There was once a time when 2k developed thesecondbiggest annual NBA video game. Prior toNBA 2k11’s release, that’s exactly what they were known for. For most of the 2000s, NBA Live was the better option in almost every regard. Graphically, mechanically, even the game modes were far more fleshed out in Live. Somewhere around the latter half of the decade, 2K started to take over. 2K9 narrowly outsold NBA Live 09, but it wasn’t until the following year that the disparity became substantial. The introduction of the now-famous ‘My Player’ mode was in NBA 2K10. The mode became the bread and butter for 2K sports for the following 5 years, and took them to new heights.
NBA 2K11 released to zero competition from EA Sports, and the market never looked back. The My Player mode became far more fleshed out in NBA 2K11, and caught on like nothing the sports game landscape had ever seen. The amount of creativity and player agency that could be had didn’t really exist before. Prior to this, every game had a standard Franchise, or in the NBA’s case, Association mode.
While games like Madden had the similar Superstar mode years prior, they were barebones compared to My Player. My Player allowed you to build your player the way you wanted, upgrade individual stats however you wanted, change animations, change your shoe, and even answer questions in a post-game press conference. By today’s standards it all feels pretty bare bones, but it’s important to remember that every comparable mode we have now is built on the back of the original My Player.
2K11’s success was also attributed to having Michael Jordan as the cover athlete, who also came featured in his own game mode, the Jordan Challenge. In this mode, players could recreate some of Jordan’s most famous games. Games like the Flu Game in the 1997 NBA Finals, or when Jordan set a playoff record 63 points in a loss to the 1986 Boston Celtics. These moments were amplified by new intros and custom commentary recorded by Kevin Harlan and Clark Kellogg especially for the game mode. Your reward for completing all 10 of these challenges (or using the code ‘ICANBE23’ like the rest of us) was the unlocking of an 85 overall Rookie Michael Jordan in My Player, allowing you to pick whatever team you wanted him to play for.
NBA 2K11 was considered at the time, and even more so now, one of the greatest sports games of all time. 2K’s business was forever changed by the massive critical and financial success of the game, which sold 5 million copies. The next game that topped that number was NBA 2K14, which was both the first NBA 2K title on a next-gen platform, and also the first that introduced their microtransaction currency, ‘VC’.
VC had technically existed the year prior, mostly in 2K13’s My Team mode. The introduction of the park in NBA 2K14, which allowed players to take their My Player online to play with against people around the world, made purchasing VC more common, since you weren’t just playing against the computer now. For better or worse, this changed series developer Visual Concepts' perspective on how to build their games. It introduced a social aspect to virtual currency that does not really exist in other games. Since 2K does not rely on a traditional matchmaking service like every other game, you were at the mercy of complete strangers jumping onto a digital basketball court alongside you.
These players had no information other than what position you play, what your playstyle is, and most importantly, what your overall rating is. Since most players weren’t going to want to play with a low overall player, your options were to spend an additional fee, sometimes upwards of an additional $60 on top of the game you just purchased, just to be able toplaygames online. This extended to the player gear. The ‘brown shirt’ most new players were signified by encouraged you to spend money on cosmetics to avoid being judged. You could always spend a good 60+ hours grinding with that player offline in order to upgrade them the traditional way, but most players had been conditioned by this point to drop money to keep up with everyone else doing the same.
2K have also been smart in how they integrate new players into this lucrative ecosystem. Starting in NBA 2K18 with the City, a fully fledged open area with shops, a gym, and courts to play on and explore, new players have been exposed to this big area with other players walking around, incentivizing them to participate. This has become even more egregious in their most recent release, NBA 2K22, which gives you non-optional quests that involve running around a significantly bigger city to advance dialogue trees and unlock playing the game the old-fashioned way - offline against the computer. What was once a subconscious way of filtering people into these online hubs is now no longer optional.
With such a substantial shift in how 2K approaches its formerly bread-and-butter mode, it’s hard to imagine that changing any time soon, regardless of parallels to a time where their games had far higher critical reception. One of the most memorable parts of the Jordan Challenge was unlocking Jordan as your My Player, something almost impossible to imagine 2K doing in today’s sports game landscape.
