Now you can lose to the Detroit Pistons too! Hooray!
I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes when I watch the Detroit Pistons play, I think to myself “that team that’s losing to the Pistons must be having the time of their collective life.” The entire process seems so rewarding from the angry timeout huddles to having to answer awkward questions from awkward people at the post-game press conferences. I find myself getting a bit jealous, a bit sad. I know I’m not the only one.
All of us, you included, are in luck. We’re getting our chance to feel that glorious shame. FanSided friend Piston Powered wrote a sweet new article about a sweet new game released by the Detroit Pistons, and it’s everything you could ask for presuming you asked for exactly it, which you probably did.
While it is tempting, don’t click on the beckoning “START” button just above. It’s just a picture, and nothing will happen. You have to play the actual game. If you don’t want to do that, read the next few paragraphs instead.
You play as “You.” You doesn’t look like you unless you’re that guy, but you’re allowed to pretend.
The game faces you off against a rotating cast of Detroit Starters: Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Tobias Harris, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Marcus Morris. First side to get to seven points wins. Twos count for one, and threes count for two. There are no fours, so there’s no real indication of what those would be worth.
You play offense and defense with an increasingly quick and complicated series of directional presses. This is one I struggled with.
I got the first two lefts, but the direction after that still makes no sense to me. Hopefully that will be tested out in upcoming versions.
There’s no CGI rendering. Every moment of on-screen action was recorded and edited together in a remarkably neato way. It’s a video, but it’s also a game.
One aspect of the experience was captured exactly right. Here I am losing to Andre Drummond four to nothing.
Look at the joy on the player character’s face! He sees his impending soul-crushing shutout, and he’s loving every second of it!
It wasn’t to be. At this point, despite all effort, I accidentally made a couple shots. But one has to remind themself that everyone makes things that aren’t mistakes. What’s important is that we don’t learn from it. You have to stay strong.
I did stay strong. The game even told me so.
It didn’t take much else to push me along. Three points later, my fantasy became reality.
I had had my moment. I lost. And I couldn’t be happier.
Now obviously it’s not all the exact same. The game is a simulation. You don’t get to share your grief with teammates, nor do you get angry people coming to your Twitter to tell you how much you stink. But maybe, just maybe, after this article comes out I can get a little bit of that as well.