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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 how the changes to 2K Pro-Am still sting all these years later.
I had a blast playing 2K Pro-Am with our squad, NLSC THRILLHO, in NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K17. Our Friday evening sessions were always something to look forward to, and indeed with NBA 2K17, we’d sometimes jump on a few times a week. Sadly, NBA 2K18 wasn’t really to our liking, which put an early end to those 2K Pro-Am sessions. However, while NBA 2K19 was an improvement on the sticks, it delivered a much bigger blow with the changes it made to 2K Pro-Am. One change in particular made it far less viable for us to jump into games.
As I’ve said before, I’m really enjoying my basketball gaming these days. Breaking the habit of grinding up a MyPLAYER to play online, repeating the same journey as an NBA rookie along the way, was absolutely for the best. It’s been great to get back to some franchise gaming, dust off old favourites, discover new retro kicks, and play whatever I like since I don’t have to dedicate countless hours to levelling up a brand new avatar every year. With that being said, there are times that I miss those 2K Pro-Am sessions, and what the mode used to be like. Even though I’m happy with what I’m doing on the virtual hardwood nowadays, the changes to 2K Pro-Am still sting.
There have been several undesirable changes to 2K Pro-Am and online play in NBA 2K in general over the past decade, but one major misstep was the enforcement of five users per team. Originally, 2K Pro-Am supported a three-user minimum. While online team play modes are obviously designed around a user controlling every player on the court, that won’t always be feasible for 5-on-5 matchups with private squads. Because responsibilities can and will get in the way of fun, one or two people may not be free. To that point, it’s considerably easier to get three people together – especially at short notice – than always have five users available for a lengthy session of online gaming.
The solution was to provide AI teammates, filling in at the vacant positions. There are undoubtedly drawbacks to this approach. The AI Players in 2K Pro-Am weren’t the most skilled or smartest teammates, but as CPU opponents always do, they tended to stick to their man more effectively than many gamers can on defense. As such, they could be helpful in some situations, but were definitely a liability in others. They were a means to an end though, facilitating games even when you didn’t have a full squad available. It was preferable to heading to The Rec and hoping that you’ll be teamed up with some competent players, or for that matter, not getting to play any games at all.
In fact, although many of the 500+ games that NLSC THRILLHO played in NBA 2K17’s 2K Pro-Am featured a full squad, we’d also jump on with only three or four of us. Not only that, but many of the squads that we faced also had an AI teammate or two. As a result, most of the matchups felt fair for both sides. Moreover, it meant that the Australasian region’s smaller userbase wasn’t a barrier to having an online scene. Again, the AI Players weren’t ideal, but it sure beat playing with randoms or missing out just because you were one person short. Based on how often we faced familiar squads, I can confidently state that we weren’t the only ones having fun that year!
And then, NBA 2K18 and the NBA 2K League came along. There was an undeniable push to appeal to competitive online gamers, and establish NBA 2K as a major name in eSports. With that came pressure to turn 2K Pro-Am into the home version of the NBA 2K League. Beyond the expanded meta-gaming in MyPLAYER builds and any changes to the gameplay mechanics, this direction also meant that AI teammates were out, with 2K Pro-Am requiring full squads of five users. If you’d been enjoying 2K Pro-Am with the flexibility of the three-player minimum, too bad! The elitists were the ones being catered to now, having been appointed the gatekeepers of online play.
Now, I can absolutely see the argument for enforcing five users per side in team Pro-Am. It’s the intention of 5-on-5 online team play, and the ideal scenario. I understand that not everyone is willing to play with or against bots under any circumstances. As I’ve pointed out before though, there was a sensible compromise that could’ve catered to both sides here. Either provide matchmaking options that allow squads to avoid being matched up with opponents that have less than five users, or if that would be too much trouble to implement, only match full squads with other full squads. Sadly, elitism and zero-sum thinking stifled support for what should be the logical solution.
In other words, there was no need to pick a side, and yet the developers did. That’s why even though I’m quite satisfied with my current basketball gaming habits and can comfortably leave 2K Pro-Am in the past, the changes still sting. I would’ve liked it if we could’ve made the choice to move on from the mode, rather than feeling as though we were pushed out in an effort to appeal to the elitists. There’d be a greater sense of closure if we’d been able to stop playing 2K Pro-Am on our own terms, rather than the changes essentially making the choice for us. If there wasn’t an obvious solution that could’ve satisfied everyone, the chosen direction wouldn’t feel so needlessly callous.
I’ll also admit that as a Millennial, such changes sting because it reflects how we’re losing things that have been synonymous with our generation. Yes, every generation ages out of being the target demographic for pop culture, but handing things such as video games and social media over to the next generation has been different to the way that we took over music and other entertainment from our parents. We may have dictated what was popular and trendy, and even made fun of what our folks watched and listened to, but the point is that they didn’t lose their entertainment media. We had our music, TV shows, movies, books, and so on, but our parents still had theirs, too.
Conversely, video games and social media platforms are proving to be a different scenario. In theory, they’re for all ages, but they’re definitely aiming to be cool and relevant with the younger demographic. With apologies to my fellow Millennials, unfortunately that’s not us anymore! As such, games that we’ve been fans of for years and online spaces where were we once digital pioneers are not only changing in ways that are less in tune with our generation, but even openly hostile towards it. Passing the baton of pop cultural relevance is something every generation must do, but it feels like we’re giving up things that are “ours” in a way that previous generations didn’t.
Imagine if a radio station dedicated to classic rock or another genre aimed at an older audience was suddenly forced to only ever play K-pop, hip-hop, and EDM, because “that’s what music is now.” It’s not a perfect comparison, but that’s kind of what the changes to 2K Pro-Am felt like! Despite there being a viable method of catering to two different preferences and audiences, they decided to alienate one. “Who cares if it’s harder for you to organise games? Playing online is for young people anyway, and young people who are True Gamers™ at that!” It feels like something else that’s been snatched away from us; a poor “reward” indeed for long-time fans and early adopters!
Incidentally, while this is about the changes to 2K Pro-Am, it’s not just about the changes to 2K Pro-Am. This shift that began in NBA 2K18 with the introduction of The Neighborhood was a sign that the series was courting and catering to gamers who weren’t necessarily hardcore basketball fans. As always, it’s impossible to say that without sounding like I’m gatekeeping, but appealing to gamers who are fans of other genres – especially those associated with eSports, such as fighting and battle royale games – doesn’t necessarily gel with being a realistic NBA sim. Indeed, it’s why we now have gameplay that’s dominated by meta-gaming and “skill-based” mechanics.
Look no further than the adoption of timing for all dunks in the forthcoming NBA 2K27. It’s another glorified quick-time event being added in the name of making the game more “skilful”, complicating and reducing the effectiveness of the highest percentage shot in basketball. By and large, it wasn’t a feature that the community was demanding – certainly not the simheads, anyway – and the responses so far have been predictably negative. Once again, it seems that offline gameplay is set to suffer due to changes that are being made with the online scene in mind. That said, I don’t think that it’s a great change for online play either, with only the elitist sweats desiring it.
Back in 2018, a now-deleted (but fortunately archived) Reddit post from a former EVE Online developer tried to warn us about the direction NBA 2K was headed in. His prediction about player retention may not have been accurate – sadly, the desire to play a new basketball video game ultimately outweighed the resolve to boycott – but he was spot on about the pressure to spend, the contemptuous hostility towards new players, and catering to elite (or at least, elitist) players. The changes to 2K Pro-Am in NBA 2K19 were another step in that direction, and the message was clear. “Hardcore eSports gamers only; the rest of you filthy casuals can just head over to The Rec!”
NBA 2K20 did attempt a compromise by introducing 3v3 Pro-Am. Whereas 5v5 Pro-Am consisted of games of five-minute quarters played under real NBA rules, 3v3 Pro-Am combined the squads and matchmaking of 2K Pro-Am with Park gameplay, and featured games played to 21. It proved to be surprisingly fun! While I missed playing under NBA rules, the ability to hoop as a squad of three with our own branding was far preferable to playing in The Rec, especially solo. The games were quick, action-packed, and felt like a better brand of pick-up basketball compared to The Park. 5v5 Pro-Am was still being unnecessarily gate-kept, but 3v3 was a pleasing alternative.
Knowing that, a few of us revived NLSC THRILLHO in NBA 2K23, resulting in it being one of my most-played NBA 2K titles on PlayStation 5. As in NBA 2K20, it was a good time…for the first Season. Come Season 2, the community had figured out the exploits and the meta, and had been grinding hard (and paying) to level up their MyPLAYERs to OP status. A lot of the cheesy play from Park infiltrated the mode, and it immediately ceased to be fun as a result. It was clear that the connected modes in MyCAREER would never be what they once were. The changes to 2K Pro-Am in NBA 2K19 stung, but unfortunately it was just the beginning of the mode’s ruination.
This is where the “get good” crowd chimes in to say that there’s an obvious solution, but there are levels to competition; something that gatekeepers always ignore. When I was a teenager, I played basketball in my local junior/after-school league. I didn’t try out for my club’s Division 1 squad and also declined a tryout for a rep team, in part because of loyalty and politics, but also because I didn’t believe I was good enough. Division 2 in my age group was more my speed, and even though we weren’t on track to play professionally, we and the other teams in our league still cared about winning and competed hard. That’s basically how 2K Pro-Am was for NLSC THRILLHO.
The changes to 2K Pro-Am were the video game equivalent of eliminating divisions in youth basketball. As a result, a mode that was once capable of being both a fun way to play online socially and an arena for high-level competition ended up caving to elitist attitudes, and only catering to the latter. An experience that we loved essentially declared that it was no longer for us, shooing us out. Gameplay design has followed suit, adopting mechanics that favour “elite” competition over fun and indeed realism. And so, while I’m certainly content with what I’m playing nowadays, the far-reaching and long-lasting effects of undesirable changes to 2K Pro-Am nevertheless still sting.
