Monday Tip-Off: Has Realism Become a Dirty Word?

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 thoughts on how “realism” is rapidly becoming a dirty word among basketball gamers.

We all have our own ideas of what makes for a fun basketball video game. Beyond a preference between the sim and arcade styles, we each have a vision of what games in those subgenres should be like. Obviously, sim gamers have traditionally preferred a realistic approach to the virtual hardwood, though opinions will vary as to what that realism should entail. However, when the sim titles were primarily aimed at hardcore basketball fans, there was usually more unity in calls for the games to be as realistic as possible. The notion that realism didn’t matter was certainly an unpopular view.

It’s why Da_Czar’s catchphrase of “don’t play video games; play basketball!” became a creed that resonated with so many simheads, and why there was excitement when he joined the development team at Visual Concepts. After all, if Take-Two was going to hire anyone to help in the continued efforts to strive for realism in their NBA series, Da_Czar was an ideal choice! As NBA 2K’s popularity has grown however, there’s been a noticeable shift in attitude. More and more people are saying “who cares about real basketball, it’s just a game!” Sim gamers are suddenly the ones being labelled as “casuals”, and realism is being treated as a dirty word when talking about sim titles.

Popularity is a major factor here. I’ve said it before, and I must emphasise it again: I loathe gatekeeping and elitism. I think NBA 2K and sim basketball titles in general should be accessible to anyone who’s interested in playing them. I disagree with the idea that everything always goes downhill once it’s popular and mainstream. With that being said, a wider audience can lead to changes that stray from the original vision. Aspects that are too niche will be dropped so as not to alienate the new demographic. At the very least, formulas will be altered to ensure broad appeal. That’s not always a bad thing, but it will be at the root of any changes that alienate the original audience.

I do believe that that’s happened with NBA 2K. With no alternatives in the basketball gaming space and great success in terms of sales and pop cultural relevance, NBA 2K is now competing with other genres instead of NBA Live or another basketball series. To ensure that the game can cast a wide net and maintain cross-genre appeal, it needs to jump on trends and incorporate similar features and gameplay concepts to releases that have nothing to do with basketball. It’s still a sim basketball game at its core with plenty of realism, as well as modes and content that’s aimed at simheads. However, they aren’t the most influential voices in the wake of chasing popularity and profits.

That’s not to say that simheads aren’t speaking their minds, but they’re being shouted down by rhetoric that would be unthinkable as NBA 2K was gaining popularity: “it’s a video game, it doesn’t need to be realistic!” Now, as someone who grew up with NBA Jam – to say nothing of sim titles that didn’t achieve as much realism as NBA 2K has – I will agree that there is some truth to that. Sports video games don’t necessarily need to have complete realism in order to be fun. It is the approach that sim titles generally strive for, though! More to the point, incorporating more realism and authenticity is how NBA 2K overtook NBA Live in critical reception, and eventually sales as well.

This is why I’m puzzled when I read comments expressing disappointment with recent NBA 2K games, and ascribing it to them being “too realistic” when compared to older titles that were “more arcade”. Go back to the 2000s, when NBA 2K was on its way to being a juggernaut and many long-time NBA Live gamers were switching to it, and you’ll see people talking about how they love 2K’s realism while Live is too arcade for their liking. Incidentally, I also disagree about NBA Live being arcade-like – to me, that’s a very specific style of gameplay and design – but NBA 2K was definitely the series that was delivering what simheads wanted in terms of depth and authenticity.

And of course, the notion that recent NBA 2K games are too realistic doesn’t jibe with comments from people saying that aiming for realism would make the games worse, and they prefer the game as it currently is. Those remarks often go hand-in-hand with discussions of stick skills and skill gaps, since rewarding skilful input can result in unrealistic scenarios; say, going 10-for-10 on turnaround fadeaways from 30 feet after mastering shot timing (and aiming, whenever that mechanic has been implemented). In short, there’s a divide between simheads who want realism and authentic strategy and performance, and competitive gamers who just want to master controls and win.

As I discussed in a previous column, focusing on the competitive scene and catering to that way of thinking has given rise to the absurd suggestion that simheads are the ones who are “casuals”. The idea that gamers who know hoops and have been playing sim games for upwards of decades are somehow the “casuals” is laughably insulting! I do get the implication, of course; that video games should be all about the competitive scene, and anyone who champions realism over pure stick skills must be an untalented scrub. Not only is that elitist nonsense – and over a video game of all things – but it ignores the history of the NBA 2K series, and its goal of becoming the premiere sim.

In turn, it means that anyone who suggests that the game should be more realistic in some way is met with pushback. Not only that, but the insinuation is there that they don’t understand NBA 2K, or that the game isn’t for them. Granted, the focus on the competitive scene doesn’t prioritise the hardcore simheads, but the idea that a sim title isn’t and never has been for them is simply ridiculous. And yet, realism has somehow become a dirty word, and an out-of-touch suggestion to make for a sim game! It feels like a contingent of competitive gamers who got into NBA 2K after it became widely popular are attempting to rewrite history, on top of dictating gameplay preferences.

There’s certainly a discussion to be had about how realistic the games should be and how to handle the competitive scene. Even in offline play, we want skilful input and savvy strategies to matter. However, the argument that “video games don’t need to be realistic” doesn’t hold much water when the genre in question is rooted in realism. Of course there will be breaks from reality, whether it’s more dunks than you’d normally see in a real game, our career mode avatars being pro-level players, and no injuries in the online team play modes. There are times to forego realism, whether in general or for a specific mode, because some authentic elements wouldn’t be conducive to fun.

That doesn’t mean throwing out all semblance of realism, though! There are ways of incorporating authenticity into NBA 2K’s gameplay while also rewarding stick skills. Indeed, as someone who enjoyed the online scene and offline gameplay in NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K17, I’d argue that it’s something the series already achieved. Realism and video game mechanics don’t need to be at odds. Unfortunately, that wasn’t sufficient for the elitist crowd; the ones who love to smirk “get good” while objecting to proper matchmaking and anything else that’d actually allow for that. They’re the ones who want meta-gaming, Badge loadouts, boosts, and strategies that they can reliably spam.

The irony is that so many elitist gamers don’t seem to have much of a problem with microtransactions. Considering their insistence on rewarding stick skills and properly representing skill gaps, it’s strange that they’re seemingly fine with the shortcut of paying to get better. They’re also oddly opposed to having better starting ratings for MyPLAYERs; say, to a level where a build’s core abilities and athletic attributes would allow a skilled gamer to be competent out of the gate, while still having to put in the time and effort to level up to a point where they can dominate. Then again, how else are they supposed to beat up on weaker opponents and then act like they’re elite?

In all fairness, there’s a valid concern here. Enforcing true-to-life shooting percentages to the point where stick skills don’t seem to matter – all in the name of realism – would be frustrating in the competitive scene. My counterpoint is that realism doesn’t need to mean that they can’t drain threes at a higher clip than the NBA’s best, but it should be challenging to do so. After all, that gels with the idea of a skill gap! Furthermore, a realistic approach should mean that being able to hit turnaround fadeaway threes from 30 feet out while double-teamed should require such precision that it shouldn’t be easy to master the timing, and anyone doing it with ease should be suspected of cheating.

To that end, realism is a method of balancing gameplay mechanics for competitive play in a sim title, so it definitely shouldn’t be a dirty word! Take shot aiming in NBA 2K21 for example. Elitists loved to bleat that anyone who didn’t like the method just wasn’t good enough, bragging that they could easily knock down threes online from anywhere and in any situation. Of course, if a mechanic is that easy to exploit, does it really have a place in competitive gaming, especially in a release that’s attempting to realistically depict a sport? If shot aiming made it as easy to hit low percentage shots as its defenders claimed, then that’s hardly a compelling argument for the mechanic!

Consider NBA Elite 11. Between the demo and the ripped version that’s made it out into the wild, it’s clear the game had a plethora of problems that ultimately doomed it. However, one of the biggest criticisms was that the shot aiming mechanic allowed us to easily knock down three-point hook shots. The fact that a hook shot was being used was an animation selection error that could’ve perhaps been fixed, but the underlying issue with an exploitable aiming system would’ve remained. Our ability to master a game’s mechanics doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily good. I’d suggest that we’ve all made the best of clunky controls and mechanics, in basketball titles and other genres.

Moreover, gamers didn’t laugh at NBA Elite 11’s three-point hook shots because they weren’t an appropriate test of our stick skills for competitive play, but rather because – wait for it – they weren’t realistic! The ability to make hook shots from way downtown wasn’t a welcome sign of a skill-based mechanic, but something terribly out of place in a series that was meant to realistically depict the NBA and basketball. Sure, NBA Elite 11 had too many other problems to defend it as great gameplay experience, but I do wonder: if the same thing happened in a far superior NBA 2K game today, would people be bothered by the lack of realism, or would it be defended as skilful play?

I’d like to believe it’d be criticised for being so unrealistic, but I’m not sure. Again, I remember online gamers advocating for sprinting back to toss up turnaround threes from the hash mark in NBA 2K21, claiming that it was fair game thanks to skilful use of shot aiming. Look, you can show me all the clips of players pulling off wild threes you like. Those shots are low volume, usually also low percentage, and desperation plays rather than the gameplan. Realism doesn’t mean that highly unlikely attempts shouldn’t be makeable in video games; just that they should be rare, and difficult to pull off. That sort of realism should be part of the challenge in a sim basketball title.

Although I’ve focused on gameplay, this goes for pretty much any aspect of sim titles. From the on-court action to all of the finer points of franchise and career modes, the games should be based in reality and strive for authenticity. Yes, there are reasons to simplify concepts or break from reality when it wouldn’t be entertaining to be 100% true to life, but for the most part, a sim title is trying to accurately portray a sport and its league. Even in the online scene, realism assists with balance and challenge, which is supposedly what competitive gamers want. I know times and demographics have changed, but when it comes to NBA 2K, realism shouldn’t be a dirty word in 2025.

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