The Present and Future of Career Modes

Three things to hate about career modes:

• Separation -- While career modes revel in being all about your individual player, an unfortunate byproduct is an odd sense of separation from the rest of your team that occurs, particularly when playing baseball. Playing as a starting pitcher in MLB 09, for example, means you're pitching once every five days. When playing as a reliever, there's no telling when you'll get called in to a game--and when you'll go several days without seeing a single batter. This isn't such a big deal during the regular season, when games seem to count less, but it's a big-time problem once the playoffs begin.

In my RTTS campaign, my Chicago Cubs won the 2011 World Series in seven games against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. My contribution to that epic eleventh-hour victory? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Instead, after the game was over, I was greeted with a screen of text congratulating me on the win. That's it. To be fair, this complaint is more an indictment of the sport of baseball (and the amount of time certain players go between starts) than it is its implementation in MLB 09 but I wish there was a way to let the player feel involved in his team's progress even when he isn't on the field.

• No Personality -- This is probably the most damning problem in career modes these days and, ironically, the one that poses the most danger when looking for solutions. After all, there's a sense of simply going through the motions in many career modes these days; whether you're simply simming to your next appearance or, worse yet, simulating the regular season until you get to the games that matter.

Still, while the day-to-day career can be a bit of a grind, adding flair to a career mode can be a minefield. Attempts at injecting some fun into career modes have sometimes come off like cheesy tacked-on solutions, like the "media" interviews in Madden's SuperStar mode or the fake college exams in Campus Legend mode in NCAA Football.

For a while now, Sony's MLB series has given you "interactions" in RTTS mode. Essentially choices you can make as a player--including things like complaining about playing time, looking for a new contract, etc.--that can have either a positive or negative effect on your player. For example, complain that you need to be a starter and you might convince your manager to make a move on your behalf. Or you might make him mad and find yourself missing your next start. It's not a perfect system--text menus are inherently pretty drab--but building on this kind of consequence-based interactions can go a long way towards making the time in between your next game something more than just checkmarks on your calendar.

• Money For Nothing -- After my Cubs won the World Series in RTTS, I was offered a four-year contract for a good chunk of money. How much money, you ask? Who cares! What does money matter in a world where you have nothing to spend it on? All I cared about was staying with my favorite team--not how much imaginary money I was getting paid to do so. Another way to incentivize career mode players to keep going with their careers is to give them something to spend their career earnings on. Things like unlockable jerseys or player cards, that kind of thing. 2K Sports had a good idea with the 2K Cribs thing a few years back--it wasn't a central theme of the game, just merely something you could customize as you went along, or choose to ignore altogether.

The point: I'm a big-time athlete making millions of dollars per year. Make me feel like it!

Not my RTTS pitcher. But a nice screenshot nonetheless.

Three things that career modes need to do next:

• Reward (and Punish) -- Whether it's keeping me engaged between game outings, or giving me something to spend my fake money on, the key is to keep the player always busy. I should be fending off calls from multiple agents trying to take control of my career. I should be trying to decide when to spend time in the gym, and when to spend it with my lady friend. I should spend the offseason getting fat. Or getting better.

Better yet, make the decisions I choose matter. If I spend time training my butt off on my jump shot in NBA Live, at the expense of hanging with the boys in the locker room, give me a boost to my jumper in the game, and lower my team chemistry rating as a result. Life is full of choices and all of those choices matter. Make them matter in the game too.

• We Talkin' About Practice -- Lots of games have dabbled with training the player over the years. Madden's training camp, MLB 09's batting and base-running training sessions, even practice mode in NCAA Football or the training mini-games in Fight Night Round 3. MLB 09 surprised me by not including any pitching training games, which I thought was a big omission this year. While I think that giving the player the option to play or ignore these training session is the right design choice, I think that the more opportunities you have to train your career mode player, the better.

• Mix It Up - NCAA Football has the right idea. Coming out of high school in Campus Legend mode, you compete for a chance to earn the starter position at whatever spot you play on the field. I like the direction of this feature but think there's still more room to grow. For example, why not give players the chance to come on board your program as an "athlete" position, try multiple positions on the field, and then choose the one that you like best (or, indeed, let the CPU coach decide for you). After all, spending four years as a fullback can get boring; what if, mid-way through your college career, your coach moves you to middle linebacker after a big injury to a team mate? Granted, it might not be for everyone, but adding a little randomness to a career mode might be just the kind of thing that spices things up over the long haul.

So that's what bumping around in my brain regarding career modes these days. I'm curious to hear what you think, too. Do you play in career mode? What do you like or dislike about them? Where do you think the modes will be next year, or five years from now?