NBA Live 07

NBA Live 07 was easily the worst game cycle of my career. Fresh off MVP 06, I wanted to take advantage of my doctorate in AI, so I took an AI position on the NBA Live team, who were planning a complete rewrite of their gameplay engine for Xbox 360 and PS3. I was assigned the rules and substitution systems.

The project was badly mismanaged from the start. I remember receiving a schedule that had me finishing my work about four weeks after the alpha date. When I complained about it, my project manager sad, “Oh, don’t worry, everybody’s is like that.” It only got worse from there. At its height, 20 engineers were working on the gameplay rewrite. Ultimately, the product suffered deeply and hasn’t yet recovered. It received a 59 metacritic rating, down from a 77 for NBA Live 06 (PS2). The PS3 version was cut. See the “#1″ icon on the top left of the box art, where it says “#1 selling basketball franchise”? That ended with this game.

This was a black period for me. I learned a lot about how not to run a team from this experience.