Why the NHL Games Should Go Free-to-Play

Let me preface this article a bit by saying I’m a lifelong hockey fan. I was born in Pittsburgh in ’91 when Lemieux and Jagr brought home the Pittsburgh Penguins’ first ever Stanley Cup win and followed it up next year with the team’s second ever Stanley Cup win. I grew up in that city, in the Lemieux/Jagr era when hockey was an unavoidable topic.

We had a SEGA Genesis when I was a kid, and my favorite game was NHL ’94. If I had to pick a second favorite game from that era, it’d probably be Mutant League hockey. Probably the only two non-hockey related games I played back then were Earthworm Jim and Mario Andretti Racing, both of which I only saw after Jeremy Roenick would piss me off on the virtual ice. A long time before he would also piss me off as a broadcaster for crying when the Blackhawks won the cup (nice unbiased broadcasting shitbird, act like you’ve been there).

My point is, hockey is an amazing sport and has an amazing video game history. NHL ’94 is one of the greatest games of all time, and I say that from a place that isn’t just pure nostalgia. It is one of the most raw, fun, exciting, and tense things you can pick up a controller and play, even if you know next to nothing about hockey. I wish I could tell you the NHL games got better over the years. I really, desperately, wish I could say that.

Let’s skip those late 90’s early 00’s years of the world’s first 3D gaming experience. Those eras are forgivable limitations set by the technology of the time and we just won’t talk about those chunky nightmares on ice. So we’re moving past those years to the great EA vs. 2K battle of the late 2000’s. For those of you not aware, there are three companies in North America who make video game version of all the major sports. EA who covers FIFA, NHL, and the NFL (Madden) series, 2K Sports who now mainly only focus on the NBA, and Sony Interactive Entertainment who exclusively cover the MLB. Now back in the late 2000’s EA looked much like it does now, except 2K Sports had the NBA and MLB all to itself and the two studios both published simultaneous NHL games each year.

This set-up with two publishers putting out two different NHL games was unique. No other major sport game had that going for it, and it was amazing for gaming hockey fans. 2K was the one who carried on publishing under SEGA all the way to ESPN NHL 2K5 and as such generally released the more arcade, raw-fun type of hockey experience. EA went for a more simulationist approach and tried to put out more of the “real thing.” Neither of these approaches are necessarily wrong either – if you go back and look at the metacritic reviews for ESPN NHL 2K5 and NHL 2005, both games scored fairly well at 86 and 75 respectively. Basically whichever version you wanted, between arcade or simulation style hockey, you could get a full game dedicated to it and get graphical and gameplay upgrades every year.

We’re going to jump ahead again, this time to the ancient history of 2009. This was the last time 2K Sports had a real NHL entry (NHL 2K11 on the Wii doesn’t count, and neither do their mobile game entries, be real.) Maybe if 2K10 had come with a Be a Pro mode like NHL 10 did at the time 2K could have sold more. Because NHL 2K10, in my opinion, was far superior to NHL 10. It was the more fun game at the time, but it just didn’t win the war, and after a good long run of hockey fans having their choice between two competing publishers, EA had choked the life out of their enemies and then promptly stopped giving a shit.

The EA published NHL series hasn’t had a modicum of personality since they used to have competition back in 2009 with the introduction of Be a Pro mode. They’d occasionally show some flash of interest and competence by introducing one new gimmick a year, but then they’d shoot themselves in the foot by messing it up or removing it later.

NHL 11 brought Broken Sticks which was an event that happened randomly whenever you might expect it to happen (slapshots, blocking shots, stick lifts, etc) But then it happened way too often, like 3-4 times a game. While stick breaking isn’t uncommon in the real NHL it rarely fully shatters all over the ice like it did in game. You couldn’t reliably shoot the puck at the net (a maneuver you might recognize as important in the sport of hockey) without a 40% risk of your stick breaking and giving the enemy a breakaway goal.

NHL 13 brought us GM Connected and NHL Moments live, both of which were cool game modes that I won’t go into too much detail about because they were removed shortly after and no longer exist in modern iterations. Also Philadelphia Flyers captain and “2012’s Most Hateable Face” Claude Giroux was on the cover of this one which automatically makes it the worst NHL game to date.

NHL 14 came with the EASHL (EA Sports Hockey League) which is an online league with a real season which was exactly as cool as it sounds, however if you didn’t meet a bunch of tolerable people online, chances are you never played it. But it was a cool idea and could easily be commended as the best thing that happened to an EA published NHL game for a long time.

NHL 15 removed EASHL. Actually, to be fair, it removed most of the cool things from previous games. It was also the first game on the current generation of consoles. But I find this a pretty poor excuse for setting your franchise back to 2002. The NHL series from this point forward would be slowly re-introducing features the older games one year at a time much to the chagrin of the people paying $60 a year for stuff they used to be able to do.

NHL 16 brought back EASHL after public backlash. It also introduced the “On Ice Trainer” or, as your dad would have called it if this was his first NHL game, “What are all these stupid blue arrows and shit all over the screen, how do you turn this off?”

And finally we have NHL 17 which, as far as I know, added nothing in the way of “new” features but “greatly” improved on motion capture and in-game AI. All this really added though was constant bickering with your friends over whether or not an animation was “new” or if it had been there since NHL ’15. Nobody really knew.

So why this long walk down misery lane? Because we’re staring down the barrel of NHL 18 getting released. It’s that time of year again, when hockey fans collectively sigh and reach into their wallet to shell out their money for the newest roster update. I’ve downloaded and played the NHL 18 beta and so far all I can tell is that it’s the exact same as NHL 17 (that is to say it’s the exact same as NHL 16) except it features “THREES” which is something like hockey, but with only four players on the ice (three skaters and one goalie.) If this sounds familiar to anyone, it’s because the same thing was also featured in NHL 2K10 and NHL 09 (as NHL 3-on-3 Arcade) about nine years ago before getting removed in NHL 10.

Here’s the breakdown: NHL 18 isn’t going to look any better than NHL 15 did. It’s not going to play any better than NHL 2K10 ever did. And it’s not going to be more fun, or more tense, or more exciting than NHL 94 ever was. And if people aren’t into it for graphics, gameplay, or pure fun factor, then how can anyone be expected to drop $60 on it? I know, it’s a sports game, and you can’t exactly reinvent the wheel with a sports game. You’re limited to the existing, real-world iteration of the sport your game is emulating. So what can be done? How do you bring the NHL series back to life?

Adopt a free to play model.

For the uninitiated, the NHL series has long had a game mode called Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT). HUT is something like collecting hockey cards, but also having a use for them. The cards you collect would allow you to make a roster with them. The better players were rarer cards, and made for stronger teams. The more you collected, the better you were. It was addicting as all hell, but it was also impossible to commit to. Every year your team was going to get reset. Your progress was going to be wiped, and your killer team was going to have to be reformed with each new game. This was especially disheartening if you ever bought into the microtransactions that HUT is laden with for new card packs. In essence, HUT is the microtransaction farm with an incredibly fun premise ruined by the fact that nobody can commit to it for more than a year.

Now imagine a world where NHL is released in August 2018 as a free to play game with a focus on HUT, and continued support rather than yearly releases. Think about how amazing that would be. You download the game, get into Quickplay and maybe some Be a GM seasons and you’re rewarded for playing with HUT packs, and you just drew a Connor McDavid card, so of course you’re going to check out HUT and see what it’s about. You learn the basics of trading and pack opening and you play a couple of games and get stomped because Connor McDavid alone can’t put a full team on his back (You hear that Edmonton fans? It’s not happening.) So you do what you can to get more HUT packs and come back strong because HUT is where the real players are. You’re earning packs and pucks (HUT currency is pucks) and you’re building a real team. And you like this team, and you’re liberated because you know this team will last.

Dedicated fans who have been spending $60 every year on hardly new features and roster updates are going to appreciate the change and most would probably gladly drop money into HUT. Are casual players spending money on HUT? Probably not, but they’re being introduced to a current generation hockey game risk free, and some of them aren’t going to stay casual fans for very long. Hockey is an adrenaline pumping and tense game by nature, and the NHL series is fairly good at emulating that feeling.

By going free to play, veterans get to enjoy the game without writing negative reviews about the rip-off lack of features, and will likely spend what they were going to, or more, on HUT. New players get to be introduced to a drastically underrated sport and a decent game risk free and breathe some life into the servers. And the dev team only has to worry about maintaining and updating one game rather than shitting out a new one every year and pretending that “flowing jerseys” is an addition that’s worth $60. Nobody loses in this deal.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go weep into my Fleury jersey and figure out if I hate the Vegas Golden Knights.