ESPN

If the Warriors win their last game of the season, they're the eighth seed in the West. Lose and they go home.

So there you are, dressed in your best Believe shirt or maybe your throwback Mullin jersey, and as you watch the game unfold, you feel the desperation in the pit of your stomach as the Warriors revert back to their seemingly cursed form. Curry goes cold, Captain Jack throws the ball out of bounds, and Monta Ellis and his high-flying act hit the ground with a thud. Golden State loses their must-win game, and as a die-hard Warriors fan, those playoff tickets you have sitting on top of your desk are not only worthless, they're haunting reminders of what could've been.

But this is where "NBA Live 10" comes into play. That's right, a video game.

Using "NBA Live 10," gamers can play along with the current/real NBA action in a new Dynamic Season mode, and as you play, the stats and game results you accumulate in the video game actually change the stats and standings in your "Live" universe, enabling gamers to not only play along with the season as it happens, but change the outcome (at least on your 360 or PS3).

ESPN caught up with "Live's" online producer, Garreth Reeder, to find out exactly how this NBA alternate reality will work.

ESPN: Why spend more time developing Dynamic Season mode as opposed to upgrading the game's Dynasty mode? Is there more demand from gamers to play along with the real season as opposed to creating their own season from scratch?

Garreth Reeder: Last year, Dynamic DNA was a big feature for us with all of the daily rosters and stats, but people told us, while they loved getting all of the updates and all of the changes, they didn't have any way to actually play with it other than a Play Now game or a Quick game. We had a lot of guys saying that they wished EA could merge Dynasty mode with DNA and the daily roster updates. So from the beginning of the year, we had a real desire to deliver a mode that really ties you into what's happening every day in the real NBA season. We're really looking at it as something for the fan of "NBA Live" who is just such a big fan of the NBA that following the games, following their favorite teams in real life isn't enough. This mode gives them a way to play along with real life and change what they want to change with the season.

ESPN: Obviously, the season hasn't started yet, but can you breakdown what gamers can expect from the mode once the season begins?

“

Last year, Dynamic DNA was a big feature for us with all of the daily rosters and stats, but people told us, while they loved getting all of the updates and all of the changes, they didn't have any way to actually play with it other than a Play Now game or a Quick game. We had a real desire to deliver a mode that really ties you into what's happening every day in the real NBA season.

” -- Garreth Reeder
"NBA Live 10" online producer

Garreth Reeder: There are really two main ways to play. Let's say it's the middle of the season and I'm a Warriors fan. When I boot up "NBA Live" and there's a Warriors game tonight, I can jump into Dynamic Season, hit Today's Games and that Warriors game is going to be front and center along with all of the other NBA games happening that night. I'm playing with the latest updated DNA rosters and stats, so heaven forbid Ellis gets injured, then I'm not going to have him in my lineup because we're following real life completely. Maybe in real life the Warriors lose that game, but I win, then the very next day that win that I got with the Warriors gets put into my season along with all of the real results of the real NBA games that I didn't play get merged in with mine. So it's a constant merging of the games you play plus the real-life games. I know in Dynasty mode, everyone wants a sim engine that's realistic. Well, this is the ultimate sim engine because we're using the real results for the games that you don't play.

ESPN: How will you rectify the stat discrepancies with people playing different length quarters than the real games?

Garreth Reeder: We implemented a stat scaling modifier so you can play anywhere from 2-minute quarters to 12-minute quarters. We set it up so that depending on what quarter length you play at, we'll scale your stats up a little bit so it's a better fit with a real NBA score. So if you're playing at the default, 5-minute quarters, we'll scale up a little bit so that if you play a bunch of games with the Warriors, we don't want your stats to be significantly lower than the rest of the league. But if you're a real hard-core guy and you're playing 10, 11, or even 12-minute quarters, we don't really touch the stats on those kind of game lengths because you're playing the length of a real game. We've tested it out and some people play differently, but we're pretty happy with the results we're getting back in terms of the stats.

ESPN: What if I'm playing as the Warriors, but I totally screw them up so that even though they make the playoffs in real life, in my game, they're like 10th out in the West? Is there a way to reset my results in the game so that I can play along with the real Warriors in the playoffs even though my "Live" Warriors failed to make it?

Garreth Reeder: This question ties into a key point for us, this sandbox idea. Initially when we were looking at this we thought we should do the mode traditionally where you're locked to a team and you have one chance to play these games and if you don't make it, you don't make it. But we really wanted to open things up, so while you might want to play along with the Warriors for most of your games, you can actually play any game in the NBA and play as any team. It's completely wide open in that sense. But we also have a Rewind games feature where we have a team calendar with every game on it that they've played throughout the year. So in your case, if you've been playing your Warriors games nightly and you've been losing, you can go back in the calendar and hand-pick games that maybe you didn't play or that you played and lost, and you can try to re-play those games. It's really up to you how you want to play. But if you go back into the calendar to play, we take the roster from whatever day that was, the stats from whatever day that was, and all of the DNA information so those rewind games that you play on the calendar should feel like those real games did back on that day.

So to answer your question, if you didn't play very well and your team doesn't make the playoffs, you can either say, "those are the breaks" or you can go back and re-play some of those games and try to get yourself in. Once the real NBA playoffs start, though, we do enable a button that says My Playoffs. What that does is triggers a new playoffs based on the season standings that you have in "Live" through playing various games. So you can start your playoffs at any point once the real playoffs have started, but we will also always give you the Today's Game option that will show the real playoff options if you want to play those. My Playoffs is a separate feature that is your thing, your world, your universe, but you'll still always have access to the real games if you want to play those as well.

ESPN: Almost like you're providing an alternate reality for NBA fans whose teams can't make the playoffs on their own.

Garreth Reed: Exactly. Because we're merging your stats with real life, it's your chance to take your favorite player, your favorite team and defy expectations with them. I'll use the example of the poor Oklahoma City fan who just loves Kevin Durant. Now you have the chance to play those games as him and try to compete with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and really try to get that MVP. And one of the things we have is, when you start the playoffs, we calculate all of the season awards so at the end of the year, if I'm playing all my games as Durant and I have him averaging 35 a game, there's a good chance that he'll beat out those other guys for MVP. Maybe one of my guys gets Rookie of the Year because I played really well and got him a lot of quality minutes throughout my season. It's like a real-life simulation where you take control of it and I think that not only for a video game fan, but for a sports fan, this is something I've never really seen before.

ESPN: What about the poor Seattle fans. Can you manipulate reality enough to move the Sonics back home?

Garreth Reed: [laughs] It's funny, I was on the boards the other day and this one guy had in his signature, "Depressed Sonics fan". I told him, "You know what, in Dynamic Season, you can play all of those Oklahoma City games and use the Sonics throwback uniforms for every game." You'll still be on the Oklahoma City court, but at least you can have that Seattle feel to it if you want.