Is rugby just too complicated to make a decent game out of?

Will they ever be a good rugby game? I feel that EA, with all the tech they've got from FIFA and Madden, could make something decent but I guess the money just isn't there.

Are they any examples of a solid rugby game?

From watching the quick look I thought that Rugby 15 with better impact physics and more realistic running could be ok?

All they need to do is create a HD remaster of Jonah Lomu Rugby that came out in the late 90's, that game still plays great today

Pretty much every licensed sports game is overly complicated these days, FIFA, Madden, NFL, the whole bunch. I wish they would simplify them for those of us who aren't diehards but I guess they don't want to make their core base of fans unhappy.

There simply isn't a big enough audience on the scale of a Madden or FIFA to make it worth investing the money into, I would assume.

It's just not a very interesting sport in the first place. Maybe if they made it Mech Rugby or something it would be ok.

I thought Rugby 05 was a pretty decent rugby game.

Frozen Endzone (later renamed Frozen Cortex) sorta took rugby rules but put obstacles on the field and fewer players. I don't think it did especially well on the sales end of things.

I just think Union is an inherently slow paced game and doesn't translate too well into a videogame. League is a bit too simple, there was a rugby league game on PS2 that wasn't terrible but it just had no depth. Admittedly I'm not the biggest rugby fan by any means so this no doubt tints my opinion a touch.

[Edit] Found that Rugby League game

I liked the ps2 game but your right, it had no depth. I think it's far more impossible for an AFL game.

I think it's certainly possible to make a good rugby game. The sport that I'd say I'm not sure could be translated into a good game is Australian Rules Football.

The continuous nature of Rugby with its constant changes of possession, stop-start nature and need for spontaneous improvisation I imagine makes it tough to build an engine to accurately replicate the natural flow of a Rugby match. Budget is an issue, I'm sure. EA used to implement the FIFA engine for its Rugby games back in the day which worked well enough I guess, but it was all too rigid. You basically just saw the same four or five scenarios playing out in front of you.

Jonah Lomu Rugby from Codemasters back in '95 however, that really gave you the freedom to get creative. One of the best ever sports games as far as I'm concerned.

Sabotage mode in the Call of Duty series is the best Rugby game ever made.

It just needs the money, some day maybe there will be enough of a following for a company to warrant spending millions on making a Rugby game but until then, it's just going to be budget releases.

Well, if they can make video games about the development of entire human civilisations and it not be too complex, I think they can probably make games about Rugby. The general challenge with depicting something through a video game is not usually getting to grips with every single intricate complexity of that thing, but instead depicting that thing in a more simplified way that works in a game format but still feels true to the underlying activity or themes or whatever. I think there are some serious challenges with making a Rubgy game, but I think a smart enough developer with the right resources could do it. It would just take a lot of figuring out and support, and in a market where making a sports game usually means competing with the annual juggernauts of FIFA and Madden, Madden especially having some overlap with this kind of game, it's unlikely that any of the big industry players are going to be willing to commit to that.

If you think about it, it's no different to NFL in terms of complexity.

NFL gets crazy deep with the calling plays.

Not at all.

They managed to get 2K where it is. I think basketball is such a tall order as a sport. If that can do it, any sport can.

Now, will the effort be put forth? Is the audience to justify that effort? Those are the questions. It would take years of iteration like NBA to really get a good and accurate product.

"Is rugby just too complicated to make a decent game out of?"

Maybe, much like D&D, it should be played with character sheets and lots of dice?

I'd think like most sports games, it generally goes better for the player if they understand the rules and concepts of the game before going in.

I think it's more of a question if Rugby is popular enough to devote the man power into making a great Rugby game

Don Bradman made a cricket game. Anything is possible. I still need to grab a copy of Jonah Lomu Rugby Challenge.

I think rugby is a very strange sport to make work as a video game. For one, there is a lot of collision between players which is always an issue for game developers. Also I think the flow of rucks and mauls is hard to have function intuitively in a game. Should they be button mashes? Timing-based QTEs? It's hard to make a system where most of the time the team bringing the ball in keeps it while still giving the defending player the incentive to even try.

Maybe the only reason these things seem hard though is because no one's done it. Soccer and football seem difficult too but they were cracked simply because there was such a big market. I think it's very possible that a development team could solve this with a decent budget and developers willing to really think about these issues, but I don't really think there's the market out there to make it worth it. If any developer's listening out there, my friends and I would play the shit out of a great rugby game.

The biggest thing holding back a good Rugby video game being made is the sport is not popular enough to warrant a budget and consequently the development time to make a well designed game. Had in difficulty figuring out how to properly represent scrums, rucks, mauls, etc. and it is easy to see why a truly good video game representation hasn't been made. In saying that I thing a Rugby 7's game would be easier to make.

Jonah Lomu rugby is amazing!

No more complicated than any other sport.

Okay, so the plan for this year's World Cup is to allow Japan and USA to have really good runs into it so that the game picks up a following for a couple of weeks. Long enough for someone at EA to think, "Yeah, we used to make those. Fire up the IGNITE engine!"

More a result of the fact that the big studios, when they make these games don't devote their decent teams to producing them - a Rugby, Rugby League, AFL or Cricket game is never going to have the budget assigned to it that a Basketball, Soccer or NFL game will (that said, despite GB's hilarious quick look, Don Bradman Cricket 14 plays really well - not flashy by any means, but one of the best cricket games almost ever - some issues exist but decent).

I haven't played a Rugby League game in a while because they've been pretty poor.

I think soccer mostly works because the shape of play is a lot less regimented? Like, a lot of rugby takes place in a straight line across the field, whereas football is a bit more freeform - there are more immediately obvious options for what to do in any given moment compared to Rugby.

Now if a rugby game could intuitively allow for a lot of tactical depth in those moments (with passes and feints and whatnot) then it might be a more likely, but you;d still have the problem of scrums and rucks being hard to translate to a controller.

I didn't like Jonah Lomu Rugby all that much. Rugby World Cup 1995 and Australian Rugby League were great for the Megadrive. They were flawed but had decent enough gameplay and charm. Being able to run into the posts and fall over was funny but being able to sometimes run through a whole forward pack seemed ridiculous and frustrating sometimes.

Explain how?

I disagree, I think sports like tennis and golf translate quite easily into video games because of their simplicity and the fact that there's only one mechanic to simulate.

Whereas football (soccer) and basketball are more complex, they've had large amounts of money thrown at the problem.

I still maintain that rugby must be one of the harder sports to emulate, there's just so many different mechanics to include and without the budget I can't see this ever happening.

From the little I know about American Football I find this hard to believe, however I do know very little so maybe.

I guess the answer to my original question is: No but its not popular enough to deserve the budget it needs.