Former EA devs are making a 3v3 basketball game without all the 'GM modes and micromanagement and opening packs' of modern pro sports games

GamesSportsFormer EA devs are making a 3v3 basketball game without all the ‘GM modes and micromanagement and opening packs’ of modern pro sports gamesWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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The Run: Got Next - Official Announcement Teaser Trailer - YouTubeWatch On

The Run: Got Next - Official Announcement Teaser Trailer - YouTube

A group of former EA developers have left that technical arms race behind to make a different kind of sports game, one they think has been missing from the scene. Announced today,The Run: Got Nextis a 3v3 arcade basketball game with quick matches for our hopelessly corroded attention spans (and no BOOM Tech). And unlike certain other sports games—EA’snew college football gamecomes to mind—it’s getting a PC release as a priority.

The NBA Street series is the most obvious point of comparison, and The Run’s creative director, Mike Young, worked on all of those games. He was also the Madden NFL creative director for 10 years.

The technical focus that makes modern pro sports games look like TV broadcasts has its place, but has required trade-offs, Young said in a recent interview with PC Gamer. One consequence of procedural animation systems is that they limit the responsiveness of the controls: You can’t let players cancel dunks into passes at the last second if every action is motion captured and simulated. Young also says that The Run’s defensive play will distinguish it from simulation-focused games, where it’s “often just skipped, or it’s too complicated, or you don’t feel powerful, or it’s too realistic.” Rather than realism, The Run aims to offer distinctive characters and to generate tension with back-and-forth play—expect loads of blocks.

“So many of these [pro sports] games have become so complex, there’s so many different modes: GM modes and micromanagement and opening packs and all these things that kind of prevent you from getting in and actually enjoying the sport,” he said. “And that’s been a big focus for us, getting you into playing the game. That’s something that Rocket League does fantastic. I can jump in there as a first timer, and I may not be the best player in the world, but I can go in and I can enjoy the sport and I can have a blast. I don’t have to go on quests, I don’t have to go grind for 1,000 hours before I feel like I’m effective.”

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The Run: Got Next screenshot

There is some structure to The Run, though, which its name hints at. The main way to play will be to go on “a run”: a series of games, which are only about four minutes each, that ends when your team of three loses. Each game will take place on a different court with unique modifiers—a Himalayan court where your stamina recharges more slowly, for instance—and there’s a metagame where players can modify their characters between games, selecting new abilities. So you get lots of bite-sized matches, but with the possibility of achieving something bigger, a successful run that spans every court. In ablog post, the studio points to roguelike hockey gameTape to Tapeas one of its inspirations.

Alongside the console versions, Probst says the studio has been regularly testing The Run on PC, and that there are even players who prefer the keyboard controls (just keyboard, no mouse, interestingly). He also touched on 2K and EA’s spotty history with PC sports games.

“I think we saw an opportunity, because a lot of the bigger companies don’t specifically pay attention to PC,” said Probst. “It often either gets ignored and forgotten, or it gets kind of last-gen features. And for us from the jump it was, we’re playtesting twice a week on PC, we’re constantly looking at the game on PC and evaluating it on different machines. Because I think for us, we see the potential of the player base that’s there, and also, a lot of us are PC gamers.”

The Run: Got Next screenshot

The Run does sound appealing to me as a 1,000-plus hour Rocket League player, but I always feel a bit of sympathetic nervousness around niche multiplayer launches. It doesn’t really seem to matter much how good they are or aren’t, or how much marketing is behind them: sometimes they make it, and sometimes they don’t. Knockout City was one of our favorite games of 2021, for example, but its official servers are long gone now. (Happily,the devs planned for thateventuality and released the tools players need to run their own servers.)

No firm release date has been announced for The Run: Got Next yet, but the plan is to release it next year—on PC, it’s onSteam, and it’s also coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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