Sports Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 487

One other competition mode you should consider including is one with no players
at all: the computer versus itself. Few other games besides chess games ever imple-
ment this mode; after all, people play computer games to interact, not to watch.
However, with sports games, people do occasionally like to let the game play itself
and watch the results, just as if they were watching a real match on TV. This also
allows the computer to play simulated matches that the player doesn't want to play;
see the later section “Simulating Matches Automatically.”
Victory and Loss Conditions
The victory and loss conditions for a match are the same as in the real sport.
However, many games that simulate team or league sports offer players a variety of
ways of playing the game, usually referred to simply as modes. (Note that these are
not the same as competition modes or gameplay modes.)
■ Season mode. The player selects a single team (or athlete, for individual sports
such as skiing) from all those available and plays a series of matches throughout a
season, trying to make it into the championships. The schedule of play for the sea-
son and the rules for moving into and up the championship bracket are adopted
from the real sport. Some season modes allow a player to play not just one team's
matches but every single match played throughout an entire season.
■ Exhibition mode. In this mode, the players play one single match, but it has no
long-term consequences, just like exhibition matches (also called friendlies in the
UK) played by real teams. Whoever wins the match wins the game.
■ Sudden death. As a variant of exhibition mode, players play a match only until
the first score is made. Whoever makes the first score wins the game. This is handy
for very quick games, although it means that luck plays a much greater role in
determining the outcome.
■ Round robin. Players in a group each take a team and play each other's team a
fixed number of times, sometimes just once. Whoever has won the most matches at
the end is the winner.
■ Tournament mode. In a single-elimination tournament, any player who loses
any match is dropped, and the winner goes on to play the winner of another
match. This requires that the number of players be a power of two. You may orga-
nize tournaments in other ways as well.
■ Franchise mode , also called dynasty mode. The player controls a team over the
course of several seasons, trying to build its strength through the years. This mode
often appears in games that include mechanisms for hiring athletes and trading
them among teams. For games such as tennis, in which most athletes play alone,
the equivalent mode is called career mode —that is, the player controls the athlete
over the course of several years of his or her career.