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 some reflections on the bygone practice of creating ourselves in basketball video games, long before we had MyPLAYERs.
When we think about creating players in basketball video games these days, it’s usually to either add a missing player to the current or historical rosters, or to create our avatar for career mode play. It makes sense, of course. Even though we have official roster updates, community rosters are not outmoded. Indeed, they’re essential as far as adding retro players that can’t be licensed. Career modes have been popular since their introduction, and have only become a bigger part of basketball gaming with the advent of the connected online team play experiences.
Obviously, we’ve been creating rosters and career mode avatars for years now. Although not everyone chooses to give their MyPLAYERs their real name and face – either via a scan or a close-enough approximation with the in-game creation tools – many of us do or previously have created ourselves for use in MyCAREER. Most of my MyPLAYERs have been “me”, aside from the fictional scenario where I’m good enough to play in the NBA! However, long before MyCAREER and its connected modes, many of us created ourselves on the virtual hardwood. It may seem like a quaint notion nowadays, but it was fun thing to do before we had these deep modes.
Many years ago, I installed a second copy of NBA Live 96 on the family PC, to a folder named NBA96SE. SE stood for “Special Edition”, and was inspired by the updated version of the original Need for Speed. Back then, we couldn’t save and load multiple custom rosters without modifying the executable – something I didn’t know about yet – and I wanted my own “Special Edition” of NBA Live 96 that I could mess around with. That meant creating players to represent both me and my cousin Clinton. Since we were kids who weren’t even close to six feet tall yet, I boosted our heights to around 6’10”. I put us on our favourite teams: me on the Bulls, Clinton on the Sonics.
This is how we indulged our fantasies of being an NBA player, long before there were career modes with dedicated avatars like MyPLAYERs. Sure, playing with real NBA rosters held great appeal, which is why I wanted to keep the original game folder with its proper roster intact. The notion of updating the game’s rosters also occurred to us, even before my family got the internet and I discovered what our founders were doing with mods here at the NLSC. Beyond that though, there was a desire to mess around; to create something wild and wacky. The original Custom Teams were a great way of doing that with NBA players, but creating yourself and your friends was fun, too.
Naturally, it’s an idea that stretches beyond the virtual hardwood. In hindsight, WWF War Zone by Acclaim wasn’t a great game, especially compared to what THQ/AKI were doing with the WCW titles. It was a big deal when they switched to making WWF games instead, as it was my promotion of choice during the Monday Night Wars. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of hanging out with a couple of friends and creating ourselves in WWF War Zone, so that we could stage our own makeshift PPV events. Although we often think of creation modes and roster editing as a way to fix and update sports games, they facilitate countless ideas as far as fantasy scenarios.
And, needless to say, just as they helped us to create detailed current season updates, retro rosters, and other projects, modding tools made those fantasy scenarios starring our players even better. Sometimes, that just meant renaming teams, and adding real nicknames to the players. In NBA Live 2001, I replaced the Chicago Bulls with the City Bulls – the team I played for in my local junior league – and created our roster. I even thought about creating one of our opponents, though not knowing all of their names, their roster would’ve resembled a college basketball game: #4, #7, #13, and so on. Still, it was fun to put my team into the game, even without proper faces and art.
Indeed, when I look back on it, there was charm in taking such a simple approach to the activity. It was just something fun to do, when I didn’t feel like taking the game too seriously. We didn’t have as many modes back then, so putting Create-a-Player to use for an out-of-the-box idea basically crafted a new experience. Sure, it would’ve been cool if we all had faces and our proper logo and jerseys, but the mere fact that players with our names were in the roster, on a team that was called the City Bulls, was novel enough. I gave us ratings that generally reflected our abilities and styles of play, albeit exaggerated so that we were actually viable to use in an NBA video game.
I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen anymore, but with the depth of modern games, my guess is that it’s nowhere near as popular of an activity as it once was. I mean, when we can create our own MyPLAYERs – even scanning in our faces, if/when we can get that to work – and jump online with friends to play in a competitive setting with a team that we can customise down to the logo, why create a custom team for offline play? There’s something to work towards – a deep experience to be a part of – even if you just stick to the NBA side of MyCAREER. How is it fun to create an avatar that already boasts some impressive ratings, leaving no journey to undertake?
It depends what you want out of a video game. If you want an in-depth career mode with an actual progression system, then a ready-made avatar probably doesn’t sound like a fun idea. If you just want to set up some fun scenarios and put yourself on the virtual hardwood without having to weather a lengthy grind, then that old school, pre-career mode approach is still worthwhile. There have been a number of community rosters over the years where NLSC Forum members have been added to the game for everyone to use. KingJMASE’s Elite Street League has done something similar, and there’s even been an NLSC squad featuring Dee, myself, and the great Terry Hanson!
Aside from personal avatars – modded or otherwise – we’ve taken control of other players before we had MyPLAYERs. Even before fully-fledged career modes, we’ve had campaign modes that involved creating a player, often with the ability to level them up. I mentioned that my group of friends would create our own wrestlers when we played WWF War Zone on Nintendo 64. We did the same thing with the N64 version of NBA Hangtime, creating players and unlocking extra attributes as we went through the tournament ladder. This set up some epic battles, and the occasional re-spec as we tried to counter the strengths of each other’s powerful created players.
While that was a blast and I have many fond memories of those showdowns from early high school, to this day, I’m still a little bothered by how created players work in NBA Hangtime. Once a player has been created on your ID, they’ll always be the one that you’ll control. You can still select any team that you like, but you won’t be able to control an NBA player if you enter those credentials before a game. There were also a very limited number of player faces, so you either picked one that at least had your hair colour and could pass as you at a glance, or something outrageous such as one of the mascots’ heads. It was a far cry from the flexibility of Create-a-Player in sim titles.
Obviously, there are also the players that we created for the campaign modes in NBA Street Homecourt, AND1 Streetball, and 24/7 mode in earlier NBA 2K games. Again, these are more similar to the MyPLAYERs we have today, though without the online play (not to mention the microtransactions). They paved the way for MyCAREER and NBA Live’s various career modes. Still, the idea of putting yourself in hoops games began with the traditional Create-a-Player function, and the simple practice of placing that avatar on an NBA team or custom squad. Even when franchise modes were king, there was a lingering interest in making ourselves playable on the virtual hardwood.
Once again, that old school, more casual approach to putting ourselves in the games, has a tough time competing with the depth of MyCAREER and its connected modes. Even if we grumble about the grind and microtransactions, there’s still an in-built journey with multiseason NBA play, a structured progression and rewards system, and the ability to compete online. With that being said, I’m all for normalising old school ideas, and bringing them back! The depth of custom face creation, the re-branding options in MyLEAGUE and MyNBA, and ability to create mods on PC, open up a host of possibilities if the journey of MyCAREER is no longer appealing.
I’ve previously discussed my appreciation for minimalist modding. Reflecting on what I did in NBA Live 96 and NBA Live 2001 PC, adding myself and my cousin to the former, and then my local junior league team to the latter, definitely qualifies as such. There was no need to play a full season with those custom rosters, and to that point, I didn’t. Part of the fun was just messing around and creating ourselves, and throwing those players on the floor in between more “serious” sessions. With some of the fun I’ve had in recent years playing exhibition games with makeshift classic teams, I’ve been thinking of cobbling together something to play with whenever the mood strikes.
And why not! I’ve had immensely enjoyable experiences turning MyPLAYERs into superstars, guiding them to championships, and taking them into the online arena. I’m still enjoying my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER on PS4. However, nothing’s stopping me from playing those modes, while also changing things up with something out of the norm; especially since I have little desire to start the whole journey over from scratch every year. If you feel like a change of pace, consider this old school activity! Much has changed since the late 90s, but we can still have fun creating custom players that aren’t MyPLAYERs. Deep modes are great, but don’t let them stifle your creativity.
