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 issues with NBA Live that were seemingly evergreen.

When we look at the struggles that NBA Live endured for over a decade, there are two levels to our critique. The first concerns the minutia of the games; the hands-on experience, from gameplay to game modes. In other words, the technical issues and specific design choices that have resulted in titles which failed to live up to ours or EA’s expectations. That’s an important conversation to have, especially when we’ve compiled Wishlists, or otherwise sent in feedback to the developers. However, there’s also a second level in which we evaluate concepts and approach.

It’s at the conceptual level that you’ll find many evergreen issues with the NBA Live series, which have served to hold it back and take it in bad directions. It isn’t a case of laziness, a lack of knowledge, or even resources, though it could be argued that NBA Live has never received the same support from EA Sports brass as its other franchises. There are common mistakes that are present in all of the problematic NBA Live titles though, and even some of the best releases still suffer from these evergreen issues. A comeback for NBA Live will require many specific fixes and additions from a virtual basketball perspective, but conceptually, it must also break the cycle on these trends.

1. Building On Great Concepts

Something that NBA Live doesn’t get enough credit for is how innovative it once was. NBA Live 2000 brought us the first multi-season franchise mode in basketball video games. NBA Live 2003 utilised dual analog controls to bring us right stick dribbling. Online Team Play began with NBA Live 08, a few years after All-Star Weekend debuted in NBA Live 2005. These are just some of the examples of NBA Live’s innovations. The problem is that after these modes and features were implemented, there was often little growth. That’s not to say that there weren’t any improvements, but NBA Live’s best innovations have so often failed to realise their full potential.

Franchise mode languished for a couple of years before becoming Dynasty, added a few good features, and then fell by the wayside. It never achieved the same depth as The Association or MyLEAGUE, and NBA Live 19’s Franchise mode was shallower than ever. NBA 2K has likewise run with the online team play concept to the point of having an eSports league. From signature moves and player control to historical content and more recently the WNBA, NBA 2K has taken several things that NBA Live did first, and done them better. NBA Live’s tendency to introduce something and then barely build upon it has been one of its most frustrating and evergreen issues.

2. Marketing & Previews

There were evergreen issues with the developer blogs and other work-in-progress glimpses of NBA Live during the preview seasons. Simply put, there just weren’t enough of them. Undoubtedly, it was chiefly due to the fact that NBA Live had still been rather rough over the past generation, and there wasn’t the same confidence in the product. It also went hand-in-hand with the lack of innovation following the implementation of big features. We didn’t get developer blogs talking about how modes were bigger and better, because they weren’t. However, we hardly heard all that much about the features and improvements that they could’ve promoted via blogs.

Again, it’s tough to aggressively market a game that’s fallen on hard times and is still trying to build itself back up. Ultimately the game has to impress, and I don’t doubt that through a combination of gamer feedback events and their own expectations and evaluation, EA knew that NBA Live wasn’t about to blow everyone away and make them forget about NBA 2K. At the same time, if EA Sports doesn’t appear to care about NBA Live, then why should we? It also didn’t help when the previews failed to address our concerns. Blurbs about all the real pro-am and street courts in the game were nice, but inconsequential next to talking about gameplay and existing modes.

3. Community Engagement

Beyond the “traditional” marketing EA Sports did (or indeed, didn’t do) for NBA Live, their decreasing engagement with the community is another of the evergreen issues that damaged the brand. Look, not every post made by the official NBA 2K accounts, Ronnie 2K, or the developers, will garner positive reactions. There’ll be the usual “fix your servers”, demands to reactivate servers for older games, gripes about the evergreen issues with NBA 2K, insulting memes, or people just responding “L”. It prompts a reaction though, and it keeps the brand in people’s minds. Whether or not people like it, there’s fresh NBA 2K content being shared by the official channels.

And yes, for all the negative reactions, NBA 2K is still in a better position to receive positive ones compared to NBA Live. Complete silence from NBA Live’s social media caused damage of its own, though. There was no soliciting feedback from the community regarding improvements and issues, such as asking about the approach to controls, or what they’d like to see out of modes. There was no sharing of community-made content (more on that in a moment). Even before the series’ current hiatus, this was a problem. I’m no marketing guru, but I feel very confident in saying that these evergreen issues with NBA Live’s silence on social media didn’t do it any favours.

4. Celebrating Its History

2019 marked the 25th Anniversary of NBA Live, while 2020 marked twenty-five years since the series came to PC. You may know that from our content, which I wrapped up in late 2020 with in-depth retrospective reviews, and other wayback content related to NBA Live. You wouldn’t know that at all from following NBA Live on social media! This follows on from the previous points about marketing and community engagement, but EA Sports’ unwillingness to celebrate the history of NBA Live was one of its biggest evergreen issues. True, not all of that history is positive, but it’s still possible to focus on the good times, and all of that nostalgia.

Even when we were doing the work for them, the official social media channels barely shared our retrospectives and other content. I’m not totally surprised, as a former community manager for the series decided that the old guard were out, and weren’t worth engaging with or listening to (and look how well that worked out!). He even unfollowed us on social media, and refused to answer my emails when I tried to reach out. At this point, a lot of NBA Live’s support and potential support is wrapped up in its history and nostalgia. EA’s apparent issues with celebrating the history of NBA Live undoubtedly contributed to its evergreen lack of positive brand awareness.

5. Sticking with a Direction

It’s fair to say that NBA 2K’s success over the years has had EA reeling as far as a way to respond with NBA Live. It’s understandable if suits and developers alike have been rattled; for all its high points, the aforementioned evergreen issues contributed to NBA Live no longer being the top-rated or top-selling basketball video game. The nature of competition means that you need to step up your game, and NBA Live has admittedly tried to do that over the years. Unfortunately, it’s meant that there have been sudden and impatient changes in direction, squandering progress and sending the series back to square one. We’ve seen that happen so, so many times with NBA Live!

Instead of building on NBA Live 10, the series changed direction with NBA Elite 11. I think we all know how that went, and if you don’t, the short version is “not well”. Earlier than that, the Xbox 360 version of NBA Live 06 was praised for its graphics and gameplay, but criticised for the lack of Freestyle Superstars, Dynasty mode, historical content, and depth in general. Some of that depth came back in NBA Live 07, but the gameplay took a huge step backwards. More recently, NBA Live 18 and 19 attempted to appeal to a supposed “younger, new demographic”, which likewise flopped. Inconsistent vision and rudderless direction has sadly scuppered the series.

What’s your take on these evergreen conceptual issues with NBA Live? What other big picture problems have you noticed over the years? Let me know in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.