Monday Tip-Off: Fun When Optional, A Chore When Mandatory

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 tasks in basketball video games are often fun when they’re optional, but a chore when they’re mandatory.

I’ve made my thoughts on grinding in basketball video games very clear. In short, I’m not a fan of forcing gamers to turn play into work in order to make a game enjoyable. I couldn’t disagree more when people defend grinding by suggesting that their fellow gamers are lazy and don’t want to put in the effort. Contrary to the apologist rhetoric, not everyone desires to be 99 Overall in MyCAREER, or have a stacked MyTEAM squad, within a week of a new game coming out. They just want to progress at a fair rate, and not be forced to choose between mindless grinding and paying for shortcuts.

Moreover, while there have been a number of methods to assist with the grind and avoid spending money, they’re not necessarily fun, or as effective as we’d like. Even if they’re useful in speeding up progress, they can still become tiresome to repeat over and over again. Beyond that, there have been other concepts in basketball games – in particular MyCAREER in NBA 2K – that can be fun if they’re optional, but quickly become a chore if they’re mandatory. In my view, the fastest way to ruin a basketball game is to force us into extracurricular tasks and activities that have nothing to do with playing virtual hoops. It won’t be long before they become dreary busywork.

NBA 2K23’s MyCAREER was a great example of this. Even if you had no interest in the online scene, playing through the NBA side of the mode still required us to travel through The City to complete mandatory objectives. This included dropping by the radio studio for interviews and reporting to the GM’s office to progress through the story and advance to the next game. Playing games also required us to make our way to the team arena, get changed in the locker room before heading out to the court, and take part in post-game media scrums. If you didn’t complete all of the necessary tasks, you wouldn’t be able to leave the arena to move the calendar forward, or play online.

The goal was to provide a deep and immersive NBA career experience. On paper it’s a fun idea, but in practice, all of those mandatory tasks made the mode a chore. Sure, I was definitely burned out on starting over from scratch in MyCAREER by that point, and I also found NBA 2K23’s story to be rather miserable and full of obnoxiously unpleasant characters to boot, so that didn’t help. Even if that wasn’t the case though, I don’t doubt that I’d have still been turned off the mode. As much as I can appreciate the effort to add depth and immersion, I don’t want to endure repetitive tasks that have little to do with the core gameplay loop, but are nevertheless mandatory to progress.

My dislike for this approach goes beyond the virtual hardwood. The Grand Theft Auto series has provided a couple of my least favourite examples. In San Andreas, the need to gain turf for Grove Street (and the ability to lose it) is easily one of my least favourite parts of the game. The same goes for empire building in Vice City Stories, and the endgame of the original Vice City for that matter. There’s a reason that I still haven’t finished any of those games, but have completed GTA III and Liberty City Stories, where progress ultimately comes down to beating the main story missions. Again, there’s no repetitive busywork taking time away from far more fun gameplay.

I have similar feelings about settlement building in Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 as well, not to mention the online aspect of the latter. However, my distaste for mandatory tasks that turn progression into a chore is older than the 3D GTA titles and Bethesda’s Fallout games. Much has been said about how Nintendo 64 titles have aged poorly because of clunky controls and awkward camera angles, and that’s undoubtedly valid criticism. Personally though, I also grew weary of how so many N64 platformers focused on being collect-a-thons. This in turn allowed them to gate progress behind hitting target numbers of one or more collectables, rather than simply beating levels.

Donkey Kong 64 is the best example of this approach. In the Donkey Kong Country games on Super Nintendo, finding and completing the bonus stages and collecting items such as DK Hero coins were added challenges tied into 100% completion (or more accurately, over 100% completion). Sure, we strived to find everything and get the special endings, but as long as you could beat the levels and all the bosses, you still finished the game. In DK64, replaying the same levels in order to do everything – from collecting bananas and blueprints to unlocking items and special abilities – was absolutely necessary. It was no longer about fun challenges, but mandatory tasks.

Of course, at least collect-a-thon platformers make those mandatory tasks part of the core gameplay. While the aforementioned quests in MyCAREER are undoubtedly basketball adjacent, they still differ from the on-court experience, while standing in the way of partaking in it. It reminds me of having to navigate backstage areas in some of the career and campaign modes in various sixth and seventh generation WWF/WWE games. There’s a certain novelty to the idea and I can appreciate the attempts at immersion, but it gets stale after a while, especially with the loading times on older consoles. Traversing The City and The Neighborhood feels similar to that.

Mind you, this isn’t just an issue with unskippable tasks and story beats. Repeatable activities that are meant to help out with progression, such as Daily Prizes, trivia, and other mini-games, can end up feeling just as much of a chore. Granted, those activities aren’t mandatory, but if I may channel Lionel Hutz here, there’s optional, and there’s optional. If you want to go No Money Spent, then you’re going to have to make all of those methods of earning extra VC part of your routine every time you play. Worse yet, when it comes to the Daily Prize in its various forms, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a VC payout. Still, you have to take the chance if you don’t want to spend.

If we weren’t so reliant on these tasks to supplement our VC income – if they were truly optional rather than effectively mandatory for efficient progress – then they wouldn’t feel like such a chore. They’d just be fun things to do if you felt like it, with their prizes being a welcome but far less crucial bonus. The sad fact of the matter is that MyCAREER used to be more like that when Accolades and the Daily Bonus (not to be confused with the Daily Prize) were available. While they were still technically part of the grind, they involved attainable and enjoyable gameplay objectives. The more you played and the better you were, the faster you could earn some extra VC.

I’ll also include other activities that are intended to benefit our player here, such as working out at the Gatorade Gym. It’s not difficult and it doesn’t take too long, though the time spent on virtual workouts does add up. You can choose not to work out of course, though over the years that’s foregone perks such as extra stamina, attribute boosts, and unlocking additional body types. The boosts are essential if you’re playing online, while the body types are customisation options that used to be available right away. Visiting Fresh Squeezed for an extra team training session in NBA 2K18 is another example of a technically optional task that you’re still much better off doing.

Although this is more of a MyCAREER issue, it does affect MyTEAM to some extent. The Agendas have had a tendency to be repetitive, with underwhelming XP and other rewards on offer. Several rewards that would be extremely useful when starting out require you to play modes that you might not be interested in. While there’s logic in introducing gamers to different ways of playing MyTEAM and rewarding them for doing so, it’s not giving gamers an ideal choice. Once again, it’s technically optional, but the usefulness of certain rewards and overall benefits of completing the lifetime objectives in MyTEAM make them effectively mandatory.

Considering that NBA 2K ostensibly caters to differing tastes with multiple ways to play virtual basketball, gating progress and rewards behind specific sub-modes and objectives is counterproductive to that goal. Between meta builds in MyCAREER and OP cards in MyTEAM, there are already issues with the illusion of choice. Optional should mean truly optional, not “technically optional, but if you choose not to, you’re definitely going to miss out on content or have an inferior experience”. MyCAREER also shouldn’t incorporate so many MMORPG elements that we end up spending too much time on mandatory non-basketball objectives, often for rewards that are subpar.

As I said, this issue goes beyond NBA 2K and basketball gaming. It’s one of my least favourite design choices, having affected a number of my favourite games and genres over the years. I can appreciate games trying new things and expanding their scope, but ill-fitting and mandatory RPG or management mechanics just end up taking time away from the core gameplay that I enjoy. The fact that it’s become such an integral part of two of NBA 2K’s most popular modes is a sign that it’s strayed too far from its roots while attempting to expand beyond its genre. Sure, I see the logic in that from a business standpoint, but I believe it’s had a negative effective on the gameplay overall.

Now, if you don’t play MyCAREER or MyTEAM, then you can easily avoid these issues. That’s what I’m doing nowadays. I know all too well what that grind is like though, and I don’t wish that upon my fellow basketball gamers who still play the newest games and are interested in those modes. Standing with your fellow gamers means caring about the issues and wanting to see them resolved, even when they don’t affect you personally. Depth and options to suit multiple preferences are one of NBA 2K’s biggest strengths, but that’s squandered when gamers are basically given chores to do. Being mandatory is the quickest way for immersive concepts to stop being fun.

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