• klankin@piefed.ca
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      1 day ago

      Isn’t that just like saying there’s no other company selling Starbucks® coffee?

      Like yeah that’s the point

      • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        Nah because at one point there used to be the nba games from Sony, the ones from EA and the ones from 2K.

        And I don’t even know if there is a Euroleague game or whatever.

        So basically, from what I know, if you enjoy basketball and want to play basketball videogames, you only have NBA 2K as a sim.

        It’s also why I kind of stopped playing basketball videogames and only play in real life and watch games.

      • KRAW@linux.community
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        1 day ago

        No, because there are plenty of other places to get coffee. The only competing franchise, NBA Live, stopped being made years ago. The irony is that NBA licensing isn’t exclusive, so feasibly another studio could come in to create competition, but it won’t happen.

        • Zannsolo@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          Pretty sure EA and 2k colluded with the NFL and NBA to make the licenses exclusive and each take one. Then they slowed gameplay improvements and tacked on the stupid money transactions and since there is no competitor to not implement those things and people who love the sports are forced to buy shit games if they want to play a game of basketball or football.

          • KRAW@linux.community
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            12 hours ago

            Yeah, I seriously doubt that. Again, I worked in the studio. It was well staffed and the devs were incredibly competent. Games are just more complex now and since this is a AAA game, they aim for high fidelity. The main thing they need to do is not release a game every year, but that’s essentially throwing money away.

        • klankin@piefed.ca
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          1 day ago

          Damn I didn’t realise that, that is shitty.

          From the outside its easy to say vote with your wallet, but I imagine a lot of foss nerds aren’t into sports, so actual sports fans get stuck between choosing shit or shittier.

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 day ago

        Unlike American football and baseball, NBA does not have an exclusivity deal with 2K, last I heard. It’s just that their competitors always made worse games, and 2K was all that survived. There isn’t even an off-brand basketball game to turn to without the NBA license. If you want video game basketball, this is basically all there is.

        • KRAW@linux.community
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          1 day ago

          So I actually used to work on NBA2K. NBA Live used to be considered the superior game. One year, they missed their deadline and had to delay the game. This caused all the basketball fans to buy NBA2K. They all decided it was better and NBA Live never regained their lead, which lead us to today. Visual Concepts is now very adamant about never delaying the game, which is why there is a yearly crunch, devs get paid overtime, and they avoid feature creep aggressively.

          • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOP
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            24 hours ago

            Yeah, mine was more an abbreviated history. If memory serves, that one delayed NBA Live was actually cancelled after review copies went out, which only a handful of games have ever done. As I remember the likes of Jeff Gerstmann telling it, that was the exact inflection point. Though I’ll admit I haven’t purchased a basketball game since the N64.

        • klankin@piefed.ca
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          1 day ago

          Damn that is shitty.

          I imagine the genre is extra starved for projects, as a lot of the nerds that would typically recreate it aren’t into sports.