It’s fair to say Storylines are the biggest selling point MLB The Show 24 has put forth this year during its marketing blitz when looking at both the Negro Leagues and Derek Jeter Storylines that will be coming to the game. But storytelling comes in many forms.
Year to year saves have been gone since MLB The Show 21, but it’s a hot topic beyond even something like online franchise mode being removed years ago because Y2Y saves were unique to The Show. They set The Show apart and created bonds that were likely even deeper than the ones you made with friends in an online franchise.
OS user countryboy created a topic weeks ago ago about Y2Y saves and dove into this topic of storytelling, so I want to post a lot of what he wrote below to use as a launching point to go a bit deeper into the topic of storytelling and sports video games.
Here’s countryboy:
It wasn’t until MLB ’16 that I actually took advantage of this feature, and over the course of the next 5 installments of MLB The Show, I would get thru 13 seasons in one franchise. And it was glorious!
The stories that played out over those 13 seasons, I still vividly remember. Like the Yankees never making the playoffs (sorry Yankee fans) to the drafting of a player named Juan Fabregas, who was switch hitting outfielder who wasn’t the best in the field, had a noodle arm, but could hit. He was a C potential that eventually made it to B, and went from a late-round draft pick to an All-Star and contender for the National League MVP in the span of 8 seasons. I watched as the Marlins went from bottom feeders to World Series Champions and a “rival’ of my Cardinals for 3 years as we battled in the playoffs, twice in the NLCS with us each winning once. I watched players hit their 500th home runs, earn their 1000th strikeout, and watched as rookies climbed the ranks from the stars of tomorrow to becoming the stars of today.
And all of this unfolded one game at a time, one pitch at a time over 13 glorious 162 game seasons, plus Spring Training, All-Star Games, and playoffs. Each game told a story that would be continued the next day. Each season told a story that would continue the next year. Each draft started the beginning of All-Star caliber career, and dare I say Hall of Fame career that would play out over time.
And now, all of that is gone, or at least extremely condensed.
It’s a nice thing to read, and it’s a reminder of how cool sports video games can be at creating those sorts of ecosystems for people to make their own stories. Y2Y saves were the fusion of time and commitment within a sandbox. None of the stories countryboy explained would be possible without great gameplay, a dynamic enough franchise mode, and a development team that went out of its way to keep Y2Y saves alive for season after season — until they no longer did.
But that is just one way to tell a story. When creating Storylines, it’s not about commitment, time — albeit not longevity at least — or creating a sandbox. Telling the story of Derek Jeter’s career or that of the Negro Leagues is more “traditional” in a sense and lines up more with movies or TV. When it works, it’s due to the charisma of its storytellers, and its focus as a feature is about history and education as much as it is about raw entertainment. Of course, the Negro Leagues is much more about education and history because it’s a less well-known story, it’s more important as a time capsule, and it happened much longer ago than Derek Jeter playing for the most well-known MLB franchise in the ’90s.
Regardless, the point remains that Negro Leagues Storylines would fail without Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick and his clear love for history and his natural ability to tell a story. Without that charisma, it’s a mode giving you a history lesson, but it’s framed around a Moments feature that is the same gameplay and a lot of the same presentation we had years before Storylines ever existed. In other words, it would not have the juice to be that engaging. This isn’t to shortchange the developers — they have to create the presentation, the architecture, and realize Kendrick is perfect for the role — but Kendrick is what ties it together and makes it work.
It’s to be determined if the Jeter Storylines feature will be as good, but there is a clear love for this feature from SDS, and it’s showing up in their art and appreciation for NY and that moment in time, so it comes down to Jeter’s ability now to tell his story.
To stay with MLB The Show, another way they tell a story is a fusion of sorts between the traditional stuff mentioned above and the sandbox. Whether it’s RTTS or March to October, you’re placed more in a sandbox, but you’re being feed narrative beats and things to overcome that are different based on the mode. In Road to the Show, it’s more about in-game podcasts, cutscenes, and directed choices mixing together with how you want to shape your player. In March to October, it’s about trying to bring life to things like the trade deadline, the draft, and what type of team you even want to be, all on an expedited schedule where you play the biggest moments of your season.
None of what I’m describing is meant to say one storytelling device is better than the other, it’s more to point out how powerful time can be as a storytelling device. We have a Dynasty Headquarters on the forum that houses the stories folks want to put together about their franchises, career modes, and so on. In a way, it’s the Y2Y saves of OS because these folks put a lot of the time into sticking with one version of the game for multiple years (or transferring the same story to a new game). They add to their experiences in games like NBA 2K or Madden with the power of their own imaginations and ability to do write-ups and put together media.
It’s a lot of work to do that. It’s why many of those stories on that forum do eventually end. But it’s a reminder that storytelling comes in many forms, and video games are unique. I’m not hear to beat that topic into the ground or say “this is what makes video games special vs. books/movies/whatever” because they all have their place, and they all do certain things better than another medium.
Instead, it’s more to explain that people wanting Y2Y saves back is not because they’re pushing for something just because it’s gone, rather they want it back so much because that’s the power of something that’s seemingly so simple. It’s not a feature that takes a lot to explain (albeit it’s absolutely a pain on the developer’s end to implement), and it could conceivably show up as a single bullet point on a press release. Still, what these Y2Y saves unlock is a powerful form of storytelling.
And if you want to put that into dollars and cents, implementing a storytelling device that creates a bond that strong then creates a consumer who will keep crawling up that hill to give you money year after year.
