NBA Jam: On Fire Edition Info-Dump!

The IGN Australia team makes no secret of its love for last year's NBA Jam. In fact, we declared it our #2 game of 2010. We're understandably excited, then, about NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, which is heading to PSN and XBLA in October. It's going to be incredible value for money, and - if our sessions with it are anything to go on - a blast to play.

A lot has changed since last year too. The team has stripped out all the boss battles and half-court games, and is focusing entirely on the two on two experience. They've also introduced the ability to swap – or tag – between players. In classic Jam, the player controls only one character on a team, with the other assigned to AI. Now the player can swap, and it alters the gameplay significantly.

Behind the scenes there are a bunch of changes too, from a brand new AI system that is designed to make computer-controlled opponents challenging and believable, as opposed to - hello Jam 2010! - cheap, to a rethink of player stats and abilities, and a heap more players and hidden characters.

We caught up with Trey Smith, NBA Jam's creative director - and certified Jam freak - to find out a little more.

Trey Smith: I don't want to be that 'we've got over one thousand gameplay improvements and enhancements' guy, but it's true. It's a lot about seeing how people play. You're kind of in a box when you're working on a game, and it's really hard to get quality feedback. We do focus groups, we bring people in, but it's not until it goes out there into the wild that I think you really get to know the ins and outs of your game. [With last year's title,] I played a lot of games online, just to see how people play, and it was really surprising.

Last time, I can tell you, the power stat was way heavy. It influenced far too many things, in our opinion – a lot of the conflicts and blocks and collisions. Power was a very loaded stat last time through. That wasn't the original plan, but that was how it ended up. Stats mean more this go around. Every stat has to count and it's balancing them out a little bit more. So that's one of the under-the-hood things that you might not recognize right away, but [that you'll notice] the more and more you play. We've got a lot of fighting game guys on our team, and the match-ups and the strengths and weaknesses and the balancing – these are all things we've put a lot of time and effort into this time through. Blocks are harder now, on purpose. There is a better outside game. It was really hard to drain a routine two pointer in our game last time, and that was about how we docked the shot percentage for two pointers – it was too heavy. There's seven or eight different things that go into a shot percentage, and it was weighted too low, so people weren't doing them.


Another thing is the spin move, to counter the shove. On the dev team and on paper, whenever we play, I use the spin move quite often. When I played online, no one used it. And it was a shame, because I thought that was a really nice counter to the shove, so what we did was we opened it up another six or eight frames, where you're invulnerable to the shove, and all of a sudden the shove [is less effective]. It's little things like that. When it comes to those core interactions, we touched every single one of them. We did tweak the shove [too]. I don't want to tell you what we did to the shove, but it's a little bit different and it should feel a little bit different.


Trey Smith: Tag mode. That was one of those decisions that I made early on last year, and it's an expensive feature. It doesn't seem like it would be, but it is, because you're shifting AI on the fly and all that kind of stuff. At the time I made the decision not to do it in last year's version, because that's what they did in the original. As soon as we threw tag mode into this one… when you're playing player versus player with an AI team mate, I think the game's at least twice as much fun now.

I'll give you a classic example. In last year's game, I'm running with the Lakers, I've got Kobe, I've got Pau Gasol. I shoot a three with Kobe and then I hope that AI Gasol goes in and snags that rebound for me. I'm like 'c'mon Pau' and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. In this game, I've got Kobe, I shoot the three, switch to Pau. I can go in and either put it in or do an alley-oop. Another one is – you go for the shove at mid-court. If I missed that shove before, it's like 'okay, I'm out of the play'. Now, if I miss that shove, I switch to the other guy and I'm still there for the block. So if you think about it, as fast as Jam was last time, you're doing twice as many things now.



Trey Smith: We've got some triple threat moves now. If you go for a pump fake and you pick up your dribble, you can now do a eurostep jab, which is just like the cross-over and it sends out a radial attack, so if you draw them up into the air and they go up, on their way down, if you do a little step and send out that radial attack, it'll kick 'em into a stumble. You can also do a pump fake, and if – instead of going up for the block, the blockers come in for the shove – now you can do kind of an ole move, and then they can go right through you. The more interesting choices we give gamers, the more strategies you can develop, and the more you get to learn different playing styles.


Trey Smith: In this one, it is best to go in with a three point shooter that's fast and that has steals, and a big power blocker/dunker. That's your quintessential Jam one-two punch. But, you can go in with Shaq and Dwight Howard on the Magic as the twin towers, which a lot of people were doing online with Tim Duncan and David Robinson last time, and that's a different game. Obviously you've got some really big strengths on the rebounds and the blocks, and the dunks and the power, but really weak on the outside, and you can counter that. We had the substitution at half time with the last version and I think some people used it, but 90% of the time people just ran with what they had. This time, I think – especially once you unlock legends – we're going to see people saying 'well that strategy's not working, I think I need to swap somebody out'.


Trey Smith: We've got more secret teams, players and characters than have ever been in a Jam before… I'd say we have at least 50% more this time around, and it's across the board – it's more NBA legends, it's more current NBA stars, it's more mascots – I think we only rolled with six mascots [last time], now we have 27, it's like a furry-palooza… NBA Jam's a game for gamers first, sports fans second, and with the secret teams in particular we've put a lot of time and effort into creating teams that anybody would want to play.



Trey Smith: We have an unlockable mechanic where you earn 'Jam bucks' that are like experience, and then you buy what you want in the store, so it's not like you have to play through a campaign mode with this one team and beat it seven times in order to unlock something. It's in the store and you spend your Jam bucks on what you want to buy. We're not here to punish people.


Trey Smith: We swapped out the AI. We tossed it out the door. It was punishing to new users. We have a brand new AI system. This is R.E.A.L. AI. It started out on NHL, it went to Fight Night, and then our guy took it and dropped it into Jam… It's an exciting new piece of technology… we don't really know what it's going to do. It's recording your gestures, so the things you do in the game, whether it's a sequence of two seconds or seven seconds or whatever, it's recording and bringing it in and then it's playing it back, and depending on how successful that sequence is when it plays back, it either moves up in the 'how often it gets called' rate, or it drops down and falls off. So it's constantly updating with new moves and new tricks. You'll be playing against the AI and you'll see it do your move. It's funny because if you taunt the AI, it may then taunt you back.

It doesn't feel like you're playing against the computer, and very rarely will you really be able to tell what the AI is going to do, and sometimes it's creepy-good. Not in a cheaty way… anyone can write an AI that can pound you, that can beat you - because it can cheat under the hood - but can you really build an AI that can keep you engaged and challenge you and learn from you and adapt and be dynamic? This is another great thing about Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network - we can take risks like that, we can try some stuff out. We're very confident in the value we're offering gamers this go around. We dropped Remix and the boss battles and all that kind of stuff, and just focused on two on two. A razor-sharp focus on what happens on that court, and adding more layers to it. It also allowed us to try some new stuff.

It's our hope that it helps you play better, that it teaches you and shows you holes in your game. It's a fraction – it's not every single move is real AI. We have an embedded move system.


Trey Smith: Along the lines of AI and along the lines of player differentiation and making stats matter, we put every player in an archetype. So we've got a point guard, a shooting guard, a forward, an all-rounder and a big man, and every single player in the database is one of those five archetypes, so that's also deterministic on what players do and when they do it. And when you play with that kind of player it's almost assumed that you know what that archetype is, and if you play that archetype like you're supposed to, you're going to find success, and if you don't, then you're not.


Take the Golden State Warriors. Their two starting guys are big three point shooters, so when you're playing them, they shoot from outside, and you have to figure out how to beat them. We tried the boss battles, we tried the strength and weaknesses things, some of them worked, some of them didn't, but I think that feeling of being able to recognize and try to counter those strategies based on stats, and you throw the archetypes in on top of it – it's an arcade sports title so it's pick up and play, but for the fans out there that love it, we wanted to give that depth. And it is a deceptive depth.


Trey Smith: We did juice the outside game, so three pointers are easier to land this time, and that was on purpose, because I really did feel like it ended up like run-dunk-run-dunk-run-dunk, so we're trying to open up the court and give players some different strategies they can do, and the alley-oop is one of them, and I think team fire is also something else that a lot of people wanted to do, and that's three consecutive alley-oops. I can say that a high pass rating, for the guy that's throwing the alley-oop passes, is a big deal.

With the new players that we added to the roster, a lot of the time those choices were made to even things out. Last time, the Trailblazers were a really weak team – sorry Blazers – but in Jam world there really wasn't a strong outside shooter or a strong blocker/dunker guy, so we went out of our way to find a legend that could fill that void, and tweaked the stats a little bit more to even things out. I think everybody should have a chance. It's like a fighting game - you should be able to pick any player and fight against any other player. Yeah, you might have a disadvantage, but it's still going to be fun and you still have a chance to win.


Trey Smith: Jam-net is right there on the main menu. We have an online co-op campaign called Road Trip – more on that later, and it has a heavy Jam-net component to it. We've got a dynamic online tournament mode called Arena, which you can play solo or co-operatively, and it changes often, that's about all I can say on that one. There are lots of different ways to play, but it all comes down to the two on two experience on the court.

We want it so every time you hop on you've got someone to play. Last time with the Remix games, what we found out is that we essentially splintered our audience in eight different directions. This time they're all going into one pool.


Trey Smith: We want to go out there with the strongest feature set on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. We want people to go – holy cow, all of this for fifteen bucks or ten pounds or whatever? It's our hope that down the road somebody goes – you know what? That ten pounds I spent on Jam? That was probably the best bang for fun buck that I spent. If even one person says that we're doing cartwheels. That's been our goal all along. It's a passion project – we love this game and we love making this game.

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One last thing I wanted to mention. I asked Trey whether players who had a save file from last year's Jam on their system would get anything cool. While he couldn't reveal anything, his answer does sound promising:

"I can't give you an answer to that, but we're very cognizant that we have a fan base that's out there, that's established, that came along with us for the first ride. We learned a lot, that first time through, and we're very happy that people showed up. If it wasn't for the fans that showed up the first time, there's no way that we would have gotten a second kick at the can with this one, so it's obviously in our best interests to try to give thanks back, and that's about all I can say."

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