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 examines the five worst parts of modern basketball gaming.

Over the past few weeks in The Friday Five, I’ve covered the best and worst parts of retro basketball gaming, as well as the pros of playing modern games. This week, it’s all about the cons of the latter. Once again, I must stress that despite my advocacy and enthusiasm for retro basketball gaming, I do spend a lot of time with recent games as well, including the latest release every year (albeit with some exceptions). There are many great reasons to play the newest NBA 2K, just as there were for NBA Live back in its heyday. I covered those reasons last week, and I stand by them.

However, it’s not all fun and games with modern basketball gaming, and the worst parts can leave you yearning to return to an old favourite. That’s certainly something you can do, and again, I’m all for that. However, it’s important that we speak out with fair criticism, and it benefits us to make constructive suggestions as to how the next game can improve. To do that though, we must acknowledge that there are issues with modern basketball gaming, and that new isn’t always better in every way imaginable. Obviously basketball games have come a long way, drastically improving upon their predecessors in many respects, but they’ve also fallen short in other areas of concern.

1. No Competition

So many gamers giggled at the downfall of NBA Live. Far too many influencers and pundits were eager to take potshots and delight in predicting doom and gloom for the once-proud franchise. Many of them still dismiss the need for NBA Live to even attempt another comeback. I understand the scepticism of course, but if we’re talking about competition and choice in the basketball gaming space, it’s something that’s sorely lacking, and desperately needed. Sure, the “right” game became a juggernaut because NBA 2K has maintained a generally satisfactory level of quality, but we’re feeling the effects of one company having a virtual monopoly on basketball gaming.

2K can basically do whatever they please, with no regard for goodwill towards their audience. Whether it’s the one-sided VC inflation, legacy issues that have persisted through multiple generations, or people associated with the games lashing out and making fun of basketball gamers, they suffer no repercussions. We can still vote with our wallets – and I would encourage people to do just that – but it’s tougher when you want a new NBA game and there’s only one choice on the market. I’ve said it before, but it seems that we should be in a new golden age, yet it doesn’t feel that’s the case with modern basketball gaming. A lack of competition has absolutely hurt the hobby.

2. Modes Designed Around Recurrent Revenue

This is definitely tied into the aforementioned issue, though it was beginning to be a problem even when NBA Live was still coming out. Sadly, it’s a problem that far too many apologists will smugly dismiss with thought-terminating cliches: it’s business, it’s the way of gaming these days, it’s optional. All of that is true, yet none of it is the clever “gotcha” that they believe it to be. I know I’ve said this before, but given the constant attempts to justify these practices, I’m compelled to keep pushing back on it. Just because spending is optional, it doesn’t mean that the game isn’t designed in a way that encourages you to spend, or suffer a long grind (more on that in a moment).

When modes have been designed to generate as much recurrent revenue as possible, fun has been sacrificed. When profits have been prioritised, our enjoyment hasn’t been. When we can pay to skip the grind, it’s admitting that the journey isn’t fun; we wouldn’t want to skip it otherwise! My point is that before microtransactions were ubiquitous in gaming, and even in older games that originally had recurrent revenue mechanics but no longer support them, the aim was to provide gamers with the most fun possible. Modern basketball gaming is still meant to be fun, but it’s also trying to mask predatory practices that are intended to manipulate and maximise monetisation.

3. The Annual Grind

Here’s an important point to note: even if we were to ignore all the recurrent revenue mechanics – indeed, even if you took microtransactions out of NBA 2K completely – there’d still be an issue with the grind. In a single player offline RPG or an MMORPG that’s intended to be played for years, gamers are free to take their time. As frustrating as it may be to wait years between Fallout titles, it does provide ample time to explore every nook and cranny of the games, and level up at your own pace. There’s no rush to finish the game and get everything done within the space of a year, because a new season means a new game, and that means we’ll be starting over from scratch again.

That’s the problem with the MMORPG approach to MyCAREER in recent games, as well as collections in MyTEAM. There’s a lot of work – a lot of grinding – to get to a point where the game is fun and viable because your MyPLAYER is finally no longer underpowered, or your squad overmatched. Whatever you accomplish in those modes, none of it will carry over to next year. Not even your rep has carried over from game to game, making seasoned online gamers appear to be newbies, and thus avoided by potential teammates in a toxic online scene. There’s so much repetition when it comes down to it, and I can speak from experience when I say you can really get burned out.

4. Difficulties in Modding

The advantage to modding modern basketball games is that there’s a far more active scene. That means more mods being produced, and more people who can answer questions, share advice, and contribute to large projects. As I noted in my previous articles, that isn’t the case with the retro modding scene. A key disadvantage, and one of the worst parts of modding newer titles, is that the process isn’t as easy as it was in older games. Looking back, I’m not sure we realised how lucky we were with some of the games being so modder-friendly. Beyond a love of retro basketball gaming, I’d suggest it’s why some prefer to mod old games than to tinker with more modern ones.

NBA Live’s switch to DBF files – though something done for internal convenience – made it far easier to edit and distribute roster mods, even without dedicated tools. Once NBA 2K’s save files were decoded, REDitor II and RED MC facilitated some amazing projects for NBA 2K10 through NBA 2K14. Custom art files were placed in a special folder, or directly in the main game folder, overwriting original assets as needed. Modern roster editing tools need to be updated after official patches, and we can’t open the saved rosters directly. Plugins are required to load custom art assets. We can still mod recent NBA 2K games, but it’s unquestionably tougher than before.

5. Lack of Future-Proofing for Eventual Retro Gaming

While there are many advantages to modern basketball gaming, one of the worst parts is that the best parts are fleeting, compared to the strengths of their predecessors. Because they rely so heavily on live service content and cater to the online scene, major aspects of their experience are guaranteed to be watered down or completely inaccessible in the future, once their servers are switched off. This isn’t a new issue of course, but it’s increasingly common as more content relies on online connectivity, and entire modes are unavailable offline. A new NBA 2K game may be the best yet in the series, but with the current approach, it’ll have far less value as an old favourite.

MyCAREER is the worst offender in this regard. More and more of its functionality has disappeared from the offline version of the mode over the past generation, to the point where it’s no longer playable if you’re not online or the servers are permanently switched off, as they one day will be. The PS4/X1 version of NBA 2K14 featured a surprisingly intact and enjoyable offline MyCAREER mode, but that’s no longer the case. Modern basketball games are designed without retro gaming in mind, assuming that everyone will move on and never look back. Frankly, I believe this disposable approach has led to weaker design, with game modes that aren’t meant to endure.

What do you feel are some of the worst parts of modern basketball gaming? Does it ever inspire you to go back to an older game instead? Have your say 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.