I am currently working on a sports game but it has struck me, after a lot of searching, that there isn’t a lot of sports games developed by indies. Am I looking in the wrong places? Does anyone know any small developers working on, or completed, sports games? Bonus points if they are developed in Unity!
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Worked on this game: Discover and Play Free Online Games on Kongregate!
It did not make is as big as the company hoped for, but they do have quite a lot of players in brazil 
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The barrier of entry on making a decent team sports game is really high. The biggest hurdle getting good team AI working, which can take years to perfect (which as a release cycle is not feasible for most indies)
But as to single player games/events such as skiing etc… yes there don’t seem to be many games.
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i remember a certain cricket game that got a lot of attention awhile back, but not for anything good, and i dont recall how “indie” they actually were.
i think most don’t bother going after the big name sports like hockey, football, soccer, basketball etc, as the aaa ones out are pretty unbeatable.
would be nice to see more simple versions come out ala mario type sports games, where the point isn’t to be as realistic and accurate as possible, but to actually be fun.
not necessarily indie, but look back at the explosion of skateboard/snowboard/bmx/ other x-treme type sports. im sure there’s an untapped market just waiting, for some newer type or variation of sport, like parkour, long boarding etc.
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Theres tons of indie racing games, if you consider racing in the sports category. Other than that there hasn’t been “legit” sports simulations, but if you look in Desura ( which mostly contains indie developers ) there are some indie sports games http://www.desura.com/games/browse?filter=t&style=18
As banreaxe stated about a cricket game, not sure if its the same one he’s talking about. http://store.steampowered.com/app/25500/
I agree with this, there’s no possible way to beat an AAA sports game (2K Sports, EA Sports, Football Manager, etc), and that I would definitely love to see more mario-type sports, games which aren’t so serious and realistic.
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I’m currently working on a 2D semi-arcade jump shooting basketball game. I know there’s a ton of them on the market right now, but I’m trying something new other than the same ones with floating basketballs and boring shot mechanics. Right now it’s just me working in my free time and a paid artist.
What sport are you working on?
Take a look at Frozen Endzone being made by Mode7.
I’ve just released a fishing game
It’s bit old game, but I believe Matchball Tennis was released by indie company,
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Worked on this game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/BigBiteGames/big-bite-soccer
It did not make is as big as the company hoped for, but they do have quite a lot of players in brazil
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And now it has player in Poland as well. Seriously though, you should go to mobile with it. Seems like perfect game to play when you’re on a train or in bus.
MogoTXT has put out a few indie sports games including the now infamous (well, in Ouya circles at least) - Gridiron Thunder for Ouya.
I think the biggest hurdle to developing indie sports games now is that the overwhelming majority of people that play sports games want to play with real-life players and teams, and licensing to do that is easily out of most indie devs’ budget. Or in some cases, simply impossible because the league has signed some kind of exclusive licensing agreement with a particular developer.
The demand for non-licensed sports games is almost non-existent, sadly. Which really is a shame, because I have fond memories of some great non-licensed sports games from the late 80s and 90s: High Impact Football, Arch Rivals, Super Baseball 2020, Bases Loaded, Super Sidekicks. I’d love to see some more of those kinds of games released today.
Hehe, well the multiplayer part is the focus, and mobile connections needs to be better before it can handle a game like that well enough.
I believe that Big Win series were indie and made an insane amount of profit
http://www.twingames.it
we are indie company that develop many sports games.
if you are interested contact us to info@twingames.it
You are right, the AI is the thing – we are a small indie studio developing a mobile basketball simulation game in Unity 3.5.7, and spent a lot of time making a modular system that would accommodate the managing and leveling of several characters and still make the game fluid and fun. Come by and check us out:
I’ve done a couple of American football games in Unity. I started with a simpler flick game called Pocket Passer QB and eventually did a much, much more complicated game called GameTime Football. I’m currently working on GameTime 2.
All games are exhausting to make but the AI, movement and balance on a sports game is really challenging and fairly difficult to get right. I think its a pretty tall barrier especially when you are competing for users against the likes of EA and Madden.
That’s why my next game is Flappy Something.
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Great stuff! Had fun playing this on my tablet.
I am looking at developing an American football simulation using some of the “canned” (3D model, rigged, animated) football player packages that are out in the Unity asset store and on sites like Turbosquid. I anticipate my plays and player actions will be fairly scripted. Would you advise I use Mecanim to facilitate getting a given play with accompanying player and referee actions setup and coordinated or use some other method. I am going to post this in the Unity animation forum to get additional input.
I’m not exactly sure if that would work best. If the game is scripted and you are looking to just show a player running a route without interactive gameplay I think that would be OK. If you are hoping to have dynamic gameplay with your players reacting to other players, adjusting to catching the ball and such you need to take a different approach. You will have to get into steering behaviors and some AI along with all the calculations to determine where players are supposed to be and when they are supposed to be there.
I did use Mecanim for blending animation states, but the overall transforming of position and rotation was done through waypoints and steering behaviors that factored in players abilities. For the routes, those are just broken down into waypoints that the players try to get to with a variety of braking factors depending on the points.
All the players AI is done using Finite State Machines depending on the circumstance of the game/play.
I don’t think that’s going to be a ton of help, but maybe it will point you in the right direction.
Thanks to everyone that has shared links, I, like the OP have always been interested in sports (both as a gamer and a developer). If you know of any other games keep the links coming.
My initial learning game is winding down development (1 or 2 updates left in the coming months) and then I’ll be moving on to the next idea (basketball game). I always love to see various indie takes on sports. I’d agree that the full team sports games is a bit far fetched for an indie because of the AI involved like previously mentioned but also the large animation work required that has to be infused with physics in most sports to make it look right. Couple that with market expectations (madden, nba, nhl, etc) and its not very indie approachable in the traditional sense. Most that have worked don’t really even attempt direct competition (flick soccer, homerun battle, ice rage, backbreaker football, etc) and instead mostly take the team out of team sports to make it a fun experience (and they are still fun).
That being said I think there are more of these unique indie “sports” games that will probably succeed (obviously I hope to be one of them) but your traditional team sports games is a tough nut to crack for an indie. At least for me I view the animations as a tougher thing to overcome than the AI but I’m a developer so obviously I’m biased.
Thank you for the reply. Your comments are a great help. Since the project I am getting involved in is more of a training app and not so much a dynamic game. If I go with the scenario where the play is 100% scripted then I will be animating/choreographing each of the 22 players plus referees. Doable, but based on your comments, I might want to consider scripting the players involved in what the program is focused on demoing (like a pass play with particular routes) and run the rest of the players (linemen executing blocks, etc) in some sort of dynamic mode. It may be simpler and more cost effective time and money-wise to just script all of them but not sure at the moment. Have to give it some thought and if you have a moment and want to add anything to this I would appreciate it.