Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five looks at five conceptual mistakes that were made with various basketball video games.

Game design isn’t as easy as some people believe it to be. Programming is far from entering instructions in plain English, with many technological challenges that must be overcome. It’s also impossible to cater to everyone’s tastes and preferences, and what might seem like a good idea on paper may not work out as well as hoped when it comes to fruition. For the most part, no one is trying to make a bad video game. It’s just that some concepts don’t pan out, there’s not enough time or adequate resources, ambitious plans set the bar too high, or perhaps a combination thereof.

At the same time, some basketball games have left us wondering what the developers were thinking when it comes to an approach or design choice. There may be some small merit to an idea, but it’s still bewildering that it survived the planning stages, or preliminary proof of concept testing. In all fairness, there are other ideas that seemed good to us as well, until the games were in our hands and we realised that it wasn’t quite what we wanted after all. These are the conceptual mistakes that held games back from being as good as they could and should have been. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but again, a few of these examples were waving red flags from the beginning.

1. Three Shoot Buttons in NBA Live 07

By the early 2000s, it was clear that basketball video games needed to have deeper controls and mechanics. Pressing a button and hoping for the appropriate move or animation may have been fine up until then, but modern controllers had more than enough buttons to work with, and we wanted to see greater depth in sim titles. NBA Live 2004 made the move to separate shooting into two buttons: one for dunks and layups, and one for jumpshots and contextually appropriate post and paint shots. Not everyone was a fan of the change, but it did work, and NBA Live 2004 through 06 were generally well-received. That set up a further change in NBA Live 07’s controls.

Now there were three shooting buttons: one for dunks, one for layups, and one for jumpers and other miscellaneous shots. It proved to be overkill, and it was far too easy to press the wrong button. The dunk button was useless for players who weren’t able to throw it down, as it just resulted in an awkward layup attempt that missed most of the time. If a player wasn’t within range of being able to attempt a dunk, they likewise stumbled into a rough-looking shot that had very little chance of going in. EA thankfully abandoned the idea after NBA Live 07, and both NBA Live and NBA 2K have found better ways to give gamers more control over their shot attempts.

2. Rookieville in NBA 2K21 Next Gen

I wrote a whole Monday Tip-Off article describing how Rookieville was a terrible idea. When it comes to conceptual mistakes in basketball games, the most literal form of gatekeeping has to rank up there among the worst. To gain access to The City, gamers had to level up their rep, at which point they’d be “noticed” by one of the Park affiliations, and the gates would open. Until getting into The City, there was no way of accessing the shops, Daily Bonus, or any other staple features. Levelling up also required playing against other gamers. This was undesirable for anyone who preferred the NBA side of the mode, and simply unviable later on in NBA 2K21’s release cycle.

That last part was easily the biggest problem. It didn’t take long to gain access to The City, and it wasn’t difficult. The idea was for everyone to get there – which kind of made Rookieville pointless gatekeeping – so it wasn’t an insurmountable challenge. Latecomers to the mode found themselves at empty Rookieville docks however, with no one to face and thus no way to raise their rep. One of the later patches placed a CPU opponent on the 1v1 court, but it’s concerning that such a conceptual mistake was made in the first place. Although NBA 2K22’s developer blogs tried to spin it as a worthwhile experiment, it was a really terrible idea that they thankfully abandoned.

3. A Faithful Re-Creation with NBA Jam (2010)

Sometimes, we don’t actually want what we think we do, especially when it comes to bringing back something from the past. Now, I’m someone who does enjoy indulging nostalgia, and there are old games that hold up extremely well. However, they aren’t perfect, and while we may tolerate certain issues in old games because of their age, we don’t want to see those problems in new titles; especially a remake. EA Sports’ reboot of the NBA Jam series – often referred to as NBA Jam 2010 – aimed to be a faithful re-creation of the arcade classic. The result was a great game, but it also replicated a few aspects of the original NBA Jam that had definitely aged poorly.

There was no tag mode, so it was impossible to switch control to the other player; a feature that had been added in NBA Jam Tournament Edition. The comeback logic felt contrived, which was part of the charm in the original games, but now made the gameplay dated. Even with Boss Battles, the Classic Campaign was too linear and repetitive, though the developers also made the mistake of locking in your choice of team, which wasn’t the case in the original NBA Jam. In short, some old stuff felt dated, and the new stuff was a mixed bag. Fortunately, NBA Jam: On Fire Edition came out the following year, proving a worthy successor to the reboot and originals.

4. Unlockable Basic Functions in NBA 2K14’s MyGM

NBA 2K14 is a game that I overlooked for a long time, due to a bad first impression. There are reasons for that and they go beyond actual issues with the game, but the bottom line is that I didn’t warm up to NBA 2K14 until 2021. Since then, it’s become one of my all-time favourite basketball video games, as I’m still playing through its MyCAREER! I also began a MyGM game that I still have and will readily pick up again whenever the mood strikes. I couldn’t have pictured doing either of those things back when the game was new. In my defense, the brand new MyGM mode did make some key conceptual mistakes that were a turn-off for many franchise enthusiasts.

The new mode combined RPG mechanics with the traditional franchise experience, which included conversations with players and other GMs, as well as the team owner. Your MyPLAYER served as your GM character, and had to be levelled up similar to MyCAREER. This was creative, and it did result in a mode that’s deep and fun. It wasn’t what everyone wanted though, which is why the creation of MyLEAGUE in NBA 2K15 was a great move. The real kicker was the need to unlock basic functions, such as roster management, by purchasing it with VC. A revamp of The Association was a good idea, but VC usage and forced RPG mechanics were conceptual mistakes.

5. The Overhaul to Controls in NBA Elite 11

This can never, ever be left off of any list of conceptual mistakes made by basketball video games! When a concept ends up setting back and basically sinking an entire franchise, it will always rank among the biggest blunders in the genre. The NBA Live series had been losing ground to NBA 2K, and was outsold by its rival come the 2009 season releases. NBA Live 10 was well-received, but still trailed NBA 2K10 in sales; in part because that was the trend, but also because NBA 2K10 was released for more platforms. Although that’s been blamed for the attempted revamp with NBA Elite 11, plans to adopt that new approach were actually in place even before NBA Live 10.

It’s fair to say that the positive reactions to NBA Live 10 should’ve made EA re-think that idea, though it was a highly questionable notion to begin with. There was no good reason to hand the series over to an executive producer with a background in hockey, and utilise technology and control concepts intended for an NHL game. The demo was a bust – even putting aside the infamous “Jesus Bynum” glitch – and anyone who has played the full version will most likely tell you that it wasn’t much better. It was an ill-conceived plan that made less sense after NBA Live 10 was received far more warmly than its predecessors, and one of the worst mistakes in basketball gaming.

What are some other conceptual mistakes that basketball video games have made over the years? Is there a mode, feature, or mechanic that seemed good on paper, but just didn’t work out when you got your hands on the game? Comment below, or 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.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Conceptual Mistakes Basketball Games Made appeared first on NLSC.