Play by Play Studios is coming out of stealth today as a game studio and it unveiled its first game, The Run: Got Next.
The game is a street basketball title where three players square off against three others (3v3) in full-court hoops action that celebrates the attitude, style and skills of streetball culture. Play by Play Studios has been quietly working on The Run: Got Next for more than two years now and it’s starting to share it. The game is expected to launch in early 2025 on Steam and consoles, said Scott Probst, CEO, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“We’ve been at this for almost three years now. We’ve stayed completely silent. We’ve been hidden in the shadows, very much intentionally, Probst said. “We wanted to prove out what our specific game and our lane was in the world of sports. And we’re excited to pull back the curtain which enabled us to do that.”
It will remind players of NBA Street, which has inspired many others. This game comes from a small, independent team of seasoned developers who have come together to make sports games that they feel just don’t exist today.
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The studio said it is not interested in making another simulation of the pros for consoles and PCs. Their focus is to create games that celebrate the global culture and spirit of sports – bringing people together, focusing on the fun and pure play within each sport, and creating everlasting memories from those experiences.
They have taken a lot of inspiration from the sports games they grew up playing, and they’re ready to shake up the sports games landscape with something new. The company has private financing and hasn’t described that.
The Run: Got Next
Basketball is just the start. The Run: Got Next is a character-driven, full court 3v3 hoops game where you bring your squad to some of the most legendary street courts around the world and see how long you can go on a Run.
You can play alone online or with friends, and you try to go on Runs in courts across the world. In between each game there are some choices you have to make in terms of modifiers, different courts favor different playstyles and your opponents will be other players trying to beat you.
The game is starting out with a roster of characters who all have strengths and weaknesses. They’re diverse, from all over the world, different genders, body types, playstyles.
The SpinCycle character is from Philadelphia and is a ball handler and perhaps the cockiest charcter. He talks trash, is an average shooter, is a good passer, is great at steals but can’t dunk. The art style is inspired by cel shading, Young said.
The focus from day one started with gameplay and nailing the studio’s style and flavor of basketball, built with players at the center, gameplay that’s easy to pick up and play and fun to master. The Run is chalk full of signature dunks, monster blocks, unbelievable handles, long 3s and alley oops – the aim is to take things right to the line of bending the rules a bit (in the name of fun), while keeping the game grounded in the sport everybody loves.
You’ll build a squad from a roster of diverse, larger-than-life streetballers, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and a customized move set to fit their specific playstyle, readying you up for your Run around the world.
Building a winning streak and holding the court will require more than just a sweet jumper – there’s layers of strategy along with surprises to keep you on your toes in every run. Some courts will favor different playstyles and you’ll visit a shop between games to customize your experience – items, abilities, sponsors kicks and more — every Run is unique.
All this takes place in a world the team has handcrafted with a uniquely stylized look and feel. Everything from the characters to some of the most legendary and unexpected courts around the world – hand-painted textures, cell-shaded characters, hand-keyed animations and the list goes on and on. This is a fully curated sports experience.
The goal is to create a game that truly looks, feels and plays like nothing else out there. A game that leverages the learnings our team has had working on games like NBA Street, Battlefield, Madden, God of War, Apex Legends, League of Legends, Dead Space and more, and equally inspired by games we’ve been playing like Valorant, Balatro, Hades, Tape to Tape, just to name a few.
You can wishlist the game now, sign up for a chance to playtest and follow the studio on social and its Discord.
Origins
I met Probst years ago at an EA dinner in Montreal. He spent 15 years at EA, working on titles like Medal of Honor, Lord of the Rings, Command & Conquer, Dead Space and Battlefield Hardline.
Probst said he grew up on games and spent 20 years of his professional life working in the games industry. Mike Young, creative director at Play by Play Studios, spent 23 years at EA. The first half of his career was with the EA Sports Big label, and he worked on all four NBA Street games, SSX, and FIFA Street. Then he spent 10 years as the creative director of the Madden series.
“Scott came to me about this opportunity. And I really liked what he was talking about. And I thought the idea of using some of my experience to revisit a game that I worked on at the beginning of my career sounded really cool,” Young said in an interview with GamesBeat.
One of Young’s insights? Defense has to be as fun as offense.
In 2021, with some old friends from his days at Electronic Arts, he cofounded Play by Play Studios and they created the company to combine their collective passion for two things – gaming and sports.
“Personally, both games and sports have played massive roles in my life – they helped shape who I am today,” Probst said in a blog post. “I remember back in the early days of gaming playing with my brother and our friends, having a blast together. Back in the 90’s my best friend ‘T’ and I used to play Madden like it was going out of business. We were both football nuts, and also running backs, and we’d play ‘All Run’ Madden where no matter what you could only run the ball. Good times.”
Probst said sports and games have created opportunities to connect with people, to build friendships, to compete, to enjoy our time together, to get better, and most importantly – to have fun.
“That idea of ‘fun’ is pretty much the basis for Play by Play Studios. As the years have gone by the gaming industry has grown exponentially, and in many cases the business has taken precedence over the fun of a particular experience – that sucks,” Probst said. “I’ve found this myself in many sports games today where I feel like I have to grind hundreds of hours to be good, I have to pay hundreds of dollars (on top of the $70 I already spent for the game itself) to have an ok time, and I have to go out on random quests to do things that don’t really have anything to do with the fun of the game or the sport.”
He made it clear his team is not going for a full simulation.
“We’re not gonna worry about overly complex menus, GM modes, micromanagement of rosters, opening packs or playing a game that feels like I’m watching a broadcast (I’d rather just watch that game on TV). We’re gonna double down on fun and get you into the game, and we’re gonna do it with style,” he said.
The team is a remote stuido.
“The initial kind of inspiration was to take our passion for games and our passion for sports and bring those two things together in a way that I think sports games aren’t really being built today,” Probst said. “That led us to The Run: Got Next.”
The team has about a dozen internal people, not counting development partners and contractors.
“We see ourselves as a small mighty studio,” Probst said. “We really want to put together an extremely crafted basketball experience that feels like it was built by a lot more people than what we have. So we got really high ambitions.”
Game design
They viewed NBA: The Street as having the Holy Grail of gameplay when it came to street basketball. You just pick up and play and join a friend in co-op play.
“We want to take that kind of easy to pick up and play nature of basketball, getting people in the sport with the game quickly and blended up with a much more modern mechanics in the game,” Probst said.
Part of the inspiration was Rocket League, where online play is a big component of getting people together for short play sessions.
“It’s really about balancing and mechanics having people that are wildly strong at something and weak in other things,” Young said. “The team construction became very interesting.”
“We want to create our own characters that are very memorable, have unique art style, have memorable voice over lines, and play very different,” Young said. “A lot of the sim games share most of the same animations.”
They wanted fluid and responsive controls, going back to the age before photorealism and precise physics, Young said.
“We want to go back to where, if you press a button, you instantly do what you want to do,” Young said. “There’s no waiting for an animation to finish or trying to make the most perfect animation blend.”
The game will have courts from all over the world. One of the courts is in the Himalaya Mountains. It’s windy and has high elevation. So in that court, your three point shooter might not be as powerful because shooting from it is much harder. Your stamina meters aren’t going to recharge as fast. So you have to play different based on the court, Young said.
In between games, you can go into a shop where you can upgrade your team with shoes, sponsors and skills or swap to a new character, Young said.
The NBA license?
Probst said the studio hasn’t explicitly sought the NBA license. The focus has been on developing the core gameplay experience using the Unreal Engine. They wanted to create characters and make their own game. Further down the line, they might consider it.
“Most of the sports world is dominated by official licensing, and particular players in any given sport, football, basketball, soccer, etc.,” Probst said. “For us, we want to create a framework where we could potentially bring those players or other celebrities, athletes and influencers, but first and foremost, we want to put our characters at the forefront of that.”
The team is betting that the audience doesn’t care about that license as much.
As for the audience, “the focus is bringing people together to enjoy sports and a sports game that isn’t exclusive or intimidating,” Young said. “You don’t have to be the biggest fan to have fun or have success in our game. You don’t need to know all the rules, you don’t need to know all the players. You can be a casual fan. You probably don’t even need to like basketball to like our game. And that’s what I loved about NBA Street. Half the developers didn’t play sports, but they loved our game.”
It’s not a simulation
The team believes the PC is an important platform as it is often ignored in the world of sports, Probst said.
“It’s instantly you’re having success and fun. You don’t have to pay extra money. It’s just not a pay to win kind of model. There’s no grind to become good. All the characters we come out with are awesome and also have their weaknesses,” Young said.
“Our goal is to keep you in the game. We’re not excessive about cutscenes and watching timeouts and inbounding the ball for a long time,” Young said.
When you play sports games with microtransactions today, you have to spend hundreds of additional dollars before you feel like you’re having a good time, Probst said.
“It’s a long grind,” Probst said. “I could go on these endless tasks and quests to do things that aren’t really related to the sport of basketball in order to increase my character standpoint to be OK, after I put in hundreds of hours. Our focus is to deliver these really cool characters. If you want to be a shooter, you want to have a great defensive player, you want to filter all of those options to be available to you out of the game, it’s about picking the type of character you like and jump into the game.”
It’s not so different from the world of Street Fighter, where the character is what matters, Probst said.
“We’re trying to do something very similar in the sense of getting players into the game, fall in love with the characters and figuring out the depth and strategy beyond that. But it’s not about hundreds of hours of grinding going on quests,” Probst said. “That’s not our jam, we’re gonna be a different flavor.”
Avoiding Web3 and free-to-play models
The team considered Web3 and free-to-play gaming, but they concluded it also wasn’t for them. They expect it to be a premium game, but with a lower price, Probst said.
“When you get into the world of Web3, and looking at different phases, you’re diverting your focus from making a great game,” Probst said. “We’re a very experienced team, we know how hard it is to make a game. And so we wanted to simplify our focus and go. Let’s make this game the best possible thing it can be.”
Similarly, free-to-play requires a different design mindset and monetization.
“Our feeling is we can deliver the highest possible quality games,” Probst said. “And do that in a way where players appreciate it, enjoy and hopefully love it.”
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