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 is a list of five basketball gaming theories that I can’t conclusively prove, but strongly suspect to be true.

Video games have attracted countless theories, rumours, and hoaxes throughout the years. From speculation about secrets to gossip about gameplay mechanics, these stories have spawned myths, legends…and occasionally, actually been correct! Yes, games are often designed to essentially cheat in order to give us a challenge. Yes, sometimes that rumoured hidden content is there (or at least, there’s a remnant of it). And yes, it’s hardly a wild conspiracy theory to suggest that so many modern Triple-A titles are being designed to push gamers towards microtransactions.

Of course, there are the theories that aren’t true: the secret that’s a hoax, the misguided belief as to why something is a certain way, and so on. These are the things that we’re so sure of, or want to believe, but they’ve been proven false. And then, we have the video game theories that we can’t conclusively prove – yet, anyway – but they haven’t necessarily been disproven, and seem quite likely. I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories – philosophical razors tend to make short work of most of them – but I do have a few related to basketball gaming that I am inclined to believe. Well, maybe not conspiracies as such, but they are five basketball gaming theories that I put stock in.

1. An EA Sports World Filter Blocked Clips With Glitches

Before consoles had in-built video capture capabilities, and before many of us had invested in capture devices and software, services such as EA Sports World were extremely handy. For those who don’t remember it, EA Sports World was essentially a social media platform and content hub for EA Sports games. A couple of the key features were GameFace – a function in a handful of games whereby you could add your face from an uploaded photo – and the ability to upload saved screenshots and replays directly from your console. At the time, the latter was an effective method of copying media from your console to a PC for both safekeeping and content creation.

Understandably, there were profanity filters in place. However, I suspect that any labels that painted a game in a negative light were also flagged. I once encountered a funny glitch in NBA Live 10, in which the ball bounced high into the rafters as I tried to feed Dwight Howard in the post. I saved the replay under a name that included the word “glitch”. No matter how many times I tried, it failed to upload to EA Sports World! I never had an issue with any other uploads, including a couple of tests after that one failed. Even renaming the file didn’t help! I’m still suspicious all these years later. I’ve long since deleted it, which is a shame as I would be able to record it now.

2. Real Names Are “Rigged” For Generated Players

Since the very first franchise mode with the annual Draft, we’ve had generated rookies in basketball video games. The games have lists of first names and surnames to pull from, which infamously leads to amusing combinations. I’m sure that many franchise gamers over the years have encountered a John Mutombo or a Mohammed Smith! The matching logic has improved since the early days though, so that’s no longer as common. Mind you, you may well see some real names be given to generated rookies. Someone who’s much better at maths could probably work out the odds of this, but as long as the right names are in the database, real combinations are bound to occur.

Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me if games rig the odds of real names showing up. I mean, I’ve simulated franchises in early to mid 2000s NBA Live games where Tupac Shakur and Bill Cosby have appeared as generated players. Again, all it takes is for those names to be in the database, but one of my basketball gaming theories is that the odds of a real name being generated are fudged as an Easter egg. It’s happened in my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, too. There’s a Ramon Ramos – not to be confused with the former Seton Hall star whose NBA career was ended by a serious car accident – and a fictional Brendan Haywood who appeared the year after the real one retired. Freaky!

3. Manipulative Mechanics in MyTEAM & MyCAREER’s Connected Modes

So, I’d suggest that as far as basketball gaming theories are concerned, this one is probably widely-believed, and for good reason. Adrien Laurent wrote an excellent article for Game Developer, explaining just how predatory games with live service content can be. The article discusses algorithm-based mechanics that adjust the odds of loot boxes, change the prices of in-game items, and even tweak the difficulty and gameplay experience, to generate more revenue. As the article notes, some of these under-the-hood balancing mechanics aren’t inherently predatory, and can be used to make games more enjoyable. Unfortunately, that usually isn’t the publisher’s MO.

Now, I don’t believe that anyone has definitively proven that these mechanics are at play in NBA 2K through reverse engineering and the like. Their usage is widespread in gaming however, and there’s circumstantial and anecdotal evidence – including my own experiences – that make me inclined to believe that MyTEAM and MyCAREER are suffering from this manipulation. Whether it’s an oddly good pull in MyTEAM after I haven’t logged into the mode for a while, or a game in MyCAREER or one of its connected modes feeling unusually difficult while I’m grinding up my player No Money Spent, there have been moments that didn’t feel like they were on the level.

4. Legends Are Deliberately Underrated

This is an issue that Dee and I have discussed at length on the NLSC Podcast. It goes back to Dee’s Twitter/X thread in which he provided numerous examples of how the historical players were laughably inaccurate and poorly-made in NBA 2K21; a list that as he’s noted, only scratches the surface! I revisited the issue when I discussed politics and padding in player ratings. Hanlon’s razor states that “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”, and to that end, it’s possible that these erroneous ratings are simply due to a lack of care and competence as much as anything else. Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s also part of an agenda.

It’s painfully obvious that a lot of basketball discourse these days revolves around downplaying past eras to prop up the modern game, and one player in particular. We don’t need to go into all of that except to say what disrespectful rubbish it is, but to that point, it seems to have spilled over into video games. Legends often have ratings that portray them as less skilled and athletic than they were in real life, and historical role players have insultingly been rated lower than the placeholder Roster Players. No producer has admitted to this being an edict from the NBA and no evidence has ever leaked, but at this point, it’s impossible not to theorise that it’s a deliberate decision.

5. Classic Teams Were A Late Scratch in NBA Live 08

Alright, let’s finish up this list of unproven-but-plausible basketball gaming theories with something much less sinister. As you may recall, NBA Live 08 included eight FIBA teams and a tournament mode as bonus content. The selection of teams was increased to 24 in NBA Live 09 and NBA Live 10, and they were set to be in NBA Elite 11 as well (with overdue updates to the rosters, no less). While many gamers enjoyed the inclusion of FIBA teams, they may not have been the bonus content that was originally planned. If you dig through the players.dbf file for NBA Live 08 PC, you’ll find some leftover content that hints at plans to include ten historical teams!

There are a couple of reasons why I believe those classic teams were the original bonus content that was scrapped a fair way into development, presumably because EA couldn’t secure all the necessary likeness rights. First of all, the developers explained that NBA Live 08 only included eight FIBA teams due to the timing of acquiring the license. Second, the leftover data for the players on those classic teams can be found before the FIBA players in the database. I’d love to know how close we were to those classic teams being in NBA Live 08 and the full story of them being scrapped, but the evidence does point towards the FIBA teams being a rather late replacement for them.

What’s your take on these basketball gaming theories? What are some others that you still believe, even if they haven’t yet been conclusively proven? Have your say in the comments, and as always, 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 Basketball Gaming Theories I Can’t (Conclusively) Prove appeared first on NLSC.