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 interactive areas that were featured in basketball video games before The Neighborhood (and The City).

I don’t enjoy feeling cynical about basketball video games, or any of my hobbies and interests for that matter. Some might argue that cynicism and experience go hand-in-hand – there’s a scene from the old Dilbert animated series that suggests as such – but I’d like to think that we’re not doomed to become Debbie Downers about our favourite things! With that being said, it’s impossible not to notice when game design is lacking in goodwill and incorporating greedy recurrent revenue mechanics, or is frustrating and problematic in some other way.

It’s why I’ve always had my reservations about The Neighborhood (and subsequently The City) in MyCAREER. In some ways it’s interesting and immersive to have an open world to explore, but as I’ve explained, it’s not necessarily a good fit for the genre. More to the point, once you look beyond the creativity of the concept, you can see how it pushes advertising and recurrent revenue mechanics on gamers, while also padding out playtime. It’s a shame that it’s so cynically corporate, because there was a time when interactive areas in basketball games were a fun idea. To that end, here are five interactive areas that preceded The Neighborhood that were definitely cool to see.

1. NBA Store

These days, I’m not so fond of the idea of stores in basketball video games! They’re part of the push to get us to use real money to buy virtual currency to purchase digital content that will be lost when the servers are shut down. Even if we go No Money Spent, we still have to take the time to traverse The Neighborhood or The City just to customise our avatar. However, when the NBA Store was added in NBA Live 2004, it wasn’t burdened by annoyances and cynical purposes. It was just an appealing way to present unlockable content! The NBA Store menu was revamped in NBA Live 2005, becoming an interactive area that somewhat resembled the real store in New York.

Obviously, it wasn’t absolutely necessary to create a more elaborate frontend just to unlock jerseys, shoes, and other items. To that end, I’m sure there were probably some gamers who would’ve preferred a simple menu featuring a list of unlockables. That certainly would’ve been adequate, but I do appreciate the creativity in displaying the items in an environment that we could explore as if we were actually browsing the NBA Store. It’s a great example of games from earlier generations going that extra mile to be fun and memorable. It wasn’t overdone, it didn’t complicate things, and it appealed to our love of basketball, without any of the greed that we now endure.

2. Hall of Fame

Just as the NBA Store presented unlockable content in a more appealing manner, the Hall of Fame in NBA Live 2004 and NBA Live 2005 was a fun way to view NBA records. Instead of just displaying information in a menu, we could navigate around a condensed Hall of Fame setup to view trophies, award histories, and a selection of framed retired jerseys. There’s nothing wrong with how NBA 2K presents all of this information nowadays, and it would’ve been fine if those NBA Live games had taken the same approach. It’s also worth noting that the records in the Hall of Fame in NBA Live 2004 were nowhere near as complete and comprehensive as NBA 2K’s listings.

Once again though, it was trying something fun and fresh, in a way that didn’t hamper the core gameplay experience. Indeed, that’s a recurring theme with many interactive areas in older basketball games. They weren’t absolutely necessary, but were still an enjoyable novelty. Of course, the Hall of Fame in NBA Live is also where you can view the awards you’ve collected and the jerseys you’ve retired in Dynasty mode. I like having a visual representation of those accomplishments, and that’s something that we’ve seen in NBA 2K’s interactive areas as well. It’s why there’s value in the concept, especially when it isn’t intrusive or facilitating anti-consumer practices.

3. The Crib & Student Lounge

Of course, depicting venues such as the NBA Store and Hall of Fame wasn’t the only way to tap into the zeitgeist of basketball culture in the mid 2000s. A perfect example is The Crib, an interactive area that made its first appearance in the NBA 2K series in NBA 2K6, though it actually debuted in ESPN NFL 2K5. In NBA 2K6, The Crib was a stylish penthouse apartment with an inaccessible balcony overlooking a generic city. The setting and branding made sense. MTV Cribs was at the height of its popularity, and well-known in pop culture. Even if you didn’t watch it, you still knew about it. It was also relevant to basketball, as several NBA players had appeared on the show.

To that point, if a basketball video game was going to feature some kind of interactive hub, the swanky digs you’d expect an NBA player to have was the perfect aesthetic. It wasn’t just for show, though. The Crib was how you unlocked the bonus teams with VIP credits, and displayed trophies earned by completing various in-game challenges. Unlocking the bonus content adds to the décor, and there are even mini-games in the form of air hockey and darts! I believe there’s value in having player hubs that you can customise and just chill in, so I enjoy interactive areas like The Crib. The College Hoops games moved the setting to a Student Lounge, but it’s the same fun concept.

4. NBA Live Academy

Technically, all the practice venues that the seventh generation NBA Live games immediately load into are interactive areas. However, the NBA Live Academy does stand out. As a practice facility featuring two courts, it’s one of the largest interactive areas in a basketball video game that isn’t a full open world. It’s obviously also NBA-oriented, being a realistic practice facility rather than the fictional (albeit awesome) environments of The Temple and The Hangar. The venue is decorated according to the team you choose, which can be changed at any time. On top of freely shooting around, you can participate in several drills to sharpen your virtual hardwood skills.

Not only that, but those drills are accessed by approaching the head coach or one of his generic assistants, and selecting one from the menu that pops up. It sounds small I know, but it’s a nice, immersive approach. The best part of the NBA Live Academy of course was its integration into Dynasty mode. There, the drills served as a way to train players through actual gameplay rather than just simulating sessions through a menu, as well as run scrimmages. As such, it had a much greater impact on the experience than other interactive areas that were mostly about bonus and flavour content. Sadly, it’s a concept that was dropped as NBA Live struggled to rebuild on the eighth gen.

5. MyCOURT

I’ll readily admit to being far too dismissive of MyCOURT when it was announced for NBA 2K15. It sounded like a gimmicky name for a practice court that never should’ve been removed from MyCAREER in the first place. That’s not entirely untrue, but it’s still selling MyCOURT short. For a start, it was bringing back a feature that was wanted and needed, which is a positive outcome following criticism and backlash. More importantly however, it evolved into a more substantial feature than a mere practice court. NBA 2K16 introduced the ability to customise our MyCOURT, turning it into a player hub that we can personalise to make it feel like a virtual home.

We’ve also been able to host other players on our MyCOURT – from our friends’ MyPLAYERs to our virtual NBA teammates – to play pick-up and other games, or just shoot around. These games have sometimes impacted the development of our player – such as when they were part of Doin’ Work in NBA 2K17 – and they’ve also been involved in the stories and “networking” aspects of MyCAREER. On top of helping to sharpen our stick skills – especially when a ball machine was added – it’s also provided a method of farming extra VC via shootarounds between games. There’s even been some Easter eggs to discover, rewarding us for our exploration of the area.

What are your thoughts on these interactive areas, and interactive areas in basketball video games in general? Do you get the same immersion and enjoyment out of the open world environments, or are they a step too far? 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 Interactive Areas Before The Neighborhood appeared first on NLSC.