Story by: William Abner

Another year, another cycle of sports games – and this year NHL 2K10, if you believe Producer Ben Bishop, is getting back to its sim roots, focusing on more authentic game styles. What does that mean, exactly? Well, we sat in on a conference call with Bishop, and producers Nicholas Shewchuk, Abe Navarro, and Anthony Yampol to find out.

The conference call format was the same as last year: we sent in a batch of questions beforehand and the guys answered them while we sat and listened. Pretty straight forward stuff and this is what we gleaned from the hour-long session:

This sounds like a year of refinement. Every sports games does this during a development cycle – usually once the development team is used to the code base so that the learning curve has been hurdled and they can focus on the gameplay. While that doesn’t sound too spicy on the back of a game case, it usually ends up making for a better game.

Bishop flatly says that the gameplay is vastly improved over year’s past from controls to game flow to AI. “We have a good, organic feeling to the gameplay this year. Passing is easier, the deke move is easier, and the backward skating model is improved. We have a new gameplay camera. We have stumble shots, more wristers, better defensive positioning, and so on.” What that means is that, hopefully, NHL 2K10 will carry with it a feeling of unpredictability – which is absolutely key for any sports game to succeed long-term.