Tag Archives: Simulating

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 is a list of five aspects that made season modes in old school basketball video games so much fun.

Being a keen retro gamer, one of my least favourite phrases in gaming discourse these days is “I can’t believe we used to think this was good”. It’s a myopic statement that forgets that we needed generations of technological improvements to get to where we are today. Moreover, just because graphics, mechanics, and modes have since been surpassed, it doesn’t mean that they’re retroactively terrible. Putting aside the fact that many classics do hold up on the sticks years later, they represent important stepping stones that ultimately led to major developments and improvements in the genre.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that modern games should be as basic as their more primitive predecessors. Just because I’m praising something in an old game, it doesn’t mean that I think it should be in a new one; at least, not in the same form. Once again though, games didn’t get to where they are now without those early attempts at modes and features that we enjoy so much, and indeed take for granted. Furthermore, beyond being nostalgic and worthy of appreciation for their innovation, there’s definitely an appeal to certain aspects of old school season modes. With that in mind, I’m not just reflecting on how those modes paved the way, but how their ideas are still fun today.

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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 is a list of the five worst decisions I made with my Franchise mode games.

Since I’ve discussed five of the best decisions that I made with franchise modes over the years, it only makes sense to counter it with five of the worst! Even though I know the approach that’ll allow me to best enjoy franchise modes and also what tends to ruin them for me, I’m not immune to making mistakes. Knowing that a change of pace can be a way of keeping things fresh, you might be inclined to try an out-of-the-box idea that turns out to be a flop. Alternatively, a tried-and-true approach might actually be the wrong move on some occasions.

Fortunately, as I noted in my previous article, I haven’t really ruined any franchise games that I was heavily invested in, to the point where I couldn’t continue them. I’ve come close a couple of times, but I was able to correct course before doing any lasting damage. With that being said, there are other examples where poor decisions have set me up to fail in franchise games, creating scenarios that weren’t fun. Some of them were wild ideas, though overcaution can also have its drawbacks. For all of my fellow franchise enthusiasts, may these stories of my worst decisions and biggest blunders serve as cautionary tales the next time you’re getting ready to start a brand new game!

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five offers up five basketball gaming trivia tidbits that are mind-blowing facts in 2022.

This will be difficult to appreciate if you were born in the late 90s or early 2000s, but there was a time that the Year 2000 screamed “futuristic”. It felt that way for me as a kid and later a teenager in the 90s, and I’m sure it really felt that way for my parents who were born in the 40s. The Year 2022 truly seemed like the stuff of science-fiction all those years ago, yet here we are. Granted, we’re somewhat behind schedule as far as flying cars, living on the moon, and everyone wearing shiny jumpsuits. Still, when it comes to certain technology, we have many things that were once the stuff of sci-fi.

They’re now just normal, everyday conveniences, but that’s how it goes as technology marches on. All the same, there’s something mind-blowing about it being the Year 2022, especially for those of us who remember the Year 2000 like it was only five, ten, or at most fifteen years ago. Once the years start flying by, the rising stars of the NBA are suddenly the veterans with a decade under their belts. The basketball video games you’re nostalgic for suddenly feel very retro. Even the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are beginning to seem old! In the spirit of acknowledging the passage of time, here are five basketball gaming facts that are – all clickbait aside – mind-blowing.

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The latest Courtside Report (aka Developer Blog) provides a breakdown of what to expect from MyNBA in NBA 2K22. For those who are unaware, MyNBA is the Next Gen franchise mode that encompasses the MyLEAGUE, MyLEAGUE Online, and MyGM experiences found on Current Gen. As such, the blog only applies to the Next Gen version of NBA 2K22.

Key enhancements this year include MySTAFF, a new approach to managing team staff from coaches and scouts to front office executives. Team and player training has been revamped, along with improved spreadsheet views. Three new pre-built expansion teams have also been added, along with conditional coaching options when simulating games.

Once again, I’ve summarised the key information point-by-point below. What are your thoughts on MyNBA in NBA 2K22 Next Gen? Have your say in the comments, and join in the discussion here in the Forum! As per the previously released schedule, this is the final developer insight that’s been announced, though it’s possible we’ll see some additional previews and teasers before NBA 2K22 is released this Friday.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Start your week here at the NLSC with a feature that’s dedicated to opinions, commentary, and other fun stuff related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games. This week, I’m tipping things off with a few thoughts on how achieving completion in basketball video games is really what you make it.

Achieving completion in most video games is fairly straightforward. Any game with an ultimate win condition such as a final boss or mission/quest can clearly be finished. There may be postscript content in games that can be played after their ending, even if it’s just an opportunity to finish side quests/missions and achieve 100% completion. These objectives are usually listed somewhere in the game, allowing you to keep track of them. To that end, I can tell you which Grand Theft Auto games I’ve finished, what I’ve done in Fallout games, and how successful I’ve been in various other titles I own.

Basketball gaming is different, particularly when we’re talking about the sim titles. There are goals that you can aim for, such as winning an NBA Championship in the various season, franchise, and career modes. Simply playing every game on twelve minute quarters could be considered a form of completion, having experienced the ups and downs of an NBA campaign…then again, games can be simulated. More to the point, the depth of modern basketball games make it extremely difficult to clearly achieve completion compared to other genres. With that in mind, we have to set our own definitions of completion to achieve satisfaction before a release is outdated.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Start your week here at the NLSC with a feature that’s dedicated to opinions, commentary, and other fun stuff related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games. This week, I’m tipping things off with a few thoughts on games being designed around playing on short quarters rather than the regulation length of 12 minutes.

Playing on 12 minute quarters rather than shorter settings has been a point of pride for me over the years. Well, pride may be too strong of a word – it’s not really any kind of accomplishment, after all – but I always felt fulfilled when I could play through a full 82 game season with regulation quarter lengths. The downside is that even in my favourite franchise experiences, I usually didn’t play more than a couple of seasons unless I resorted to simulating. As I’ve grown older and gained new responsibilities, I’ve had to make peace with the idea of simming games.

It’s been harder to warm up to the idea of playing on short quarters, though. It just doesn’t feel right; it’s not “sim”. If nothing else, I don’t like that the minutes per game averages for my team don’t line up with the rest of the league. The addition of an accelerated clock in various NBA Live titles over the past generation, as well as the ability to normalise stats in NBA 2K’s franchise modes, has provided a solution here. Of course, in MyCAREER, longer quarters allow for more Badge progress in short order, and there’s no normalisation option for stats. Caring too much about that does seem like folly however, as it feels like games are designed for short quarters.

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Start your week here at the NLSC with a feature that’s dedicated to opinions, commentary, and other fun stuff related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games. This week, I’m tipping things off with a few thoughts on making peace with the prospect of simulated games in franchise modes.

While there have been changes in my life since I started running the NLSC as a 17 year old back in 2001, I can still make ample time to play video games, basketball or otherwise. I don’t have a family, so in that regard, I do have fewer responsibilities than other members of our community. However, like anyone with a day job and a social life, I do have to ration my time accordingly. Video games are something that I have to fit in between being a sole trader, exercising, catching up with friends, and of course, my responsibilities both running and creating content for the NLSC.

To that end, as I look to make a return to franchise gaming this year, I must get used to the idea of simulating games. Should I back off a little on my intention to take a break from career modes, I’ll have to further ration my time, and that means a decent portion of games – possibly in both modes – will need to be simulated. On the surface, it may seem odd that this is something I need to get accustomed to. The simulation function has been available in season modes for over two decades, so it’s hardly a concept that I’m unfamiliar with. However, it is an approach that would mark a change in the way that I play basketball video games.

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