Tag Archives: Zero-Sum Thinking

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.

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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 thoughts on what we stand to lose – like tears in rain, to quote Roy Batty – with the continued push to end physical media.

As Dee and I discussed in Episode #638 of the NLSC Podcast, Sony has recently announced that the production of PlayStation game discs will end in January 2028, marking a shift to digital-only releases. To say that there’s been significant backlash to the announcement is to put it mildly! Also, despite what executives and shills may try to claim, the pushback isn’t just coming from grumpy old heads nostalgically clinging to an outdated medium. Gamers have brought the receipts, demonstrating that with many popular titles, physical and digital sales are still quite close in number.

There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with being unable to grasp or adapt to modern trends and technology, as so many sneering shills will suggest. There are advantages and disadvantages to both physical media and digital releases, and thus reasons why we may prefer one over the other, or pick and choose the distribution method on a case-by-case basis. However, with moves like Sony’s decision to end disc releases for PlayStation games, and the decline in physical media in favour of streaming services, it’s building towards a troublingly anti-consumer future. And so, like tears in rain, some wonderful benefits of physical media are going to be lost.

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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 advice for 2026: just keep scrolling.

Nothing is for everyone. I wish I could phrase that more eloquently and profoundly, but when it comes down to it, that’s the way it is. This is as true for content on the internet as it is for TV shows, movies, music, video games, or basically anything else you can name. Not every YouTube video will be appealing to you. Not every forum, Reddit, or social media post will concern a topic that you care about. Not every article that I or anyone else writes will be interesting to everyone that happens to stumble across it. Even if you’re the intended audience, it still may not be your thing.

That’s OK, but somehow, too many people still take great exception to encountering something that they’re not interested in. Now, you could say that there are far more important matters in the world, but that’s kind of my point here. If the worst thing that happens to you today is that you’re suggested a video or a social media post that just doesn’t interest you, I’d argue that it’s been a pretty good day! And yet, some people still can’t help lashing out with snark and outright hostility when either the algorithm or a creator they follow delivers content that’s completely inoffensive, but simply not their cup of tea. It’s ridiculous because there’s an easy solution: just keep scrolling!

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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 a few thoughts on how we’re in the age of gatekeeping, and how that gatekeeping frequently involves age.

With my thirties drawing to a close, I’ve never identified more with that classic scene in The Simpsons where Abe warns Homer that one day, he won’t be “with it”. For Elder Millennials like me, it feels like we’ve been suddenly and unceremoniously pushed out of pop culture and some of our favourite hobbies; or at least, an effort is being made to do so. Our fashions are outdated (yet at the same time, they’re being brought back), our jokes might as well be “Boomer Humour”, and apparently we don’t even shoot videos correctly! We’re now among the “old heads” being sneered at.

And hey, to make a very Millennial-coded reference, it’s the Circle of Life, right? We’re not the trendy young crowd anymore, with only the youngest Millennials clinging to the upper end of the 18-34 demographic. This is the way of pop culture; this is, as blink-182 put it, growing up. Still, it feels like we’re being pushed out of things that we’re not too old for, or that anyone is too old for, really. We’re in an age of gatekeeping in general, but the gatekeeping itself is also often about age. That’s not to say that we didn’t have our own version of “Old Heads Keep Out” on the proverbial clubhouse door, but online discourse definitely revolves around generational division.

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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 a rebuttal to the idea that basketball gamers who are sim heads are somehow casuals.

Since we’re all on the internet here, I’m going to assume that we’re all familiar with Harvey Dent’s line in The Dark Knight about either dying a hero, or living long enough to become the villain. It’s up there with Alfred musing that some men just want to watch the world burn; another line that the internet loves, especially wannabe nihilist edgelords. In any case, Dent’s observation can be applied to the real world as well. From people who tarnished their reputation, to simply finding yourself on the wrong side of the argument as time goes by, it’s possible to end up as the bad guy.

Of course, when it’s a matter of fandom infighting, “bad guy” is a relative term. We’re more likely to throw around a word like “casuals” to dismiss the opinions of people we disagree with, ostensibly because they just don’t get it. For a long time, gamers who played basketball games, but didn’t know or care much about the real sport, were the ones who were branded with the “casuals” label. While I don’t agree with the gatekeeping nature of that, it made sense in so much as sim games in particular were designed with hardcore hoop heads in mind. These days, sim heads are being called “casuals” by those who advocate for cheese and “stick skills” over realistic gameplay.

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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 my thoughts on how there’s too much zero-sum thinking in the basketball gaming community.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, zero-sum thinking involves perceiving situations as a zero-sum game; in other words, a scenario where a gain for one side means a loss for the other. Needless to say, this leads to a belief that mutual gain and benefits are impossible. Our success must come at the expense of someone else’s failure, and every situation involves a winner and a loser. Obviously there are zero-sum games and scenarios where this is true, but a bias towards zero-sum thinking does result in fallacious assertions.

Needless to say, zero-sum thinking occurs in a number of matters, many of which are more serious than basketball gaming. However, since that’s what we cover here at the NLSC, that’s the context I’m discussing here today. If you’ve observed or partaken in the discourse in the wider basketball gaming community, you’ll have encountered zero-sum thinking, even if you didn’t recognise or label it as such. Again, it’s hardly unique to basketball gaming, and is inevitable when passionate people have different ideas about their hobby. That doesn’t mean we can’t call it out though, because it does foster toxicity, and doesn’t help in the development of better basketball video games.

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