Kotaku article on NBA 2K12's online issues

[Andrew]

NBA 2K12 Works Overtime on a Problem with Roots in the Dreamcast

"Every line of code for our online game was rewritten this year," said Jeff Thomas, the director of development at Visual Concepts, the 2K in-house studio that makes NBA 2K. "It was a huge undertaking by our top team here, and we put our top team on it because we knew we had to get results."

They didn't, to put it bluntly. For some players, it was impossible to find a match; for others, many connections were terminated just as the game had barely begun. If it was a ranked match, someone was saddled with the loss for quitting. Features from the previous version of the game were not included in this year's, further enraging the community. Rumors of paid downloadable content with a heavy online component turned into another set of moneygrubbing allegations.

The explanation for all of this is within that old codebase, Thomas said. And that old codebase goes back all the way to the days of the Dreamcast.

Interesting read. It also mentions that while My Crew was left out this year, it may return.

[kAmilli LakeShow]

Thanks for sharing this article. 2k tryna find the excuse still looks kinda sad, considering that you should freaking test the game before the release and put out a COMPLETE product. I don't think any of us would complain if NBA 2k12 came out later yet there would be less of these gameplay and online issues, i still had fun playin 2k11 before 2k12 release date, now i can't come back XD

[benji]

Hey, remember when last year they said they had completely rewritten the online code and finally got rid of all that old Dreamcast stuff.

[shadowgrin]

Hey, remember when last year they said they had completely rewritten the online code and finally got rid of all that old Dreamcast stuff.

+1

[fjccommish]

Trying to fix something isn't the same as fixing it.

They didn't fix online play. So what did they do? Charge extra for some of the online play. Actions speak louder than words.

[Patr1ck]

You mean charge extra for broken online play.

[JaoSming]

poor them and their own development issues and bad choices.....I'm still holding this watered down Blacktop mode against them

[fjccommish]

"You mean charge extra for broken online play."

Exactly. It's like a car company discovering the built in nav system fails on a 2010 car. Instead of issuing a recall or fixing it in the 2011 model, they change the pricing. The 2011 model comes without a built in nav system, but customers can pay a little extra for a nav system (re-named the "auto route locator") that doesn't work. Then they describe how hard their engineers worked on fixing the nav system.

[[Q]]

You mean charge extra for broken online play.

poor them and their own development issues and bad choices.....I'm still holding this watered down Blacktop mode against them

if i didn't know any better, i would've thought you guys were talking about EA in 07 or 08

[Andrew]

Some of our complaints are certainly familiar like that. I suppose when it comes down to it, all developers are prone to erring and/or making unpopular decisions. I still think it's bewildering that they've yet to properly launch the official site and all its features almost a month after the game's release. If it wasn't ready to go, they should've left the old community site in place.