Monday Tip-Off: The Pain of Benching a Beloved Game

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 it can be extremely difficult to put aside a beloved basketball game that you’re really enjoying.

Basketball games – and sports games in general – have a ticking clock. I’m not talking about the one that counts down while we’re on the virtual field of play, but rather the countdown to the release of the next title. Annual releases give us a year to get the most out of a basketball game before its successor is out, but sometimes, that won’t be enough. After all, an 82-game season on twelve minute quarters will take over 100 hours to finish. That’s certainly feasible for an enthusiastic basketball gamer, but with multi-season play, that may only be the beginning of the journey.

Needless to say, if a basketball game is good enough to keep us hooked even as the next release is on the horizon, then that’s fantastic! We’re not always so lucky, as I can attest to souring on games long before the end of their life cycle. Furthermore, we’re under no obligation to buy the new game every year or to bench a beloved basketball game if we still want to play it. We can always revisit old favourites too, though we’re seeing games become increasingly disposable. With that being said, many of us are still interested in seeing what a new release has to offer, so the need to make room in our rotation ends up clashing with our reluctance to bench a game we’re hooked on.

I won’t say that this phenomenon is completely unique to basketball and sports games. How many of us have a backlog of games on Steam, a multitude of titles that have been sidelined because they were picked up on sale and only briefly played (if ever)? It is basically by design with basketball and other sports titles though, as a new game is meant to replace the current one on a yearly cycle in conjunction with the start of a new season. Unfortunately, this may not be enough time to feel like you’re completely done with a title. Put it this way: I’ve never felt that I’ve received a new Fallout game when I wasn’t ready and eager for it, nor pressured to wrap up business in the old one!

Even when we are excited to move on to a new game, we can encounter some “New Game Blues”: that feeling of unease and disappointment because it’s not the game we’ve grown so familiar with, not to mention the knowledge that we’re starting over from scratch. As someone who’s been playing basketball video games since I was a kid in the 90s, I’ve gone through this many times. It’s even worse now that the games are designed to be so grindy in aid of pushing recurrent revenue mechanics, and it’s been a major factor in turning me off new games since NBA 2K20. Gripes with the gameplay don’t help, but neither does being hooked on older titles like NBA 2K14.

Indeed, since getting hooked on NBA 2K14 MyCAREER and entertaining the idea of playing it through to today, I’ve had to make an effort to reach a point where I feel I can take a break whenever a new game is about to be released. As much as I’m still having a blast with NBA 2K14 PS4 over ten years after its release, I do want to give new games a fair chance. This means setting aside ample time to play them, and as such, putting NBA 2K14 – and some of the other favourites in my rotation – on the shelf. That’s much easier said than done! It’s impossible to truly enjoy a new game when I’m left wishing that I was still playing one of those beloved favourites instead.

Of course, that also speaks to my disappointment with recent NBA 2K titles. If they’d managed to delight me and capture my attention, I wouldn’t be yearning to play old ones nearly as much, even with my affinity for retro gaming. As I said though, I’ve gone through this a number of times in all my years as a devotee of basketball video games. It’s not just something that’s happened recently with a generation of NBA 2K titles that I’m unimpressed with; the New Game Blues can happen even when a great game is being superseded by an equal or indeed better release! It comes down to not being ready to bench a game, and the feeling that you’ve still got unfinished business.

Once again, you obviously don’t have to stop playing a game if you really don’t want to. If you can make time to keep a game in your rotation and alternate with a new one, then by all means do so. However, there is a sense of obligation to move on and play the latest release. From fixes and new features to an updated setting and rosters for the upcoming season, there’s incentive to at least take an interest in a new game. With live service content becoming such a big part of basketball gaming nowadays, moving on is essential to keep playing modes that deliver fresh rewards and experiences. The loss of content to server shutdowns adds another ticking clock to each game’s life cycle.

There’s also pressure to move on if you’re a content creator. Continuing to play last year’s game, or focusing on retro titles, can be risky. It tends to be more of a niche audience, and if you’re vying to make content creation your career, then you’re at the mercy of trends and algorithms that favour the latest release. This can be incredibly disheartening if you don’t enjoy playing and creating content for the newest game as much as you did the previous year’s offering! Even if you’re not a content creator, if you have any interest in the online scene, you and your squad – if you have one – will be forced to migrate to the latest game if you want to keep finding opponents to play.

This of course means starting over from scratch, building up your player to the level where they’re as powerful and fun to play with as before. That’s another key part of the New Game Blues, and why starting anew in career modes often results in a poor first impression of a new game. We’ve grown accustomed to dominating, or even just pulling off the basics with ease, with an upgraded player. Throttling us back to basic animations and low ratings makes for an unfavourable comparison to the game we’ve just been playing. It’s why a returning gamer bonus could really benefit NBA 2K. It might be a slight hit to recurrent revenue, but it’ll make for a better first impression.

Here’s the catch, however. Even if you eliminate the grind and the greed, we still lose the progress that we’ve made. To that point, even if there had been a way to get a head start in a new game by importing my levelled-up MyPLAYER, or keeping a few cards from a previous game’s MyTEAM mode, the journey begins anew. Sure, a clean slate is exciting and enticing in its own way, but familiar ground will be tread. Even if I could somehow bring my NBA 2K14 MyPLAYER into a new game, or import him into NBA 2K15, I wouldn’t have all of his virtual history. NBA 2K14 is a beloved game for me largely because I now have six seasons of memories in its MyCAREER.

While not everyone is as much of a creature of habit as I am, never underestimate the appeal of familiarity. Indeed, there have been studies about how watching the same TV shows over and over is comforting, and even beneficial if you suffer from anxiety and/or depression. I expect it’s why many people have a similar approach to gaming. It’s not just about mental health, either. Fresh experiences and a new learning curve can be stimulating challenges, but sometimes you just want to unwind with a beloved game you know you’ll enjoy. It’s not fashionable to say that in the age of competitive online play and True Gamers, but there’s more to video games than being the best!

Avoiding the pain of benching a beloved basketball game has an obvious and rather straightforward solution: just don’t! That’s admittedly easy for me to say. I’ve always been able to enjoy older games ever since I got into the hobby, as not always having the latest console or the most powerful PC growing up meant that I grew accustomed to sticking to what I could actually play. There is pressure to move on to a new game even if you are still having fun with its predecessor, from live service content to the inevitable migration of most of the userbase every year. As popular as nostalgia may be, there’s definitely backlash against it; a constant demand to “get with the times”.

On top of my predisposition to be a retro gamer, I’ve developed relative immunity to that pressure as I’ve aged into the upper end of the key demographic, and now find myself on the outside looking in. I play what I want, and create the content that I’m interested in and can feel proud of. A younger content creator, or anyone who seeks clout for that matter, is more beholden to trends, algorithms, and always championing the latest release. It’s why there were community and “insider” accounts on X posting claims that NBA 2K25 was set to be the best NBA 2K ever, before we’d even heard a single thing about the game! It’s total clickbait, but it certainly does get engagement.

Still, the lure of a new game is intriguing for most of us, or has been in years gone by, so at some point we’ve all reluctantly benched a beloved game. The great thing about older titles – the ones that I’m drawn to these days – is that you can not only bring them off the bench, but essentially out of retirement! They’re more intact and built to last, compared to the more disposable games of recent generations. Publishers were always trying to sell the latest game to us, but the planned obsolescence of online modes and eventual server shutdowns is antithetical to replay value. Even if you do enjoy the gameplay, it’s not as fun if half the modes you like are now inaccessible.

It’ll be interesting to see if that becomes an issue for younger gamers who have grown up with the “games as a service” model being commonplace. They might not develop the same nostalgia as my generation when it comes to video games; it’ll probably be a few more years before we see either way. At the same time, with how painful it can be to go back to square one every year, I’d suggest that the New Game Blues affects everyone to some extent. Even if we’re interested in the new game and it lives up to our expectations, and even if we’re satisfied with the memories we’ve created with last year’s release, there’ll always be some wistful pain when benching a beloved game.

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