 I've been having plenty of conversations with content creators and 2K players about what feels wrong about NBA 2K 22 right now because although the energy at launch was ecstatic, people were really happy. It quickly faded. I like to draw references from the games that have succeeded or failed in the past to see what 2K is doing correct and wrong. Nobody could quite put their finger on it because everybody has a different answer. But let's jump into all the reasons why here in this video you might feel like playing NBA 2K 22 isn't as fun or worth your time as previous iterations of the game. If y'all new to the channel, be sure to subscribe. You don't have to, but if you click notification bell you'll be updated next time I drop a video and it's free. But otherwise, let's just get straight into it. Hey man, sometimes people wait till it's too late to make a good decision. That's why this video is sponsored by Rhino Shield. Ooh, this is a bad luck, man. I'm sorry this happened. 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A lot of people say things like, oh, the game just doesn't feel the same. The dribbling is ass. The game is slow paced. It's not as fast as previous years. Some people say there's a lack of innovation. And although they're doing things differently, they're not giving us a new experience. And so that's the root of it. But what I'm starting to hear more and more is that people feel like having two separate games between current and next gen is splitting up the community and making things feel less like one big community and more like two fragmented communities. So I remember when the game launched, if you guys remember at the launch of NBA 2K22, everybody was picking their sides. Like people were putting out posts like, yo, I'm playing on next gen. I'm playing on current gen. People was picking their sides. You saw a lot of content created slides to the current gen side of things because that's where the views were. But most people that had access to next gen consoles just picked next gen. Every time a bit of news came out, people were like, yo, next gen got the win because we have this feature. And then current gen was like, but this leaked gameplay came out and the dribbling looks better on current gen. So we took the win. It kind of felt like the community was in fighting for the first time in probably years. The last time I seen this was like in 2K19. 2K didn't have this problem at the last jump in generations because when they went from 2K13 to 14, 2K14 on the PlayStation 3 was awful. So it didn't make any sense to purchase the game. If you didn't buy it on the next gen consoles, 2K just wasn't worth having. And I could see that. I could see why people feel like that's the root cause of it. Especially if your friend group is like, man, you have your sharpshooter on this gen but you got your playmaker on this gen and it's like, no, I can't play on that gen with this build. Everything is just more complicated. And 2K did try and make the process smoother by releasing the cross gen bundle of the game where you just pay $10 more and you get not only the current gen version but also the next gen version. But man, does it feel like, yo, yo, you want to play 2K? Yeah, yeah, let's hop on, let's hop on at nine. And then the next question has to be, oh, what gen do you play on? And if their answer isn't the one that you play on, you guys cannot play together. So I could see why people might feel like that's the reason why. In fact, that's probably a contributing reason. But I actually believe that that's not the root cause. I was on a Twitter space with a whole bunch of different content creators. I was kind of giving my opinion on where I felt like it was. And keep in mind, I could be wrong, but because I've been playing video games for so long, this is what I feel like is the correct answer. 2K was a largely irrelevant game in the 2000s. NBA Live had all the hype because they were dropping mode after mode after mode that just inspired you to always be on the game. Every part of the game kind of inspired cooperation. It wasn't until I believe NBA 2K 9 or 10 when they added my career when things began to change. And that's not because 2K's gameplay just took a huge leap in those years. It was just because 2K finally was willing to offer a gameplay experience that didn't exist anywhere else. And for a lot of people that my career experience was one that you couldn't miss out on. I remember before I left the NBA Live bandwagon to play NBA 2K, I borrowed 2K 10 from my cousin who lived like right down the road and I played it and I was like, dog, I've been wrong for years because 2K had it. But 2K didn't kind of rest on that. They saw the success of Ultimate Team that EA was having across FIFA and Madden and they wanted to implement that into their games and they did that in 2K 13. And although in the first year it didn't catch on, in 2K 14 and 15, the momentum began because my team began to take off and become easily the most lucrative mode for NBA 2K and they were heavily incentivized to drop new content on it and make it the focus of upcoming games. But they didn't rest on that neither because the following year in 2K 14, they released my part and it was a brand new mode. You could walk around and enjoy your experience with friends. It wasn't entirely new because games like Freestyle 2 and the early 2000s have been doing it but it was the first time it's been done on next generation consoles and I would argue it was the first time it was done polished. And ever since 2K 14, I guess there was the introduction of Pro Am in 2K 16, I believe. But we had Pro Am in 2K 11. They just called it the crew and they took it out the game for like five years and no one knew why. So I argue that if 2K made a reasonable attempt, Pro Am could be that next mode. I think Pro Am is a blast. But if you ever tried to sit down and play Pro Am for a few nights, you'd realize the buggy disaster that it is and that 2K doesn't care to fix any of those issues. So you eventually end up giving up on it because why play this atrocity of a mode? A mode that although has potential, 2K is not making anything of it. Instead, you could just hop on the rack or the park or any one of the modes that 2K would actually care to update. Okay, so if the answer is not Pro Am neither, then what is it? So here's the problem when it comes to 2K. Let's be honest, y'all, 2K is a deep game. When I say deep, I mean like, bro, after you get done syncing in like 60, 70 hours into grinding a couple players on the My Park, I guess you can hop on the My Career and play out the whole RPG story on Next and Current Gen. Once you're done there, you can back out and play on the My Team. You can rise the ranks on Play Now Online. You can play in the My NBA circuit. Let's be honest, y'all, it's a deep game, bro. There's not a ton of changes to all those modes, but just the fact that all of them exist in one video game means there's lots of ways to play the game. So that also means that every time 2K wants to add something new, especially if they have the intention on what they wanted to catch on, they want more and more people to play it, they want it to be the next new mode, they're gonna kind of stretch themselves then and I feel like that's what's happening. So, I mean, y'all seen me sit on this channel for years here and say, 2K, all you have to do is hire more people. That would literally solve all of this. By hiring people is expensive and finding good people is hard. So although you would think that's a solution that a AAA dev team in HR department can figure out, unfortunately, I'm not confident that they even want to put forth the effort to do such a thing. But I believe that 2K has been resting on the fact that they are the biggest game and that they have conveniently stomped out all competition and they haven't done much to innovate since 2K14. Now, yeah, they've come out with gameplay updates and gameplay updates, but when I say innovate, I mean like a new experience. I think 2K made an attempt with the city and it was a valiant effort, but what they were missing was time. I think with more time, 2K could have decided that having a city wouldn't add so much more value than a park would have been, that it's worth dedicating years of developer's time to try and fine-tune. It just isn't it. Instead, if they took that same energy and applied it to a new experience, a different mode. Y'all can see me drop a video, it's probably gonna be the next video I drop on this channel where I play the NBA Live 2005-2006 dunk contest. And you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. When that video drops, click it. If you've never seen or played this mode, you'll be like, man, there's just something to it. And it's an all-star weekend, but it became an experience. It was the thing you would go to your friend's house to play for hours because it was so many different combinations of dunks and every single new one felt interesting. It was a joy to play and it was the perfect example of not having to do a lot to provide a new experience. I've given it plenty of ideas on this channel in the past of different ways 2K can innovate, but they just haven't taken any. The easiest one I feel like they can implement is proximity chat. You add more toxicity, but shut the f*** up for a moment. You can mute proximity chat in every game it exists. So if you don't want that experience, just mute it. You don't have to have it. But it would transform the way the game is played and 2K doesn't have to do anything different about the gameplay. There's no new level design required. It's the easiest way 2K can add a new experience to 2K and I believe it would transform the way people play it, dog. But they won't listen. I've been saying it for years. The next best way and this is the way I believe just because of all the other games I play, I think 2K should have a ranked mode and stop for a moment. Not like any ranked mode. Like a ranked mode with in-depth leaderboards so you can see how you stack up against other people. A system that organizes all of your stats so that you can keep track of who has what. You can treat everything like a competition. In a ranked mode in that you're playing people on your skill level. Man, it's insane how many games drop like Apex Legends and the first thing those developers know about trying to build a competitive community or just any kind of community where people aren't either being destroyed by tryhards or destroying tryhards is that you need a good quality ranked mode to get people hooked on the experience of playing the game. Man, in like 4 or 5 months of the launch of Apex Legends, the game is doing fantastic. EA's dicks just rock hard over the success of their game. They immediately add a ranked mode. And that's not the only game who's done it. Valorant is a similar case. The first thing those guys did is add a ranked mode. But 2K just can't seem to take a hint. I think sometimes when people think ranked, they think, oh my god, the competition is going to be so steep. But that's not that. In my opinion, it's you're playing people on your skill level. If you're asked you should want to play ranked, they're going to put you as people. Having some kind of ranked mode and the ability to just play wherever. So it's matchmaking. We already have different forms of matchmaking in 2K22. What we don't have for whatever reason is 3v3 squads. So if you have a team of people, you can't hop in and match make with your friends and rank up against this and that and the third, right? I guess 3v3 Pro-M is supposed to be that experience. But again, as cited earlier, Pro-M is a f***ing disaster and it's not worth anyone's time to play it. So I wanted to show you a couple examples of Dev's caring and taking the time to release a polished product. So I'm going to show you a couple excerpts from the Riot Games team that works on Valorant. Check this out. It's across, you know, the play things. We've kind of been working night and day for the last several months to make sure, hey, all the kinks are knocked out of this thing. This is as good as it can be because we know how bad it is as a player to have a situation where, you know, you go over the headshot, you land it, but the surface is nope. And we absolutely want to have that not be a thing for our game. You know, that is our top-line goal. Yo, hold on. I need you to understand what's happening right now. These developers are breaking down the technical improvements they're making with their servers so that you don't experience bad hit registration in their video game. And then they immediately follow up what they said right there with this. I hope we've met your expectations. I hope, like, you appreciate the care and the love that we've put into this game. We really do want to make a game that both that we enjoy as gamers and that we think you will really fall in love with. And I think I just hope that everything is kind of meeting the mark there. I would be honest, yeah. Have you ever heard anybody related to 2K say something like this? Yeah. I'm not saying they don't care. I'm just saying when you put out unpolished products and the first couple months of the game is trying to fix everything that went wrong, it just comes across like you don't care. Grown adults that run big businesses trying to tell me that hiring people is so challenging that they're not capable of hiring the talent required to... It's like, stop, guys. Stop pretending like the obstacles in front of you are not possible to overcome or that they're even challenging to overcome. They're just problems. Handle them. They're all f***ing problem handle them, amen. You know, the interesting thing about gaming is like there's a part of gaming we don't really talk about but we all feel it and that's when you hop in and then the feel of the game, does it feel good? When you click on someone's head with the weapon, does their head burst into flames? Does it feel good when it happens? When you're dribbling, you pull up for the shot and you hit a green release, does it feel like you accomplished something? That's very difficult to put your finger on, right? There's no real way to quantify the feel of the game. I feel like the dev teams that take their time to release a product and make sure everything is polished, they knock it out the park most of the time. The reality is, is 2K kind of... It's almost as if they're shooting in the dark and maybe one of these shots is gonna land because let's be honest, bro, they have a year to develop this game. And now they have a current gen version and a next gen version and they kind of have to be in reasonable sync, right? Because at least on the my team side, things can transfer over. I mean, be honest, between the current and the next gen version of NBA 2K22, there's a lot that's similar. It's way more that similar than there is that's different about those two games. So now you've got to be in tandem with this whole another game that's being developed by this entirely another dev team. It just feels like a lot. And again, like, they're not willing to hire more people. They're not giving us a brand new experience and then people is confused. I feel like the easy default answer is to blame franchise fatigue. Like, people have been playing the game for a while, they're just tired of it. But the reality is, is games like GTA exist and it's a franchise where people have been playing the game game for decades. On my other channel, I've played every single GTA and when you sit there and you watch me play every new game, you're like, this is a whole different experience. Not just because it's a different story moment because it's an entirely different take on the game, an entirely different look on the game. And the reality is, is when you give people a new experience and it comes at the cost of the existing experience, some people is going to be unhappy. Like, I was unhappy when Fortnite removed the double pump. I love the double pump. I use it all the time. And for me, it kind of killed it. But the reality is, as Fortnite knows what I'm trying to say right now, is that you have to be willing to provide a brand new experience to your audience. The reality is, 2K can do that without having to cannibalize existing experiences that people already love. But I think, I genuinely believe it's a lack of innovation. But I'm curious to see how y'all feel. Please, if there was a video to leave a comment, it'd be this one. I want to look through them. Drop a like if you guys made it through the whole video. I appreciate y'all. And if y'all want to catch future videos, subscribe to the channel. A video on the screen right here. Yeah. I've been uploading on my other 4 channels a lot, so if you don't see me as much on here, just click the links in the description. You can follow me on those ones. I'm out. Peace.