15 Ridiculous Real-Life Things Missing From Otherwise Realistic Sports Video Games

If it's in the game, it's (not necessarily) in the game.

February 24, 2013

Image via Complex Original

Sports video games have gotten so realistic that gamers can practically taste their favorite athlete's musty crotch odor when they play. From improved graphics, physics, and artificial intelligence to more lifelike player management—Your team's star is trying to extort you for several more millions you don't have!—each new edition of games brings fans closer to that pro career they would have had if only they were 6'7" and chiseled from granite.

As the famous EA Sports tag line goes: If it's in the game, it's in the game. Unless, of course, "it" is a part of of the game that's best described as "fuckery" that leagues and players licensing names and likenesses would rather pretend doesn't besmirch their fine sport. With slavish devotion reality in mind, we offer up 15 Ridiculous Real-Life Things Missing From Otherwise Realistic Sports Video Games. This time, even fouls are fair.

Written by Justin Monroe (@40yardsplash)

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Broke Athletes

As real as contract negotiations and book balancing has gotten in manager modes, we've yet to encounter anything as rib-tickling as NBA guard/forward Latrell Sprewell, who, in 2004, called a Minnesota Timberwolves three-year contract offer reportedly worth between $27 million and $30 million ''insulting," and argued, "I got my family to feed.'' Banks subsequently foreclosed on his two homes and feds repossessed his yacht after he failed to make payments on them, so apparently his family was eating tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Just once we'd like to get a contract renegotiation e-mail or text from an agent or player complaining that they need an extension because "this yacht money is running out, and the jumpoffs are about to jump ship!"

Steroids

Remember when it was impossible to pitch to Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, or Sammy Sosa in baseball games because they'd crush anything near the plate into the upper deck? Clearly steroids have been in our sports video games for a while, totally tainting stats, we just didn't know it.

It's time to put it all out there. Imagine the emotions when you're making a run to the division title and you lose your star player (say, A-Roid) for 50 games because a blood test turned up estrogen intended to mask doses of testosterone that would make the Hulk look like Woody Allen. And not only that, but you'd have to second guess every home run you ever hit with the guy. Who doesn't like a little taint now and then?

Offensive Trash Talk

If you turn up the volume on player chatter in any sports video game, you'll hear a QB barking out commands or players calling for the ball or puck. What you don't hear is Kevin Garnett telling Carmelo Anthony that his wife, Lala Vasquez, tastes like Honey Nut Cheerios. Or Kevin Garnett calling Charlie Villanueva, who has the skin disease alopecia universalis, which results in hair loss, a "cancer patient." Or Kevin Garnett wishing Tim Duncan, who lost his mom to breast cancer when he was 14, a "Happy Mothers' Day, motherfucker."

Need that added incentive to crush the Boston Celtics? If virtual KG was as big of an asshole as actual KG, motivation would never be a problem. Preventing your players from trying to put him in a choke hold, maybe.

Game Tampering/Betting

Players, managers, and referees in every sport are betting on games and even influencing outcomes. Word to Pete Rose putting money on Cincinnati Reds games while he was managing the club, to NBA referee Tim Donaghy making calls to affect the point spread in games he'd bet on, and to the recent revelation that organized criminals fixed 680 soccer matches, including World Cup qualifiers and Champions League games, between 2008 and 2011.

In real life tampering sucks, because the outcome of every sporting event is in question, but in the context of a video game, it would make for an excellent game-within-the-game challenge. Instead of trying to recreate or improve upon Michael Jordan's "flu game" in the 1997 NBA Finals, your aim could be to successfully lose by more than 20 points without being charged with tampering and demoted to the prison recreational basketball league.

Refs Who Want to be the Center of Attention

Every sport has officials who get blinded by the lights and forget that fans pay money to watch stars do their thing, not to admire the frequency with which they can blow a whistle. Looking for a new challenge after dominating in the most difficult levels available in sports games? Try winning an NBA game when an egomaniacal ref gives your opponent a figurative man-advantage, tossing your star player for looking at them sideways after a suspicious third foul call in the game's first five minutes.

WAGs

Sports games have come a long way since crowds looked like pixelated cardboard cutouts that repeated every third person. But now that fans resemble actual human beings, enough with the realistic sports enthusiasts decked out in face paint and beer guts. What we really need to see when the camera scans the crowd are the players' gorgeous WAGs (wives and girlfriends). Bonus points to whichever franchise makes a game out of bagging the baddest b of the bunch with the smallest of diamonds.

Drunk Athlete Celebrations

Is there anything more anti-climactic than winning a championship in a sports video game. What is supposed to be the pinnacle of one's athletic career is typically represented by players jumping around and posing with a trophy as confetti falls, or, worse yet, a credit roll of all the designers who teamed up to give you such lameness. Real athletes wait about 30 seconds after winning a title to get pissy drunk, then they take compromising photos like Chris Bosh (above). Now that is a money shot, er, payoff worthy of a video game champion.

Fights

Hockey games get props for consistently having a fight mode (albeit a less bloody and concussed one than in real life) where players square off, but no matter how hard you try to pick a fight in most sports games, it's impossible to start the sorts of brawls between players, coaches/managers, and fans that regularly make SportsCenter highlights.

Seriously, you can bean an entire baseball team in the head, one batter after the other, or tackle Lionel Messi with studs up and the intent of breaking his leg, and the only thing that happens is you get ejected. What?! Nobody even so much as gets in your face for that?! Is there no such thing as manhood and team unity in sports video gaming? Grandpa fought WWII for this?

Hilarious (Yet Hurtful) Fan Chants

Generic crowd chants are no fun, in real life or in video games. The most entertaining way for spectators to become a part of a game is to target someone on the opposing team and clown them unmercifully. Complex doesn't condone racism or homophobia (you already get enough of both just by playing online anyway) but if Duke fans, a.k.a. Cameron Crazies, are going to emasculate an undersized, fresh faced opposing guard by chanting that it's past his bedtime, video game crowds from the Raiders' Black Hole in Oakland to the Napoli's nutter Ultras should be equally cruel in their efforts to provide a home advantage.

Of course, there's always the possibility that a player will have a high masochism rating and enjoy being put down just so they can score and make a choke sign to quiet the crowd. (Damn you, Reggie Miller, damn you.)

Crotch Grabs

Whether adjusting one's jock strap or telling an opponent or journalist to "suck it," the grabbing of one's crotch is as much a part of sports as wins and losses. But not in video games. And why is that exactly? It takes balls to play these games, after all. (Occasionally a puck, boxing gloves, or a snowboard, too, but you get the point.)

Butt Slaps

The only thing in sports more universal than the crotch grab is the butt slap. It shows camaraderie in good and bad times and, well, it allows older people to safely touch on young hard bottoms without being considered creepy. And at least in video game form it makes nobody feel awkward. And if it does, the virtual team psychologist could be added to games as well.

Riots

Fans have a funny way of showing civic pride when their team loses or performs poorly despite having a high payroll: by burning their city to the ground. Even Canadians! If sports can rile our friendly neighbors to the north up to the point that they go all American, video games should reflect that. Plus, is there a better virtual contract negotiating tactic, when trying to pay a player less, than reminding them that their performance was so shitty it cause literal damage to the city?

Flopping

The NBA and soccer leagues everywhere have made efforts to curb the practice of flopping/diving, play acting in the hopes that an official will award a foul to an opponent. But it's still on display every week when a player does their best imitation of Bruce Willis being blown back several feet in a Die Hard movie.

We say, embrace it. There's an art to cheating (and it's not some cheat code bullshit), and if a gamer is good enough to get away with taking a fall and pressing a combination of buttons that makes one's histrionics more likely to affect the ref, great. And hey, if you dive or flop and get penalized for it, well, then you just learned a valuable lesson: cheat better.

Streakers

Naked people in video games. Across the board, we need more of that. For a bonus game, you could play as the male or female streaker and avoid police for as long as possible, or play as the unlucky officer whose job it is to deal with your jibbly bits.

Social Media Fails

From leaked dong pics, to ignorant tweets about politics, to getting catfished, if there's a way that athletes can bungle their use of social networks, they'll find it. The often lame inclusion of Twitter in sports games (clichés from reporters and athletes) completely ignores the best things that happen when vain and privileged guys with little ability to self-censor or analyze participate in the public think tank.

Note that not every faux dick pic would mean a dip in virtual performance, either. Because, really, if the world just saw that the nickname "Albino Python" has nothing to do with your on-court abilities, confidence could only swell, right?