The Loss of NHL 2K Has Made EA NHL Worse

Long before Electronic Arts gained a stranglehold on the four major North American sports, there was a time when multiple developers would be assigned to make games. Football, basketball, hockey, and baseball used to be represented by multiple development teams, and there would sometimes be completely off-the-wall sports games like NFL Blitz or NBA Street. If you grew up liking sports, the 1990s and 2000s represented an incredible time for sports video games.

It's a common misconception that EA owns some sort of exclusive contract with the NHL to make hockey games, but the reality is that no such deal exists. 2K simply stopped making hockey games due to the poor sales of NHL 2K11. It's certainly fun to join the dog pile against EA, but the truth is that they're the only game in town due to a declining market, not some sort of self-imposed monopoly.

That being said, the loss of NHL 2K represented a shift in hockey video games. As a lifelong hockey fan, I always found the more simulation-style of NHL 2K to be far more enjoyable than what EA was doing. I don't hate the EA NHL game, and I'm probably one of the few defenders of the annual game, while also arguing NHL 14 is still one of the best hockey games ever made.

With the end of NHL 2K, however, there's a severe gap in the world of hockey video games. It's certainly not volume, as there are multiple styles of hockey video games every single year, ranging from retro-style 2D throwbacks to management sims, but there's only one 3D game with the NHL license that aims to replicate the on-ice product, and that's EA's game.

It's in the Game

The erosion of the NHL under EA was a slow, agonizing end that saw it transform from a feature-packed hockey sim to a game with less to do and more money to spend. It's no coincidence that the last genuinely great NHL game came out roughly three years after 2K was put on ice, as any competition EA had in the 3D hockey market was gone.

The final NHL 2K release was 2K 11, which was a Wii exclusive and featured Vancouver Canucks star forward Ryan Kesler on the cover. Three years later, EA would release what many consider the greatest hockey game of all time with NHL 14. Since then, EA's product has become saturated with Hockey Ultimate Team, a severe stripping down of simple features, massively downgraded GM and career modes, and a focus on getting players to spend more money after the initial purchase.

NHL 2K's keen, sharp eye for the on-ice product and its many eccentricities were always what made it the better hockey video game when it went head-to-head with EA. The teams who made those games really understood the small, subtle things that make hockey so enjoyable both to watch and to play in a virtual setting. 2K was what pushed EA to go for broke every year.

That competition also gave rise to EA trying really weird, off-the-wall things, like the creation of EA Sports Big. While I'm always more interested in more of a simulation when it comes to sports games, I absolutely loved the EA Sports Big banner and the games it produced. SSX and NBA Street were so unique and added much-needed dimension to the sports landscape. Imagining the EA of today making a game like that is laughable.

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Game Modes

EA's unhealthy obsession with wringing as much money as they can out of potential customers is well-documented, but there's often little discussion of how that leads to a product with so little to do but a lot of things to buy. After the transition from the seventh generation to the eighth, EA's NHL franchise saw a sharp decline in what was available on day one.

Live the Life, an engaging career mode from previous games, was stripped out alongside GM Connected, NHL 94 mode, a shockingly dry online environment, and so much more. It wasn't long before this game that 2K shipped with a game where it felt like you could do literally anything, including pond hockey, a spectacular franchise mode, the Winter Classic, robust online, and so much more.

In the years since, EA's situation with the NHL franchise has somewhat improved in regard to features and functions, but most of the modes are still built around monetization as opposed to fun hockey activities. 2K always seemed to absolutely crush EA when it came to sports games back then, but it was even more jarring back in the day.

The Art of the Simulation

What the 2K games really understood about hockey was that it is absolute madness in motion. The chippy, unpredictable nature of the way the puck moves was so well represented by 2K's game, and it's something the EA games just never got right. It doesn't mean it wasn't fun or enjoyable to play, especially with a group of friends, but if you're out for something that captures the raw chaos of the game, EA always felt like it just wasn't quite there.

There's always been a certain stickiness to the puck, where it seems to magnetically attach to the stick of the player who has it. In 2K's game, the puck seemed to follow the logic of the real-world sport, where it often feels like it has a mind of its own. While 2K felt like it was trying to approximate the real-life mayhem of the game, EA's on-ice play has always felt a little too robotic and awkward.

The smooth feeling of 2K still absolutely rocks today. Rimming a puck around the boards, then chasing it and feeling like you won or lost a battle based on skill as opposed to what the AI has decided, just hits differently. The weighty, realistic movement adds so much, and none of that ever feels present in EA's game.

2K shutting down development on any future NHL game was heartbreaking back in the day, but we haven't felt the full aftermath of that until just recently, as EA's game just keeps declining every single year. With no one to challenge EA, especially when it comes to the minute-to-minute game design, it all feels like we're playing a hockey game with a pre-determined outcome as opposed to reacting to what's going on.