next blog post I can fill everyone in on some new keys to success that I will have learned.

Reaching the Plateau

I don't know whether it was spring break or the break from posting but for some reason I feel like my interest in playing NBA 2k10 is beginning to fade. This made me start questioning myself. Did I exhaust myself by playing so much from the very beginning? Have I learned everything that the game could possibly teach me? Is it possible that I will never reach the same excitement level that I did when I played the game for the very first time?

As I sit and think about these questions, I have come to the conclusion that my boredom is a product of my game selection. Role player games appear to be better for extended periods of playing time because new levels and feats are unlocked as players reach new goals and accomplishments. Maybe my game playing experience would increase at this point if I set new goals for myself. Maybe the fact that I have so much control over game simulation that I have come to terms with mediocrity. If set goals for myself, I will be forced to play more games and simulate less, which may provide a new excitement and spark things up. After all, motiving oneself can be a seemingly impossible task without a destination in mind.

In order to test my hypothesis, I took a break from my Chicago Bulls franchise and begin playing a single player career. I thought that if I had to control one player (myself) versus an entire team, I might be more dedicated and passionate about playing. I don't know if it's because I am playing the game as myself or if the game mode is more appealing but the single player career mode has been much more entertaining and pleasing. In the next few days, I'll be sure to switch back to my beloved Bulls in the hopes of winning our first NBA championship.

The Insider Principle

Last week I wrote about Gee's Principles, and I figured that I would stick with the same theme for this week's post. The principle I wanted to talk about this week is "The Insider Principle", which states that the learner is an insider, teacher and producer.... not just a consumer and that they are able to customize their learning experience and domain/game from the beginning and throughout the experience.

My experience playing NBA2k10 is unique and personal to me. Each person who plays the game derives their own personal life lessons and educational values. In some sense, my fate and my learning experience was determined at the startup screen when I customized the settings of my dynasty and my team. If I had selected to remove the injuries option during simulation, I wouldn't have had to experience the frustration of simulating a series of games without a pop up screen stopping my simulation. Additionally, my learning experienced would have been altered had I picked the Los Angeles Lakers or Oklahoma City Thunder instead of my beloved team. Hypothetically, had I chosen the Los Angeles Lakers, my learning experience would have been greatly different because their roster was incredible and I would have been able to simulate a season and offseason without the difficulties of financial problems and losing. Further, had I elected to be the Thunder, I may have struggled in the preliminary season but the youth on my team would naturally progress over time without having to worry about finances, team chemistry, or trading.

While the NBA2k game itself is the same for everyone who purchases it, everyones playing experience is greatly different. No two people have played the exact same game, made the exact same trade, or drafted the same exact player. Thus, when we progress our teams and make basic decisions in the game we are customizing our own learning experience. Just like my trade that I talked about last week in acquiring Kobe Bryant, had I not made that trade I wouldn't have learned the importance of team chemistry and synergy.