Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five recalls five times that I encountered real life moves being made by CPU-controlled teams in my games.
One of the oldest Wishlist requests when it comes to franchise modes is that they feature realistic player movement. This is actually an interesting concept, because many of the moves that we see in real life would probably be considered unrealistic if they occurred in a franchise or career mode game! Teams frequently don’t get equal value when they trade big name players, as the circumstances that result in superstar for superstar swaps are generally rare. Familiar faces end up in strange places, there are unexpected reunions, and loyalty between teams and players is often eroded.
With that in mind, with so many deals that once seemed so unlikely, who’s to say what constitutes realistic player movement in a video game? In fact, I’ve encountered moves made by CPU-controlled teams that, if they hadn’t happened in real life, would probably strike me as unrealistic. Indeed, playing through five seasons and counting in NBA 2K14 PS4’s MyCAREER has resulted in a number of such moves! They may differ in terms of the exact players involved and when they occurred, but the game’s trade and free agency logic still made moves that it couldn’t have known were coming when it was released. Here are five examples of my games imitating real life moves.