JBOMB Basketball Blog

I played EA’s NBA Live since 1995, and I must say, many have tried to imitate its success, but no game is even close to NBA Live almost-real gameplay and player profiling.

The NBA Live series has been improved every year, and to me, the highlight of NBA Live is not its graphic, but its player profiling.

What I mean by player profiling is each player’s attributes. In early years of NBA Live, the attributes are merely basketball ability – shooting, defense, and so on. But in recent releases, NBA Live adds personality traits to players – sweet shooting spots, styles, etc.

The latest release, NBA Live 09, introduce Dynamic DNA – a player profiling system – how a player scores and how a team play as a unit. The Dynamic DNA is so near to real life profile of the player, that real NBA teams use NBA Live 09 to scout and evaluate talents!

I found this article written by Owen Good, reporting that the NBA says about half of the league’s 30 teams employ the video game in making personnel evaluations.

Here’s the explanation from the blog:

The game’s “Dynamic DNA”, the new stats engine behind this kind of analysis, is good enough to be taken seriously even when team officials are evaluating straight-up rookies barely a dozen games into the season. Dynamic DNA not only simulates the surges and slumps players hit during a long 82-game season, it updates that model with real-world statistics and outcomes fed into EA’s servers daily.

Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

So, if you consider yourself an NBA fan, try NBA Live 09, and forget other game titles. This game, my friend, is a heaven for realistic NBA simulation lover.

My favorite kind of hoops game.

Image by EA Sports NBA Live 09.