Monday Tip-Off: Passion, Burnout & Modding
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 the battle between passion and burnout can make it tough to walk away from modding.
Like thousands of others over the weekend, I watched Norman Caruso’s farewell video for The Gaming Historian. After some 15 years and so many wonderful gaming documentaries, Norman is officially ending the channel, though all of the videos will remain available. In his farewell, he reflects on he felt burned out after releasing his video on The Oregon Trail, and how that made it difficult to find the passion to begin work on the next project. After initially planning on a part time schedule in the hopes of reigniting his enthusiasm, he’s ultimately realised that it’s time to move on.
His candid and understandable explanation really resonated with me. While I won’t compare my dabbling with video content to what he and other fulltime YouTubers do, I’ve experienced similar feelings as I approach 25 years of running the NLSC. No, this isn’t me announcing my retirement! However, it did get me reminiscing about how I stopped creating roster updates for NBA Live, and my unsuccessful attempts to make similar mods for NBA 2K. Burnout is a roadblock for creative endeavours, but your lingering passion and sense of dedication encourages you to persist. At some point though, you’ll come to realise that it’s time to channel your energy into a new venture.
In the wake of EA Sports’ decision to not release NBA Live 09 for PC, I continued to update the rosters for NBA Live 2005 through NBA Live 08. Even though NBA 2K had come to PC with NBA 2K9, it took a while for some of us long-time NBA Live fans to really get into the series. It was also a couple of years before the modding community for NBA 2K really took off. As such, there was still interest in keeping the last few PC releases of NBA Live up to date, and I wanted to be involved in those efforts. After a couple of years however, I began struggling to remain motivated to maintain those rosters with the same enthusiasm, and my releases became irregular.
Looking back, my burnout was very obvious, and it’s not surprising. Those efforts to keep NBA Live updated as an alternative to NBA 2K were intended to be community projects. Unfortunately, as more and more modders moved on to NBA 2K or stopped modding altogether, it became tougher to source the necessary art updates. Instead of offering help, it felt like most people were just waiting for me to get everything done. Also, although I developed methods of converting the rosters so that I could maintain updates for four games simultaneously, it was still a heavy workload. Getting a new release out still brought satisfaction, but I now dreaded getting started on the next one.
It probably would’ve helped if I’d chosen to stick to one or two games, specifically the ones that I and the community liked best. Incremental updates may have relieved the pressure, though I was trying to avoid the inevitable complaints about “forgetting” to add rookies from people who skimmed the release notes. Collaborating with someone on the roster work would’ve been wise, too. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and if I’m being honest, my pride got in the way. In any case, come the 2013 campaign, it took me almost the entire regular season to finally get a single update out. The writing was undoubtedly on the wall, but moving on felt just as daunting as continuing the work.
That brings me to something that I haven’t really talked about that much whenever I’ve reflected on my roster modding burnout: I did actually intend to keep updating NBA Live 2005 through NBA Live 08 for the 2014 season. In fact, it was more than just a fanciful thought. I saved a copy of my 2013 roster and labelled it 2014, ready to be updated. I sourced, saved, and from memory even printed the Opening Day roster listings. I also created a spreadsheet of the Class of 2013 rookies, with the intention of devising all of their ratings before creating them in-game. I felt it might speed up the tedious process of adding dozens of new players if I had those ratings ready to go.
It’s an idea that might’ve worked if my burnout wasn’t so severe. To that point, I didn’t even finish that spreadsheet! I was tired of the work, having made numerous current roster updates for multiple NBA Live games since the late 90s. Furthermore, the time and effort required to maintain updates for those games became increasingly difficult to justify as the number of people still playing them continued to shrink. Nevertheless, I struggled to let go. I didn’t want to be the bad guy who “abandoned” the community of gamers still holding onto NBA Live, leaving them disappointed. I already felt like I’d let everyone down with the long wait for the 2013 roster, and wanted to do better.
Moreover, maintaining the NLSC-branded current roster updates for NBA Live was “my thing”, and had been for years. That was my contribution to our community of modders and mod users, and part of the core content that the NLSC was established upon. Walking away from those roster updates was a major decision that part of me really didn’t want to make. It sounds melodramatic and indeed arrogant to say that it would be the end of an era, but it’s accurate. It’d mean that for the first time since we were founded in 1996, the NLSC wouldn’t be providing updates for NBA Live. I’d be ending a tradition that I’d proudly inherited, and that was an overwhelming thought.
Of course, it’s a thought that had been on my mind. I was coming up on 30, and I was mulling over my future with the NLSC. I wanted to keep running the site, but I did ask myself: do you still want to be modding an aging basketball video game in your thirties? It’s funny to reflect on now that I’m in my forties and a keen advocate for gaming and modding as long as you like, but I couldn’t help thinking about that as a milestone birthday loomed. All these years later, I see that a Murtaugh-esque “I’m too old for this” declaration was just me trying to force myself to make the right decision, since the guilt of “giving up” wasn’t allowing me to acknowledge the burnout I felt.
With that being said, I did float the idea that I was done with the roster updates. In a comment on my bulletin announcing the release of the 2013 rosters, I stated there was a “strong possibility” I wouldn’t be making updates for the following season. As much as I didn’t want to make a definitive announcement that I was finished, I didn’t want to give people false hope, either. It was the wiggle room I needed to quietly make those preparations for a potential 2014 season update, and have it be a pleasant surprise if all went well. Once again though, burnout prevented me from making any significant progress on that preliminary work. There was no way that I could continue the rosters.
And so, watching Norman explain why he’s ending The Gaming Historian reminded me of my experiences creating that final NBA Live roster update for the 2013 season, considering continuing the updates for the 2014 campaign, and ultimately abandoning the idea. When he talked about feeling burned out, but also hopeful that the passion would return if he changed up his approach and waited long enough, I could relate to that completely. I understood the hesitation to put an end to something that had taken so much time and effort – something so well-established – while also feeling a strong desire to branch out and try new things that you can dive into with more enthusiasm.
For me, that had turned out to be content creation. In late 2012, I began co-hosting the NLSC Podcast. Originally I wanted to leave that project to JaoSming and Leftos, but when scheduling conflicts led to me filling in for Jon one week, I came to really enjoy doing the show. At the beginning of 2013, I debuted The Friday Five, which in time was joined by Monday Tip-Off and Wayback Wednesday. Writing and talking about basketball video games was a fresh new creative endeavour, and the passion I had for that compared to the burnout I felt with roster making encouraged me to step away from those updates. I’d still mod from time to time, but it was no longer a priority.
My burnout also stood in the way of getting involved with NBA 2K modding during its infancy; well, that and the need to learn new techniques! The lure of modding is strong when you’ve done it for so long and previously enjoyed it, though. Come 2016, I began toying with the idea of updating NBA 2K11. Not only was there burgeoning nostalgia for the landmark release, but it had also missed out on many of the huge roster packs that were produced for NBA 2K12, NBA 2K13, and NBA 2K14. As with NBA Live 99 during the 2002 season, I saw an opportunity to do something cool for a game that people still loved, but many modders had understandably moved on from.
Sadly, despite my best efforts – and some video updates that I hoped would keep me motivated in addition to hyping up the eventual release – my current rosters for NBA 2K11 fell through, and I had to abandon them. Being far less experienced with some of the technical aspects of NBA 2K roster modding, I definitely bit off more than I could chew by undertaking such a large project. Progress slowed down, and before I knew it, a new season was underway. Publicly announcing the project added pressure that stirred up some lingering feelings of burnout. As my enthusiasm for the modern NBA dwindled, my passion for making a current roster update likewise faltered.
When the COVID shutdown in 2020 handed me a prime opportunity to catch up to the current day, and I still couldn’t make significant progress, it was an undeniable sign that the project was doomed. I quietly and wisely cancelled it, but I hated doing so. I hated the thought of giving up. I hated that I was disappointing people who had been interested in and supportive of the work-in-progress mod. I hated that my time and effort had ultimately gone to waste. I hated the notion that I’d given satisfaction to anyone who wanted to see me fail; some people get very childish and bitter when they leave our community on bad terms! I hated that I wasn’t completely over my burnout.
Still, I made the right call. Even though it had been a few years – even though it was an entirely different game – I didn’t have enough passion to overcome my burnout. There had been a spark of inspiration – an itch to get back into modding – but it wasn’t enough. Ultimately, it wasn’t the right project, either. I’ve had more success tinkering with rosters on a smaller scale, such as adding missing Legends to NBA 2K10 PC, or fixing up some of my older releases with extra polish. For the most part though, I’ve been writing articles, recording podcasts, and producing videos. As I’ve said, I won’t rule out trying my hand at a bigger modding project, but these days I mostly dabble.
Unfortunately though, as I and other long-time modders have gradually stepped away from the scene, it’s been harder to promote and uphold the principles our community was founded upon: free mods and tools, cooperation and collaboration, and sharing knowledge and resources. So many modders charge for their work now, or refuse to release their mods until they’ve received a certain number of replies or Likes on social media. Naturally I’ve spoken out about these practices, but it’s impossible to lead by example when you’re not actively modding yourself. It’s a lot easier to dismiss me as a voice from a bygone era, when attitudes towards paywalled mods were quite different.
Indeed, that’s probably my biggest regret about my burnout steering me away from modding. I’ve found great creative satisfaction with the content I’ve produced over the past 12 years, and stepping away from a project that had become a chore was the right choice. All the same, I wonder how things could’ve been different if I’d rediscovered my passion and updated those NBA Live rosters for the 2014 season. I might’ve been able to go out on a higher note instead of exhausted relief that I finally managed to get a release out. That in turn might’ve encouraged me to dip my toe into some NBA 2K modding a little earlier. If I’d remained an active modder, I could set a good example.
On the other hand, as tough as it was – as much as it’s made speaking out against paid mods akin to yelling into the wind – ending those roster projects was something that I needed to do. Again, it wasn’t easy. It’s a fierce battle between the resolve to continue, and the desire to quit. To resolve that conflict, you take a break, hoping that renewed passion will soothe the burnout you’re feeling. You hope that a different approach will make the work more efficient and manageable. You don’t want to look at the writing on the wall, because then it’s harder to deny that the time has come to make a tough decision. Eventually though, you’ll realise that all good things must come to an end.
Ultimately, you have to listen to what your burnout is telling you. It may seem like it’s allowing it to “win”, but really it’s making a healthy decision. It’s recognising that a chapter has come to an end, and that a new passion will allow you to get started on the next one. Of course, there’s no rule that says you can’t change your mind. If Norman ever produces another Gaming Historian video as a once-off – unlikely as that seems right now – I highly doubt that anyone would be mad! It’s about making peace with moving on to something new, not pledging to never go back if circumstances change. You can close the door, but you don’t have to then lock it and throw away the key.
Besides, you can always take something with you when you open new doors. I’ll still dabble with rosters and other mods, but I’ll choose my projects carefully, prioritising anything that would benefit my retro gaming habits. Clearly, Norman is approaching his podcast with the same enthusiasm and professionalism as The Gaming Historian, and I have no doubt his future projects will exhibit the same high quality. Burnout may put an end to one endeavour, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t find passion for a new one. To that end, burnout may have ended my roster updates, but it didn’t destroy my passion for basketball video games. It simply guided that love in a new direction.
The post Monday Tip-Off: Passion, Burnout & Modding appeared first on NLSC.