NLSC Your source for basketball video games.
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a confession: I can’t (totally) hate the open worlds in NBA 2K.
I’ve discussed the problems with MyCAREER incorporating open worlds before. I dedicated a Monday Tip-Off column to explaining how it gives the mode an identity crisis, forcing an ill-fitting concept into a genre that doesn’t need it. I further outlined some of the major issues with mixing open worlds with sports games in a Friday Five article. From pointless time wasting to propping up recurrent revenue mechanics to putting an end to offline MyCAREER, there’s a lot to dislike – even hate – about NBA 2K’s open worlds. I stand by all of that criticism.
However, I have to confess that I can’t and don’t completely hate the open worlds of The Neighborhood and The City! That’s not to say that I believe they’re absolutely necessary, because again, I stand by my previous criticisms. Nevertheless, I do have a certain appreciation for them, and they ultimately didn’t prevent me from enjoying my time with MyCAREER in NBA 2K19. Granted, you don’t have much choice except to grow accustomed to the open world approach if you want to play MyCAREER! Still, when it’s done right, the concept definitely has its moments. And so, I won’t deny that I’ve found The Neighborhood and The City to be engaging and enjoyable…at times.
Obviously, my enthusiasm for series such as Fallout and Grand Theft Auto makes the concept of open worlds appealing in general. It’s fun to freely roam and discover all of the locations and the effort that went into designing them. There’s joy in finding gags and Easter eggs, world-building details, and in some cases, activities and sidequests. Naturally, The City and The Neighborhood don’t compare to Fallout or GTA when it comes to gameplay, but there’s still a ton of detail beyond the locations we go to play basketball. To that end, I’ve spent some time exploring the back alleys and the furthest reaches of the map, just to see what the designers placed out of the way for us to find.
Those discoveries included cafes with charming outdoor areas, and public gardens. There were murals and graffiti art celebrating basketball. You could stumble across a forklift in an alley where construction or repairs were underway. Near the promenade of 2K Beach, you could find a wry joke with a food truck serving leftovers (“Old But OK”; what a slogan!). Although most of these details were just flavour content that we couldn’t interact with, there have also been mini-games, such as Disc Golf in NBA 2K20. Along with the various restaurants, stores, and other businesses between places of interest, as well as seasonal and event decorations, they made the maps feel alive.
Now, you could certainly argue that none of that is necessary in a basketball game, and I’d completely agree! You could further opine that time, effort, and disc space could’ve gone into more important areas of the game, and again I’m right there with you. With that being said, there is an art to level and map design in video games, not to mention details such as murals. The people working on MyCAREER’s open worlds – whether it’s a block, a town square, a beachfront, a cruise ship, or a city – have put a lot of love into making those environments interesting and visually appealing. I have my issues with these open worlds, but the quality of the aesthetics isn’t one of them.
There’s also novelty in having an interactive area beyond the usual gameplay arena in sports games. It’s an opportunity to change up the experience, and provide a fun way to unlock content, display and reflect on achievements, and access mini-games that are enjoyable time-killers. Games can throw in some rewards for taking the time to explore and just mess around, such as finding all the things that our MyPLAYER can interact with in MyCOURT. There’s value in being able to customise and decorate a virtual space as well. None of this is stuff that NBA 2K needs or anything that most of us would greatly miss, but there’s fun in being rewarded for following our curiosity.
I hate to admit it, but it did make the grinding and busywork to go No Money Spent slightly more palatable, too. In time it would become a chore, but working out at the Gatorade Gym for an extra boost was novel at first. Heading to the Daily Spin was more interesting than watching ads or tapping the screen in a mobile game, even if it was borrowing a concept from one. Gaining an extra team workout by visiting the Fresh Squeezed cart in NBA 2K18 wasn’t just useful, but the proprietor was a weird character that had some funny lines, so it was entertaining to find out what he’d say each visit. It grew tiresome as the grind got worse, but for a while it kept things fresh.
If nothing else, while I had my gripes with the concept and was concerned about the long-term impact it would have on MyCAREER, it didn’t stop me from having fun; particularly in NBA 2K19, where I finally got a player into the Hall of Fame. I also appreciated the redesign of the map which placed the Park courts in the middle, and other important locations such as the team practice facility and Pro-Am arena closer to the MyCOURT building. This “town square” approach was less arduous to traverse than NBA 2K18’s Neighborhood, with its long walk to The Playground. Strange as it may sound, NBA 2K19’s map also felt more welcoming; more like a virtual home.
It’s why I wasn’t too bothered when NBA 2K20 retained the same basic layout. I understood the disappointment that other gamers expressed. It was fair to want a new map, especially considering the repetition in annual sports games, not to mention that Ronnie 2K flat out tried to lie that it wasn’t basically the same one from NBA 2K19. If they were going to stick with the same Neighborhood for two years running though, NBA 2K19’s map was definitely the one to choose. I appreciated how the familiarity made my NBA 2K20 MyCAREER feel like a continuation of my NBA 2K19 game. Well, apart from starting over from scratch, but a new map wouldn’t have fixed that!
Of course, I wasn’t keen on the idea of MyCAREER’s open worlds getting any bigger, so the reveal of The City in the Next Gen version of NBA 2K21 didn’t exactly delight me. The removal of MyCOURT in favour of pay-to-rent courts, the addition of more advertising and ways to spend VC, and the increased travel time and distance – not to mention the need to have an in-game map and waypoints for navigation – confirmed my most pessimistic predictions for the concept. Fortunately, subsequent games have scaled down The City in accordance with gamer feedback, proving that the developers severely overestimated the desire to have massive open worlds in a basketball game.
On that note, I doubt that many people were clamouring for a skateboard game in the middle of their basketball sim, me included. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend some time trying to grind rails and pull off a few other tricks in NBA 2K21! On some level, I respected that they were able to incorporate those mechanics, as well as geography such as the hills that slowed down your ascent and provided momentum as you coasted down them. Unfortunately, it paved the way to add other vehicles and an unnecessary racing game to a hoops title, though I guess there’s some novelty to that.
Speaking of necessity, as I said, open worlds being an integral part of MyCAREER means that we have no choice but to acclimate to them as best we can if we want to play it. If you’re enjoying the on-court experiences of MyCAREER and its connected modes, then it is easier to stomach The City and The Neighborhood. This admittedly became much tougher when quests and mandatory tasks were introduced. NBA 2K23 was a terrible offender here, with unskippable objectives tied into an unpleasant story that prevented you from streamlining the NBA side of the mode. In earlier games, the open world aspects of MyCAREER were nowhere near as intrusively mandatory.
This reminds me of my gripes with Donkey Kong 64, compared to the Donkey Kong Country trilogy on Super Nintendo. In the DKC games, collectibles were mostly for bragging rights. It was how we achieved 100% completion – or over 100% completion as the case may be – and got the bonus endings. The main story could still be finished without collecting everything. Conversely, the collectibles were essential to progress through DK64, and involved a lot of backtracking and replaying the same levels to obtain them. Indeed, gating progress behind a target number of collectibles was a common approach with Nintendo 64 platformers, and one that I’ve never enjoyed.
MyCAREER’s open worlds going from an admirable attempt at being immersive to padding out the experience with undesirable extracurricular activities feels a lot like that. Sure, they still had their issues beforehand, but you could at least argue that they were replacing menus with a more interactive environment. Once quests became a focal point in an effort to make the mode more of an MMORPG beyond the virtual hardwood, it destroyed the goodwill and whimsy for me. It’s one thing to walk from your private court to the team’s training facility for a workout, another thing entirely to track down a virtual Ronnie 2K all over The City to unlock perks and content.
It wasn’t always that way, and that’s when MyCAREER’s open worlds were more tolerable, and even enjoyable. It’s why I can’t completely hate the concept. It may not be exactly what I want to see in a basketball game, but if done right, it needn’t spoil the fun. Once again, I admire the artistic merit of designing interesting and visually appealing maps, and the effort that goes into fun details and amusing Easter eggs. Unfortunately, because of the way they facilitate grinding, greed, and elements that I don’t think belong in a sim hoops title, I can’t wholeheartedly support them, either. And so, they’re something that I enjoyed somewhat grudgingly…at least for a time.
