Monday Tip-Off: Crafting An Alternative to NBA 2K

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 how to go about crafting an alternative to NBA 2K.

At this point, it’s painfully apparent how important alternatives and choices are in the sports gaming space. For years, too many people in the basketball gaming community seemingly delighted at NBA Live’s struggles. They relished in its shortcomings, eager to pounce on every preview with snarky mockery. That’s not to say that there weren’t valid criticisms, even the ones delivered drenched in snark. NBA Live is dormant for a reason – several reasons, actually – but too many gamers wanted to see its downfall. “Just give up and go away,” they sneered. “It’s NBA 2K’s time, now.”

Misguided as it may have been, that stance was at least understandable when NBA 2K was at its peak, delivering quality on the virtual hardwood and fairness to the gamer. It was easy for the series to become the darling of basketball gamers, while Take-Two became the “good guys” who kept virtual hoops on PC when EA Sports abandoned the platform. As I said in a previous article however, Take-Two has become EA now, from greedy practices to games that fail to innovate and excite as they once did. NBA 2K is admittedly in much better shape than NBA Live was at its lowest, but there’s still room for viable alternatives. The question is how do you craft a competing title?

One of the first roadblocks in crafting an alternative to NBA 2K is that whichever company steps up – whether it’s EA Sports with NBA Live, San Diego Studio with a basketball version of The Show, or another developer – they’re going to have to be comfortable being in second place for the foreseeable future. Even though I don’t believe the NBA 2K series is at its peak right now, the strength of its brand is going to make it extremely challenging for an alternative basketball title to match its sales, especially out of the gate. To draw the obvious comparison to the NBA, an alternative game would have to patiently rebuild before it could expect to face 2K in the Finals.

Assuming that the suits can get on board with a long-term project where their game is going to be the underdog, I think that’s an identity they could lean into. Because any competitor to NBA 2K is bound to not be as deep when it comes to its features and content, it needs to be sold as a promising title to get behind. It needs to be an exciting bandwagon to jump onto; a game that’s clearly got a ton of potential but is already fun to play. It can’t match NBA 2K in depth and quality across the board right away, but an alternative needs to at least be a viable choice. In other words, if you’re utterly sick of 2K, a competing game must be good enough that you can enjoy playing it instead.

If another company can produce a game of that quality with plenty of promise for the future, then it needs to be marketed well. Again, lean into that underdog status! It’d be a terrible idea to market your game as a true challenger to NBA 2K when it clearly isn’t there yet, but if you can develop a game that can be promoted as an exciting new alternative that’s fairer to gamers and has a strong foundation to build upon, people can get behind it. To that end, this means engaging with the community, and content creators big and small. No vague updates, no hand-picking a couple of big YouTubers while ignoring everyone else. You really can’t afford to be gatekeeping so early on.

For that matter, you can’t afford to get picky and snooty if the game takes off. If you turn your back on long-time fans that supported you during the rough times…well, look what happened with NBA Live’s attempted comeback on the eighth generation! Any developer/publisher crafting an alternative to NBA 2K needs to avoid the same pitfalls when it comes to squandering goodwill, but also steer clear of NBA Live’s follies as far as alienating ardent supporters. They would need to keep any promises that they made, and also fulfil the potential that was apparent while the game was an underdog, while never losing appreciation for the support that led to more success.

Alright, so that’s the level of quality, marketing approach, and patience that would be necessary to craft a viable alternative to NBA 2K. Let’s talk about designing the game itself. This is difficult, because there’s a clash of old school sensibilities that I’d like to see return, modern trends that developers and publishers would ignore at their peril, and unreasonable expectations given that greedy recurrent revenue mechanics have become ubiquitous in gaming. We’re unlikely to see a game that’s basically NBA Live 2005 or 06 PC with modern enhancements, because the online scene demands more attention nowadays, and the suits simply won’t be keen to leave money on the table.

Still, there’s merit in experimenting with a more “traditional” approach in a sim-style alternative to NBA 2K. There’s no doubt that NBA 2K has attempted to cast a wider net and expand beyond hardcore hoop heads beginning with NBA 2K18, to the point where sim players are being labelled casuals. This trend won’t change anytime soon. Lele Murray – daughter of former NBA player Lamond Murray, herself formerly a volleyball player at Long Beach State, and now a prominent content creator – has spoken out about her experiences with 2K’s NextMaker program. Frankly, it’s rather discouraging as far as providing any detailed feedback to the NBA 2K developers.

Basically, Lele Murray confirms that the community team at 2K only focuses on suggestions regarding gameplay. Issues such as Badges, cosmetics, animations, The City, and so on, are not welcomed, because the teams behind those aspects of NBA 2K are not interested in community input. In other words, they’ll do what they please and what they’ve planned, and to hell with gamers. This doesn’t surprise me, having encountered similar pushback and disinterest when I was in contact with people at EA Sports. Indeed, it eventually led to the old guard like me being shooed out because they didn’t want to hear our feedback (how well did that work out again, Donnie?).

My point is that if NBA 2K is set on being Fortnite with basketball and rebuffing any suggestions from gamers who don’t want that, then that’s something an alternative title can capitalise on. If 2K is set on its career mode being story-driven and connected to an unnecessary open world, a new game should take the opposite approach, being more like the early days of My Player and MyCAREER. It can still be a fun, deep, NBA-oriented journey that way! Again, it may be wishful thinking with the direction the gaming industry has taken, but if you can avoid linking progression with predatory recurrent revenue mechanics, then the emphasis is on fun over reaching into wallets.

Obviously, being an NBA sim is still a core element of the NBA 2K series. However, as the games have become increasingly catered towards online competitive gamers, it’s resulted in gameplay mechanics that are ill-suited to traditional/offline play. These mechanics may be striving to achieve a mythical skill gap, but because the CPU can react much faster than a human – and can be programmed to flat out cheat in order to be more challenging – MyCAREER, MyTEAM, and MyNBA/MyLEAGUE gamers are at an unfair disadvantage. Ideally, offline and online gameplay should be superb and not at the expense of each other, and NBA 2K has been faltering in that regard.

Generally speaking, it’s been the online gamers who have gotten their way, so it only makes sense for an alternative to NBA 2K to appeal to sim basketball gamers who’ve been unceremoniously pushed aside. Developing a game that plays a realistic and fun brand of sim-style basketball, without demanding that gamers have best-in-the-world stick skills every time they hit the virtual hardwood, would be refreshing! Just look at how NBA Live 19 maintains a dedicated online userbase all these years later. You can leave the sweats, elitists, and gatekeepers to the toxic wasteland that NBA 2K’s online scene has become, instead focusing on NBA gameplay that’s about fun and realism.

With that being said, if you’re developing a Triple-A basketball video game in 2024 and beyond, then an online team play component is kind of a necessity. You also do want stick skills to matter, as dice rolls shouldn’t determine success. Again though, I’ll point to NBA Live 18 and 19. The gameplay wasn’t as polished as I was hoping, but between robust dribbling mechanics to pull off ankle-breakers, and the Green Release approach to shooting, skilful input did indeed matter. Proper matchmaking and squad options would naturally be essential, but a focus on accessibility and enjoyment over elitism and gatekeeping would make for a fun alternative to NBA 2K’s online modes.

As far as traditional season and franchise play, this is an area where NBA 2K is the gold standard that should be imitated. There’s no way to get there overnight though, so a competing title would need to start out more modestly, and build upon that foundation. I’d suggest that it would need to at least be as deep as the late 2000s NBA Live games, or even The Association in early 2010s NBA 2K. As for any historical content, it’ll be tough to compete with NBA 2K here, but any Legends teams that can be included would be better than nothing. Bottom line, this alternative game must have strong online and offline gameplay, appealing content, and captivating modes.

While I would like to have another sim game in the space to provide an alternative to NBA 2K, we shouldn’t count out arcade or sim-arcade hybrid titles. That could still give us a great new basketball video game to play, even if it’s one that only receives a new sequel every few years. Needless to say, NBA Jam and NBA Street are prime candidates here. I’ve always enjoyed the change of pace that arcade games bring to the virtual hardwood, and the creativity they invite since they’re not bound by the need to be lifelike. With NBA Live’s inability to compete with NBA 2K, EA is passing up a great opportunity to bring back NBA Jam, NBA Street, or both, as an alternative.

Mind you, the modern gaming landscape is often inhospitable to Triple-A titles that eschew massive profitability for artistic vision. I’d imagine that a new NBA Jam or NBA Street game would be successful, but would it be successful enough in the eyes of the suits? Could those titles from a golden era of sports games survive the changes they’d undergo to bring them into the present? I could see microtransactions ruining both games if they were made today. That’s why an old school approach – one that fosters goodwill with the audience – needs to be taken with any hoops game that tries to be an alternative to NBA 2K. It would be a huge selling point to fed-up gamers.

I’ll readily admit that the glut of basketball video games we had decades ago simply wasn’t a sustainable scenario. Awesome though it may have been to have three, four, even five sim games on the market some years, along with an arcade title or two, they weren’t all great, and simply weren’t successful enough to survive alongside the brand leaders. As technology and basketball video games have improved, expectations have risen, so a fun-but-mediocre title is unlikely to spawn a series or even be greenlit. We likely won’t see those days again, and it’s understandable. Still, it’s unfortunate. For all our issues with NBA Live, for all the jokes, we’ve seen what a 2K monopoly will do.

We need alternatives in the basketball gaming space. That means other developers trying to make a mark with a sim title. EA Sports reviving NBA Live is probably our best bet, and while I’m sadly pessimistic, I still absolutely support it. I also want to see EA and other developers try something different with arcade titles like NBA Jam and NBA Street, and sim-arcade hybrids like NBA in the Zone or And 1 Streetball. NBA 2K may remain the brand leader, but it doesn’t mean there’s no room for an alternative (or two, or three!). I want to see NBA 2K get better and I don’t want to see it fail, but I also don’t want to see it remain unopposed as the be-all and end-all defining the genre.

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