How Sports Video Games Stopped Getting Better

The story of how sports video games went from the fastest-improving creative product in entertainment to a gambling platform

There was a summer, 2004, when two studios were swinging as hard as they could at each other and you got to benefit from every punch.

Visual Concepts, a studio out of San Mateo, priced NFL 2K5 at $19.99. It was a statement in a world where Madden dominated. They believed the game was good enough to make the argument on its own, and it was. NFL 2K5 outsold Madden that year. The ESPN presentation wrapper made it feel like watching a real broadcast. The gameplay was sharper. The production was more ambitious. A scrappier, hungrier studio built a better product and the market said so clearly.

What happened next changed sports video games forever. EA locked in an exclusive licensing deal with the NFL, making Madden the only football video game.

That decision is where the story of sports video games begins to turn. Not dramatically. Slowly. The way something dies when the incentive to keep it alive disappears.

The question I kept coming back to wasn’t just what happened — it was why it happened in the way it did, gradually enough that most of us didn’t notice until we picked up a controller one day and felt nothing. The leaps got smaller. The menus got slower. Entire features quietly disappeared. Games that cost $70 started feeling less complete than games that cost $20 in 2004.

To make this video I talked to Kofie Yeboah, who covers sports gaming on YouTube and has watched this arc play out in real time. He gave me the line that I think captures the current state of sports gaming better than anything I could have written: it’s sports Yu-Gi-Oh now. Ultimate team versus ultimate team. Card versus card.

The sport itself almost incidental to the transaction happening around it.

What I’m Enjoying Right Now

The death of good taste, by Percia Verlin

Percia Verlin is one of my favorite commentators on the state of fashion today. She has a grounded perspective, a knowledge of fashion history and understands how fashion represents more than just aesthetics and clothes. Her recent video on the themes of the MET Gala and the tech industry’s interest in “taste” speaks for itself, and speaks to the moment we’re living in beyond clothes. approaches fashion less like a consumer product and more like a cultural language.

A lot of fashion commentary online revolves around trend cycles, luxury signaling, or shopping advice, but Verlin tends to frame clothing as a reflection of psychology, identity, labor, class aspiration, internet aesthetics, and the strange performance of modern adulthood. She understands that fashion is about what people are trying to communicate about themselves, consciously or unconsciously, through taste. She can recognize the absurdity of fashion culture without becoming cynical about it, which gives her commentary a level of warmth and curiosity that a lot of fashion discourse lacks.

Substitute Teacher’s Goodbye, by Saturday Night Live

I really love when SNL commits to the absurd, and this sketch from Matt Damon’s recent episode fits into that mold.

Damon plays a substitute teacher who wishes a class farewell.

Thanks for reading.

Joon