Monday Tip-Off: The Identity Crisis Of An Open World
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 observations of how bringing the open world approach to MyCAREER has led to an identity crisis.
I haven’t been shy about sharing my disdain for the direction of MyCAREER. I’ve bluntly stated that the mode sucks in NBA 2K23, and that it’s reached the point of no return. I’ve also unfavourably compared it to MyCAREER in NBA 2K14, which I’m still greatly enjoying. I’ve discussed the varying quality of the stories, and how that approach could best be used. Over the years, I’ve experienced the best and worst of MyCAREER, so when I say that the mode is at an all-time low, that doesn’t come from a point of ignorance, nor is it hyperbole.
It wasn’t an immediately sharp decline, but the writing has been on the wall since NBA 2K18. I’ve described it as a turning point for the series, and MyCAREER is the mode that was most impacted. The implementation of The Neighborhood in NBA 2K18 steered MyCAREER towards an eventual identity crisis, which finally came to fruition with the expansion into The City in NBA 2K21 Next Gen. Not everyone wanted to see it that way, preferring to shout down anyone who dared not enjoy it. Now that the problems are painfully obvious to all but the staunchest shills and fanboys, we can openly acknowledge that the mode doesn’t know what it wants to be.
The identity crisis goes beyond trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, in an effort to transcend genre and compete with other games. A basketball game doesn’t need to have an open world environment as part of its career mode, but it could conceivably work and freshen up the experience. In all fairness, I’m guessing that was one of 2K’s goals in reimagining MyCAREER, though there are some more nefarious ones as well. I’ll get to that, but strictly focusing on gamer enjoyment and immersion, the open world approach in NBA 2K comes up short for one critical reason: it doesn’t truly understand the concept, leading to poor execution that spoils our enjoyment.
That may sound harsh, but let’s consider other games that are classified as open world. What does it usually mean? It means a game with a world that can be explored freely, with autonomy over objectives rather than linear progression through levels or story beats. There are locations to visit, NPCs to interact with, and a world that feels alive; as much as current tech and the game’s design will allow, anyway. When someone says “open world”, we think of games like Grand Theft Auto, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. The City and The Neighborhood have adopted elements of those other games, but on top of detracting from basketball, they’re missing what makes open world fun.
Simply put, in NBA 2K’s approach to the concept, there’s not enough gameplay in the world we’re exploring. In The City and The Neighborhood, we’re just travelling to different locations where the actual basketball gameplay takes place. In those other games that I mentioned, traversing the game world is actively part of the gameplay experience. We encounter enemies and obstacles that we have to engage with, or otherwise overcome. Travelling to a shop in The City or Neighborhood is busywork dressed up as interactivity; a long way to bring up a menu. Finding a merchant in a Fallout game is part of the adventure, and challenging if enemies block your path.
These games provide incentive to explore their worlds. There are interesting locations to discover and interact with, including dungeons. There are enemies to fight and people to meet in between those locations. There are quests and missions that drive the main story forward, are fun side stories, and grant useful and satisfying rewards. There may be some linear moments, but there’s generally freedom and choice in the journey. Most importantly, there’s no break from the regular gameplay. What you do in the wasteland in a Fallout game, you can do in a town or dungeon. Missions in GTA have the same gameplay as free roam, only now there are objectives to meet.
Conversely, there are few genuine points of interest in The City and Neighborhood that you can actually interact with. There are NPCs that give quests or sell items, but most of the people you’ll see are other gamers that you won’t interact with until you get on the virtual hardwood or blacktop. As I noted, travelling to different locations is just a more time-consuming way to get to shops, or the modes you want to play. The addition of vehicles and a weekly race as a recurring quest is an attempt to make the hub world feel like actual gameplay, but they have nothing to do with basketball. That brings us back to forcing an open world approach into a genre that doesn’t need it.
Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are RPGs featuring an established universe and lore, with exploration and combat being part of playing through a story with a definite ending. The same goes for Grand Theft Auto, along with sandbox elements that involve causing mayhem in between structured missions. The newest Legend of Zelda games are using an open world approach to expand upon the action-adventure genre it helped to pioneer. These are games that mesh with and benefit from the open world approach, and execute the concept superbly. In NBA 2K…we’re playing basketball! Such a game doesn’t call for an open world, especially one that’s so poorly executed.
It’s inevitably going to be the case. Being a basketball game will water down the open world aspects, while the open world aspects will detract from the on-court experience. The quests resemble an RPG, but the need for them to be basketball-related reduces them to repetitive on-court objectives that are frequently too much work for too little reward. When the quests do branch out beyond hoops, they involve fashion shows, musical careers, and other things that have no place in a basketball game. In short, they’re either tedious or ridiculous. They’re not part of a dynamic and interesting game world, or well-told story with side plots that have consequences affecting the ending.
Therefore, quests in NBA 2K’s open world settings are uninteresting and unrewarding at best, and useless and intrusive at worst. It doesn’t help that NBA MyCAREER has a linear structure: the season schedule. In Fallout, it’s fun to get sidetracked from the main quest, and choose what you want to do and where you want to go next. In a basketball game, you want to play basketball, and the need to navigate and interact with an open world environment gets in the way of that. The introduction of quests that are mandatory before you can proceed to the next game on the schedule only makes things worse. We can no longer simply engage with the NBA side of things.
Now, you could argue that some of those quests are at least basketball-adjacent, and in line with role-playing as an NBA player. Press conferences, and decisions about endorsement deals and so forth, are logical and appropriate inclusions. However, the need to travel to the arena, go to the locker room to change in and out of your jersey, and head to the press room, are overkill. It reminds me of some of the WWE games over the years, where you could roam around backstage in the career and story modes. It was kind of fun at first, but very quickly became a time-wasting chore. Immersion can be fantastic, but it can also be too much of a good thing, or just badly designed.
Speaking of design though, I’ll never downplay the work that goes into creating The City and The Neighborhood. I understand why people were excited when it was first revealed for NBA 2K18. Whether it’s a block, a cruise ship, or a mini metropolis, the worlds do look awesome. The style, architecture, graffiti art, fun signage…I get the appeal. Much of it is just for show however, and the exploration to appreciate it all takes you away from the actual gameplay. When the servers are empty, The City and The Neighborhood become a beautiful void in the worst possible way. It’s painfully obvious just how much empty space you need to traverse in order to play basketball.
Of course, this is intentional. It’s all time spent in the game, which pumps up the engagement/hours played metrics that 2K then gets to boast about. It also encourages us to care about our avatar, dressing it up so that it’s not boring to look at, and other gamers don’t avoid us in Playground games. Cosmetic items mean VC, and VC means an opportunity to push the recurrent revenue mechanics. The same goes for vehicles, which speed up travel around the open world. That’s the difference between an actual open world game, and NBA 2K’s take on the concept. The former is meant to provide an engaging gameplay experience, while the latter is focused on pleasing the suits.
At the risk of a smug “I told you so”, this is something that many of us recognised from the first trailer for The Neighborhood. It’s something that a number of gamers didn’t want to hear, but it’s become virtually impossible to ignore. It’s why big picture thinking is vital. Yes, these open worlds look cool in trailers. When it comes down to it though, how fun is it really to have to travel all over a map to train, customise your avatar, or just play basketball? It’s not like discovering Megaton or the strip in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, or unlocking a new island in Grand Theft Auto III. It’s like your daily commute; only appropriate, given how grinding feels like work rather than play!
To 2K’s credit, there have been improvements. NBA 2K23’s City was made smaller. Points of interest have been moved around or centralised. We no longer have to travel to the Pro-Am arena to customise it. These are good changes, but they don’t address the wider issue with an open world approach, and the identity crisis that it’s caused. NBA 2K doesn’t have competition in the basketball gaming space these days, but it remains a basketball game. The more it tries to be something else, the more watered-down it becomes. With that in mind, I’d prefer MyCAREER to “stagnate” with an old school approach, rather than clumsily and needlessly attempt to have an open world.
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