Monday Tip-Off: Untold MyCAREER Stories
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 reflections on MyCAREER stories that have gone untold…at least from my perspective.
Not to sound like a broken record, but I’m glad to have escaped the basketball gaming habits that had me in a rut. Although I can still have fun with MyCAREER – as my ongoing game in NBA 2K14 clearly demonstrates – I don’t miss the annual ritual of starting over from scratch with a ridiculously low-rated MyPLAYER. I don’t miss diligently doing every extracurricular activity to maximise my VC earnings so that I don’t have to spend money to speed up the process. I don’t miss weathering an awful grind until MyCAREER is fun, knowing that I’ll have to do it all over again next year.
With that being said, I would’ve liked to have spent a bit more time in MyCAREER in recent years, if only so that I could comment on their stories like I have for previous games. Although I’ve been quite critical of some of the MyCAREER stories, I’ve also greatly enjoyed others, and come to appreciate the concept in general. Of course, what I really miss is the ability to go back and experience the MyCAREER stories in recent NBA 2K games. Now that the mode is no longer available in any form offline, a big chunk of eighth and ninth gen NBA 2K releases isn’t available for retro/throwback gaming. And so for me, these MyCAREER stories will sadly remain untold What Ifs.
The last MyCAREER story that I played all the way through was the college route in NBA 2K21’s The Long Shadow. I opted to play all four years of college, not only because there was a PlayStation Trophy for it, but also because it was something new and different. It wasn’t the first time that MyCAREER featured a collegiate chapter, but previous games made it a brief part of the tale. Obviously, The Long Shadow still presented us with an abridged take on the college season featuring only the handful of schools that had been licensed, but it was nevertheless a lengthy campaign; especially after playing four years! It also featured one of the best MyCAREER stories to date.
However, it wasn’t the only route that our MyPLAYER could take to escape the long shadow of his late father in NBA 2K21’s MyCAREER. As Junior’s high school career is drawing to a close, family friend turned advisor (and possible future agent) Archie Baldwin presents him with two options: college, or the G League. Beyond offering a meaningful choice that alters the direction of the story, it also impacts the gameplay experience. The college route offers easier competition and more playing time, offset by slower development. The G League is tougher in terms of earning minutes and the opponents you face, but it’s a scenario that comes with a chance to develop quicker.
I’d just started to play through the G League path with a second MyPLAYER as the shutdown of the NBA 2K21 servers was approaching. Between my shift towards retro gaming and not being completely enamoured with NBA 2K21’s gameplay, I didn’t get to finish that playthrough before online support ended, and MyCAREER disappeared along with it. On one hand, I’m hardly distraught about it. I had my chance, I made my choice, and I still had an interesting playthrough of NBA 2K21 MyCAREER. On the other hand, it’s a disappointing example of planned obsolescence for a mode that has functioned perfectly well offline, albeit without some of its features and content.
Similarly, I can’t go back and play through the MyCAREER story in NBA 2K22, which began with our MyPLAYER playing for our chosen school in the college championship game. Admittedly, I didn’t get very far here. NBA 2K22’s gameplay left me cold, and the clunky feel was made even worse by the terrible starting ratings. As a result, I lost that game, which it turns out you need to win in order to progress in the story. I’d argue this is poor design for the prelude portion of MyCAREER stories, but in any case, I was having too much fun with old favourites to go back to NBA 2K22. As such, I was left with some unfinished business when the servers were shut down.
From what I’ve seen of the story in NBA 2K22 MyCAREER, I didn’t miss out on a great tale. Quite infamously, there’s a scene where a team rep ruthlessly chews you out for a PR blunder. Look, MyCAREER demands a certain amount of suspension of disbelief – this is a mode where I’m supposedly good enough to play in the NBA, after all! – but it’s a laughably unrealistic story beat. It’d be one thing if it were a coach or the GM, but a PR rep? The notion that someone in that role could get away with scolding a player like that without losing their job and being blackballed from the NBA is utterly ludicrous! The fact that you have to take it on the chin is infuriating.
Mind you, these are second hand observations from watching other people’s games. While I stand by my assessment of that scene – there’s no context that wouldn’t make it absurd – I can’t comment with authority on the frustration of playing through the story and being railroaded into it and other scenarios. There’s enough footage online for me to conclude that I probably wouldn’t think any more highly of the story if I’d experienced it firsthand, but at least I’d have more to say about it. The same goes for NBA 2K23’s story. Once again, I wasn’t keen enough on the gameplay to get stuck into the mode for very long anyway, but what I played was extremely off-putting.
For those who are unaware, NBA 2K23’s story was the tale of a feud between the 18th and 19th overall picks, owing to the fact that your player was drafted ahead of Shep Owens, and by his hometown team to boot (whichever team you happen to choose to go to). Shep hates you, The City hates you, and Kendrick Perkins hates you, though that last one is arguably a badge of honour. Worst still, Shep Owens is an obnoxious influencer as well as a rival NBA player, openly insulting and even slandering your player and his girlfriend; something that everyone eats up. It’s a miserable and mean-spirited story starring a bunch of unlikeable jerks, something we’ve seen too much of.
In that respect, I’m not exactly heartbroken that I didn’t put myself through the misery of being the protagonist in that story. At the same time, it would’ve been interesting to experience it for myself. As I understand it, there are some twists to the tale, as well as flashbacks to your college career. The latter is an interesting variation on the usual formula, which would see us play those games prior to being drafted, sometimes with the goal of raising our stock and improving our position on the board. With that in mind, I’d be open to giving NBA 2K23 MyCAREER another chance, for the sake of my curiosity and content creation. Of course, I can’t now that the servers are offline!
Compare this to NBA 2K15, where I was able to go back and play MyCAREER a full decade after the game’s release, and about eight years after its servers were shutdown. While that meant I didn’t have a fully-featured MyCAREER mode – most notably, by that point accessories were online content purchased with VC – it was still accessible, and thus I could play through the story. As such, I was able to put my long-standing impressions of the mode to the test, after writing it off all those years ago. Some of my thoughts remain the same while others have changed, but the point is that the mode is still playable, offering a chance for it to make a better second impression.
That’s the real issue here. The specifics and overall quality of the MyCAREER stories that I didn’t play and will never be able to play are worth mentioning, but ultimately, it isn’t about whether or not I missed out on something amazing. It’s about no longer having the option of going back and playing a single player mode – even a trimmed down version of it – when a game no longer has online support. You could say the same about the memorable lineups that we’ve lost (and also potentially paid for) in MyTEAM. There’s admittedly more online content involved there, but it’s still a huge chunk of the game with a single player element that will eventually be lost forever.
As Dee and I have pointed out several times on the NLSC Podcast, this has greatly contributed to games feeling disposable. Personally, that’s played a huge role in making it difficult for me to get excited about and invested in new releases. Even MyNBA files can be locked and lost if any teams have been rebranded with assets acquired through the image uploading and community sharing functionality. The MyCAREER stories that remain untold from my perspective are a symptom of a bigger problem with modern game design. I see the logic of it – developers want everyone to migrate to the latest release – but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it!
Again, as far as my enjoyment of basketball gaming is concerned, I can make peace with having never played through these MyCAREER stories. Sure, I’m curious and would’ve liked to have produced retrospectives on those tales, but it’s not something that I deeply regret. From what I did play and what I’ve seen and heard from other people, I don’t feel as though I missed out on anything particularly special. It still bothers me though, because of what it represents: planned obsolescence, achieved through online elements infiltrating single player modes. Mind you, the writing was on the wall for MyCAREER from the moment The Neighborhood was introduced.
To that end, while there are offline versions of MyCAREER in NBA 2K18 and NBA 2K19, they’re essentially player-locked MyLEAGUE, and you can no longer play through the stories. That makes NBA 2K17 the last game in the series in which the story is still playable in MyCAREER, though once again the mode is limited in other ways. The decline of offline MyCAREER has been sad to see. It speaks to just how destructive integration with the online scene and implementation of microtransactions has been to the single player career experience. Not only has it turned the mode into a grind promoting greedy recurrent revenue mechanics, but it’s preventing retro gaming.
Some people may wonder why that even matters, and granted, not everyone is into going back and playing old favourites, either for content creation or just their own entertainment. Too many will defend the philosophy, though. Just as they’ll excuse a predatory approach to microtransactions that hampers the fun by insisting that paying is technically optional, they’ll point out that games can’t be supported forever, and that studios understandably want us to move on to the latest release. They might throw in some judgemental peer pressure here by calling you out of touch, or “broke“, or simply insist that you’re asking for something totally unreasonable and unfeasible.
Since when did we care so much about the profits of billion dollar corporations more than other gamers’ enjoyment, or for that matter, our own? Considering that offline MyCAREER was feasible for years – stories intact and all, even after Park and Pro-Am play was introduced – it’s hardly asking for the impossible. Beyond that though, there’s the issue of game preservation. It’s one thing to not be able to play online, get roster updates, or receive any further bug fixes or technical support. It’s another thing altogether for games to lose modes and functionality, especially when they don’t need online support and can work just as well using offline versions of in-game currency.
Sadly, that’s gaming nowadays. I wouldn’t mind playing those untold MyCAREER stories; not just for my own satisfaction or content creation, but because it’d mean that modern NBA 2K games aren’t as disposable as they’ve unfortunately become. As it stands, the G League path in NBA 2K21, the saga of the disrespected draftee in NBA 2K22, and the designated villain arc of NBA 2K23, are MyCAREER stories that I’ll never finish. I still have a chance to avoid that in NBA 2K24 and NBA 2K25, though it remains to be seen if I’ll end up playing them before it’s too late. I guess it’s on me if I don’t, but the issue of disposable games is a sad tale that I wish we didn’t have to tell.
The post Monday Tip-Off: Untold MyCAREER Stories appeared first on NLSC.