 It seemed like every single time NBA 2K comes out with a bad product, there's one thing set across the internet. I wish NBA 2K had more competition. And for a few reasons about to explain here in this video, I think NBA 2K is finally going to start seeing some. Y'all new to the channel? Be sure to subscribe and get notified next time I drop a video. It takes two seconds and it's free. Click the big red button. Let's get into it. All right, it's no secret that at the beginning, right before current-gen version to NBA 2K 21 started, Gameplay Director and very important person to the process of NBA 2K, Scott O'Gallagher left. Not only did he leave, but Scott O'Gallagher left for EA Sports, the company he started his career with. He was going back. And he let us know on Twitter by dropping this here video. So I guess it was Scott O'Gallagher's homecoming. A lot of people got excited because, I mean, that means that Scott O'Gallagher's probably working on NBA Live over at EA. A whole lot of assumptions were made and then the news kind of died down and everybody forgot about it. Over the last, like, three, four months, I've been playing a lot of old basketball games in the simulation and arcade department. And as I sat here and I played those games, I started to realize one thing. The gap that NBA 2K has created, because it's been the only basketball game to release year after year after year, is not as great as we think. Okay, let me explain to you what I'm talking about. NBA Live has traditionally been the biggest competition for NBA 2K. Back before, like, 2008, NBA Live was the front runner. It was the game that everybody played and 2K was trying to win over the competition. So in an attempt to win back their old fans, NBA Live had a drought. No new games dropped, no NBA Live 11, NBA Live 12, or NBA Elite 13. And it seems like they're having another one. With the cancellation of NBA Live 20, a lot of people thought, like, oh, okay, maybe they're looking forward to next gen with Live 21. Articles dropped saying NBA Live 20 canceled as EA Sports looks to next gen console. The expectation was, just like they did with NBA Live 14, which was the first game that dropped on the PS4, EA and NBA Live were looking to catch up all the ground that NBA 2K made by just going all in on next generation. But this time around, that didn't happen. And this time, there was no announcement of a cancellation. EA just didn't list NBA Live as one of their upcoming titles. No NBA Live 21 as per EA's upcoming games list. So then everybody began scratching their heads confused. Did they give up on this entire genre as 2K just so powerful that EA stands no chance? So there's a few factors that nobody really considers when it comes to making basketball games, especially when it requires an NBA license. As I went back, I was playing a whole bunch of different games. I'm actually dropping a video soon playing all of the street games. One of the games I did play was this one here called Street Hoops. Some of y'all probably don't remember this game. It's because this game didn't have an NBA license. It was a street basketball game that released in the early 2000s, and it was a lot of fun. At its core, it had a lot of fun street basketball elements, but there were no NBA players. They were just and-one players, street players. As you see here, and you look at these photos, though, one thing stands out to you. The game was published by Activision. And so if you didn't have an in-depth knowledge about the history of basketball games, you would have never anticipated a publisher as big as Activision ever participated in the genre. For one reason or another, the game never had a sequel. And keep in mind, this was right when NBA Street games were just popping off the NBA Street series with EA Sports, the NBA Ballers series with Midway. Whether you had an NBA license or not, the genre was thriving. And so a left and right, different publishers and developers were just taking their shot to see what type of market share they could earn by dropping basketball games. But along the way, all the competition began to fall. Street Hoops disappeared, NBA Ballers disappeared. Next thing you know, NBA Street disappeared. The PC games, like Freestyle 2, disappeared. There was only two more games on the market that was NBA 2K and NBA Live. I guess as time went on, people just kinda expected to see NBA players in basketball games. The problem with that is actually pretty complicated. I only know like a surface level because apparently this is all like private information that nobody feels comfortable sharing. But anytime you have a license from the NBA in your video game, a lot of the stuff you do with your video game has to be approved by the NBA. I remember when NBA 2K21 Next Gen was announced and I heard there was billboards. I actually reached out to see if I could put myself on one of the billboards for a video. It was probably very entertaining. I was trying to think of real creative ideas and I thought that'd be hilarious. Somebody reached back out to me and told me that it would need to be approved by the NBA so there would probably be a low chance that would happen. And that's not the first time I've heard that a good idea or just something creative that was attempted by NBA 2K needed to be approved by the NBA. Everything that drops in their stores, as far as I know, needs to be approved by the NBA. And so even though this is like a big moneymaker, it relies on that NBA license. So every time you buy an NBA 2K game or an NBA live game or any game really with the NBA license, the NBA gets a cut of that as per licensing. And then on top of that, they also have a lot of control over what that game looks like. And the unfortunate part about that is you can't really ever tell which decisions 2K made and which decisions the NBA made because all that stuff is private. So a lot of the big publishers and developers actually lost interest in the genre because they wanted to have control over their video game. Look, now Activision's biggest title is Call of Duty and they have full control over what they do with Call of Duty. There's no one that can tell them what to do and what not to do. It's their decision. But left and right, a lot of different dev teams and publishers like THQ that relied on WWE or Midway that relied on the NBA Ballers series. As those developers and publishers started dropping, everybody saw the sports genre as a big risk. Almost like jumping into like the airline industry or the car industry. Like there's Titans. To fight the Titans and win is a difficult fight, one that a lot of people decided wasn't worth doing. So the few attempts we did see past that point at basketball titles, usually even if they did have an NBA license, were from indie developers. The most notable attempt was from Saber Interactive, which developed the NBA Playground series, a series that NBA 2K immediately ate up and engulfed. And there's really been no attempt since then. Okay, but check this out though and this is something I'm starting to realize as I go back and I play some of these old games. Especially in the simulation department, a lot of us go into these games expecting the games to look more and more realistic every single year. That's on the graphics department that's also in the gameplay department. NBA Live has been getting crucified for over a decade now because their gameplay looks wildly unrealistic. It looks clunky, it looks sluggish. And it's definitely unresponsive. And so the pursuit at trying to make the most realistic game, that's a difficult one to win. And as NBA 2K drops games year after year after year, it's starting to create a bigger and a bigger gap that other dev teams are having trouble making up. That being said, let me bring something to your attention. In my experience playing all of these different basketball video games, I think I've played them all at this point. I passed like the 1990s, all of them. Usually games have like a sweet spot. The gameplay is good enough that it's fun, it's fast paced and realistic, but it's not so complicated that the game becomes slow and bogged down with random mechanics. NBA 2K21, we saw blog posts after blog posts about improvements to the gameplay mechanics in the physics of the game. So if technically the gameplay saw some improvements, why when we played the game, it was a lot less fun to play. Let's backtrack now. NBA 2K19, NBA 2K16, some of the greatest 2Ks of all time. These games were a lot more simple. They weren't trying to nerf every animation and they were most definitely fast paced. I saw it with the NBA Baller series, where the first one had good core gameplay, the second one put it all together. It was fun, had great gameplay, and the third one, they just tried to do a lot. And the gameplay ended up feeling infinitely worse than the second iteration of the game. And so you ask yourself the question after all this research, how on earth, with improvements to the gameplay, does the gameplay feel worse? There was a time where NBA Live had good gameplay and the gameplay got worse. It seems like the use of random technological advancements just because it's new technology isn't always what's best for the game. And I think once that realization sets in, other developers should be way more comfortable in trying to make up that gap. Cause we don't need the game to be ultra realistic. We need it to be pretty realistic. We definitely don't want it to feel like NBA Live, but we also want it to be fun and fast paced. When you played 2K15, but it had these like seven foot small forward playmakers that could dunk on everybody. And it was, but it was fun though. It was fun. As toxic and broken as the game was and had zero balance, it was fun. It's like when an artist in the music industry like over-thinks a song and ruin something. Sometimes the simplicity is something is where people find value. So you don't need every single technological advancement. You don't even need a dev team as big as NBA 2K is to make a better game. And sometimes the actual attempts at gameplay innovation make for worse gameplay. There is no better example of that than EA's Ignite Engine. After four years of no NBA Live, EA was bigging up this thing they called the Ignite Engine. The concept was pretty simple and actually pretty innovative. All of EA's sports titles from FIFA to Madden to NBA Live, you name it, we're gonna use this engine. So when an improvement was made on the FIFA or the Madden side, NBA Live felt those effects too. What? All of these games working together to make this beautiful engine, everyone thought it was a brilliant idea. They got us gassed with the marketing. Right before the new PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were announced, they came out at E3 and they showed everything off when in series of different videos, I was personally excited. This was around the time I actually created this here channel and I actually made some videos I haven't listed on my channel now. Excited as fuck about this new engine. I was so excited. FIFA abandoned the engine one or two years into the launch of the thing and Madden soon thereafter and last was NBA Live. They had a bold attempt at something but they couldn't commit to it or maybe it was just not a good engine at all. Which reverts back to my original thesis, sometimes trying something really innovative is worse for the gameplay. And all of these games suffered as a result. Just use the Unreal 4 engine like everybody else and make a good basketball product. It's not that complicated. Well, actually it is complicated but it's your job to uncomplicate it for us. So let's go back to how we started this video. Scott O'Gallagher. If EA poached Scott O'Gallagher into a team that we don't know about yet, we're assuming it's all NBA Live but what if it's not? 2K announced earlier this year that they were finally getting into football games. That was a surprise. It was a surprise because EA had some monopoly over those. They have exclusive rights. What I didn't know was EA's exclusive football making video game rights only applied to simulation football games. So if 2K for whatever reason wanted to decide to make an arcade football game, they can do it with an NFL license. So I guess 2K is being petty or maybe they're just desperate to jump into the market. The new football video games that 2K Sports is making will feature real NFL players in addition to NFL teams, courtesy of a new licensing agreement between the publisher and the NFL Players Association. The deal gives 2K Sports the rights to use names, numbers, images and likeness of over 2,000 current NFL players in its upcoming games. And keep in mind, there's been games like NFL Street or an ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. What was that game Troy Dan did an incredible series on? Yeah, this one, Blitz the League. Ha ha ha. Man, the mid 2000s was like a beautiful period for these NFL arcade games. They were a ton of fun to play. 2K saw the success with NBA Playgrounds. They made it NBA 2K Playgrounds too. I guess this is their attempt to do the same in the football market. And then recently, EA actually announced that they're jumping back into NCAA football games. This was after a lawsuit prevented them from doing so, I believe after NCAA football 14. I could be wrong about the date of the thing. EA Sports is rebooting its college football series for next generation consoles announcing Tuesday. The game has taken since then, Michigan quarterback, Denard Robinson, appearance on the c- So they're bringing this football game back. So then a whole bunch of people began to theorize, maybe that's why EA brought on Scott O'Gallagher, an ex-professional athlete, head of NBA 2K's gameplay. He could teach him a thing or two about making realistic football products. All right, let's take a step back and look at everything from a macro level. Every large sports genre has some form of competition in it. FIFA and PES? Madden's about to start having some second 2K drops their football games. I bet you there's multiple different handball games. It just seems crazy that the basketball genre is completely dominated by a publisher and developer that's took like massive missteps in the past couple of years. NBA Live has definitely been one of the past to rush decisions, drop unfinished games and have their fans pay for it. People are unfrozenated with it. The brand took a big hit. I get them wanting to take things slow and get it right. But EA, NBA Live, if y'all can't take advantage of how dead 2K 21 was for a large part of the year and win over some NBA 2K fans that you never will. So the blueprint for this is pretty simple. It goes one of two ways. Either there's like an indie team that's like a small dev team but they have like ambitious efforts and they focus all their efforts on a basketball experience. They drop it as a beta and they make improvements to the game and the game and the game becomes more and more fun. It builds up a player base. They add developers to the team and then boom, now it becomes a big dev team. We've seen the likes of Epic Games do this. Not that Epic Games is no small team but the team has quadrupled in size ever since Fortnite's blow up, right? This happens all the time where a small dev team strikes gold on an idea that was very smart, very innovative, very fun. They scale their team to make even more money, grow the company and boom, now they're making billions. Or another large publisher like the Activisions of the Worlds and the EA Sports of the Worlds jump into a market they know they can survive in where the only current player in it continues to fuck up. So fans of that game are just begging for someone to come around that is providing something different, something unique. As bad as NBA Live's been in the past decade, any reasonable person could look at the game and see where they almost had something. The UI's been great. They've come out with unique game modes I thought were dope. They've gotten the community involved in things. Graphics for the most part look pretty good, not always actually. There's been some atrocious graphics. The shoes look great for some odd reason. The lighting and the courts look great. I swear, a lot about that game is great except the gameplay. Now more than ever, I genuinely believe whether it's a big publisher, an indie team or a known competitor like EA Sports, somebody's gonna jump into the mix and actually put up a fight. NBA 2K is coasting and it seems like every single year up until 2K21 has been new career high over new career high over new career high. Didn't matter how good or bad the game was, people were buying it and spending money on it. If you like to make money and you're in the video game market, you see that and you don't immediately think that's an opportunity, you're delusional. And it just kinda hit me because we're so used to very little competition. In our minds, just the thought of new competition is mind-blowingly unrealistic. But I grew up in an era where there were dozens of different basketball games. There was different publishers and developers all taking their shot. And you should have like some level of comfortability in knowing that we don't want the most realistic thing. The most realistic thing would be boring. We know that. Call of Duty would be boring if it was realistic. It's unrealistic at its core. Is it fun? Yes. Even Battlefield, the game that's toted as the more realistic brother of Call of Duty, is still unrealistic. The realities of war is very boring. You'd be sitting in a bunker all fucking day chilling. You might get a couple shots off. We don't want straight absolute realism. And that applies in basketball as well, ladies and gentlemen. Do we want it to look good and realistic? Yes. But we don't want real life in the basketball game. Or we can go outside and play it. I blow layups in real life. If my player starts blowing layups in NBA 2K, I am furious. Come up with a bold take in the comments right now which publisher or dev team you guys think is gonna jump into the mix. I'm gonna say something crazy. I think Ubisoft. Ubisoft has been taking an attempt at a lot of different games recently. Ubisoft has been trying to revive their games that flopped at launch. They've been taking risks. Who knows, man? And they've been doing a pretty decent job in the last half a decade in repairing their brand image. I remember when it was in the gutter after they just capped to us about just showing us fake game playing in the early 2010s. Hey, y'all new to the channel? Drop a like. Y'all really new to the channel? Your first video, man, subscribe so you can catch the next upload. There's a video on the screen right now, man. Click it. I'm gonna catch you guys in the next one. I'm out. Peace.