Max Vadakin — Copy Editor
Earlier this month, 2K Sports released “NBA 2K20,” continuing its yearly routine of distributing the next edition of inadequate and disappointing gameplay. Even the watershed addition of WNBA teams and modes added into the game could not save NBA 2K20 from appearing stale and repetitive.
For the past few years, NBA 2K games have been running a scam on their consumers, yet fans alike continue to fall for it year after year.
The sad thing is we know each upcoming edition is going to be the same as the previous year. NBA 2K is a microcosm of American
consumerism at its finest. So why do we keep falling for it?
Let’s get one thing straight – NBA 2K20 is not a bad game.
The concern around the game’s mass production is not that they are selling a bad game, rather they are continuing to sell the same game.
The actual gameplay of NBA 2K20 features impressive graphics, fluid movement with players and the exhilarating ability to throw down 360 dunks even though players cannot touch the rim in real life.
However, the game modes within NBA 2K20 have remained the same without much improvement for the past five or so years.
One of the game’s most popular modes, “MyCareer,” allows users to create and implement themselves into the game. In the mode, each user starts from near the beginning of their career and works their way toward becoming an NBA legend.
What seems to get under the 2K community’s skin the most, is the cringeworthy cut scenes that come throughout your player’s career and the distraction of unnecessary features that make the game more difficult for seemingly no reason.
For instance, in this year’s version of MyCareer, players begins in college, working toward getting drafted into the NBA.
What ensues is hours worth of unnecessary storylines interwoven within the college basketball gameplay. It takes hours to get to even
play a single minute in the NBA and upon arriving, the character is slow, weak and seemingly unable to make a basket.
So, if the MyCareer player just made the NBA, shouldn’t he be an elite athlete, able to keep up physically with most of the league? Not so fast, for that players have to pay. Another side to the great NBA 2K scam is the use of virtual currency. VC is used to upgrade players within MyCareer to actually get them to an NBA talent level.
VC can be earned through countless hours of gameplay, or one could simply get it from the big GET VC button that looms around every corner. With the amount of time it takes to earn enough VC to improve one’s player significantly, $20 for twice the amount you have earned seems like a preferable option. And as one can see on the game’s online feature, “MyPark,” many people seem to be taking that path.
Even the game’s second popular feature, “MyTeam,” where users can build a team from obtaining cards featuring historical and current players through gameplay, buying their card off the auction house, or opening packs with random cards within, is desperately trying to sell VC. MyTeam will often make the packs with a better chance of pulling a good player VC only instead of the game mode’s MyTeam points that are earned through playing the mode.
MyTeam also stirred some controversy for NBA 2K this year as a feature seems to endorse gambling, as users can win certain cards by playing the slots.
It seems that NBA 2K20 is not even trying to masquerade the fact that they are all about their consumers spending more and more money.
One thing NBA 2K20 did well this year was giving women and young girls who have been longing to play with people they look up to in a video game.
Unfortunately for them, they too will soon see how NBA 2K is only interested in making money instead of appeasing their patient fan base.
Year after year NBA 2K puts out the same game as they did the year before. I guess we all just have to buy NBA 2K21 to find out if 2K will finally changed their ways.