The latest trailer for 2K Games’ latest entry in their NBA 2K basketball series dropped as of a few days ago and has united series’ fans and non-sports gamers alike in a wave of collective disgust and condemnation.
The trailer, which you can watch above, showcases quite a lot of the new mechanics 2K is introducing to the franchise’s MyTEAM mode, none of which seem to have the faintest connection to the actual sport of basketball around which the series is allegedly centred.
Viewers are presented with a plethora of flashy slot machines, a ball-dropping mini-game based on the infamously addictive Japanese pachinko game and vibrant text emboldening words like “WIN!” and “TOKEN MANIA!”.
If the trailer wasn’t already reminiscent enough of dodgy YouTube gambling advertisements, eagle eyed viewers quickly spotted that in much of the blatantly staged webcam footage 2K uses throughout the trailer, which shows NBA community personalities supposedly rejoicing at their latest wins, the production team couldn’t even be bothered to turn the players’ controllers on!
Most egregious of all is the fact that despite NBA 2K20‘s apparent focus on gambling, the game received the “3+” age rating from PEGI in Europe and the “E – Everyone” age rating in the US. The low age rating combined with the game’s vibrant box art and the fact that sports games are generally enjoyed by a younger game demographic helps highlight what seems to be a thinly veiled predatory attempt by 2K Games to opportunistically exploit vulnerable children into haemorrhaging reams of money into their game.
This isn’t the first time 2K Games has been eager to fill their wallets at the expense of the consumer, with their recent decision to include unskippable advertisements for real life products before matches in their previous title 2K19 receiving a great deal of community backlash.
Unsurprisingly, it seems players don’t enjoy being force-fed ads in a game which they could’ve potentially spent upwards of £80 for a copy of.
The NBA series seems to be rapidly turning into a case study on how far a company can apologetically milk their player’s wallets dry of as much cash as humanly possible and, seeing how the game is still selling well in-spite of this, looks to be the tip of the hellish iceberg.
