With the NBA and NHL seasons heading into the playoffs, everyone is turning to the most trusted, accurate predictor of outcomes to figure out how these tournaments will likely play out. We are of course talking about video games.
Whether or not you're a sports fan, you've got to admit there's something kind of fun about playoff simulations. Nowadays, in-game versions of actual players are fine-tuned and balanced as much as possible to reflect the skill and styles of their real world counterparts. So what's not to enjoy about having these virtual athletes go toe to toe in order to see, according to a computer, which roster will reign supreme?
The NBA Playoffs are officially up and running, so 2K turned to their trusted advisor, the video game NBA 2K17, to find out how things are going to play out. The folks over at Polygon scooped up the details and, we've got to say, they're pretty interesting. I mean, these types of simulations are pretty accurate sometimes, which means we're getting closer and closer to needing to bow down to our mechanical overlords as they become able to predict everything about we puny humans.
To conduct this extremely scientific study, the developers simply boot up NBA 2K17, set up the post season brackets as they are in the real world, then set the game to auto-play through the entire tournament.
According to the NBA 2K17 simulation, this will be the third year in a row that Cleveland squares off against Golden State. Unlike last year, however, the simulation is claiming that the Golden State Warriors will prevail, earning a narrow 4-3 victory across the seven-game series.
If you want to get really, really deep into the particulars of the brackets, 2K has provided a full rundown of their simulation's predictions over on Facebook. If you've got a favorite team in the running, head on over and see how the fared in the virtual space.
The same goes for the NHL, where the NHL17 simulation has already worked its way through the post-season tournament. According to 2K's findings, the Nashville Predators will best The Montreal Canadiens across the seven-game finals. Again, the simulations have been correct in the past (and also very, very wrong), so it'll be interesting to see how the actual playoffs unfold.
We'd be interested in hearing if any of our readers ran similar simulations in their own versions of NBA 2K17 or NHL17. Did your results coincide with those of EA or did things turn up a bit differently? If so, which version of our future are you more inclined to believe? Let us know in the comments below.
