As the president of the “watch the games” club, I’m always eager to see how the biggest sports leagues will try to get more people to watch the games rather than just highlights or 15-second clips on social media. With that in mind, I have to say that the NBA 2K25 DataCast during the NBA Cup Knockout games failed because it was not for anyone.
I really am a big believer in the idea of “do you even watch the games, bro?” Whether it’s people who want to spit out 35 advanced stats or those who just want to go off highlights, I do think both can miss the mark if they’re not also taking in entire games. With the possible exception of baseball, there is a certain flow and amount of action taking place away from the ball that simply needs to be appreciated by using both stats and your own eyes to really get a complete picture.
With that said, the NBA 2K25 DataCast was not for fans of NBA 2K, fans of NBA basketball, young fans, or new fans. My take after watching it was that it wasn’t for anyone because it didn’t go far enough in any one direction. It was one part ManningCast, one part video game, one part normal broadcast, one part Prime Vision, and one part nerd broadcast. It was a jack of all trades, master of none broadcasts. Now, sometimes that can be a good thing in life, but if you’re trying to create an “alternate” broadcast, I think it’s about the worst thing you can be.
If you point to any of the alternate broadcasts that work, they all have a hook. From the ManningCast being driven by the personalities of the Mannings and the weird guests to Prime Vision‘s fresh camera angles and predictive stats, they all have something that makes them stand out. I guess the NBA 2K25 DataCast‘s hook was that there were some UI elements that look like the ones in NBA 2K? It couldn’t be the four people chatting over the game, or the box score stats being on the screen, or the picture-in-picture elements because those are done better elsewhere.
But if I’m to assume this was to draw in fans of NBA 2K, then it wasn’t nearly close enough to mimicking the video game. Here is the stock image TNT and the NBA used in the press release:
A lot of this image was ultimately a bait and switch because badges weren’t really a part of the broadcasts, nor did the UI look this clean. But even if this is how it ended up looking, it’s not like NBA 2K. For one thing, you can’t shoot and have player icons up at the same time in NBA 2K. But even if you don’t want to go that level of “nerd” with the video game knowledge, this isn’t being shown from the 2K Cam. And as much as I loathe the 2K Cam and prefer the broadcast camera, 2K Cam is how many people play the game. Plus, it’s the signature camera that NBA 2K introduced to video games.
Instead, this is the sort of look we had to put up with for much of the broadcasts. Just look at this mess of a screen:
That image is a nice little potpourri of everything that a lot of people probably dislike about broadcasts right now. Bloated panels filling airtime, distracting ads taking up too much of the screen, and barely a focus on the game itself. By the way, the NBA Cup is supposed to matter. You get a cup, and money, and a banner to hang. It’s allegedly a big deal!
For as much grief as I give to NFL pregame and halftime shows, they have figured out the alternate broadcast. The best in the business is Prime Vision. It maintains the TV broadcast commentators from the “normal” broadcast while giving you tons of stats, fresh camera angles, and predictive outcomes that leave me genuinely impressed. In a sense, it takes what is cool about Madden and makes it better for the broadcast. It builds upon a video game rather than just mimicking it — and it’s way better than Madden and the normal TV broadcast for it.
Prime Vision is so good that I wonder why the “normal” broadcast doesn’t at least give us the Prime camera views that try to show more of the field. Prime Vision has proven to be such a good alternate broadcast that a “true” NFL fan should want it for every broadcast.
But not every “alternate” broadcast needs to meet the standards of being so good certain fans should want it to replace all other broadcasts. On the wacky end of things, we just had The Simpsons broadcast for an NFL game. I’m still not sure if it was the greatest thing or worst thing of all-time, but it did allow Mina Kimes to drop an all-time reference that made everything worth it to me.
Something like The Simpsons Funday broadcast is like the other Nickelodeon-adjacent broadcasts where it’s either targeting kids or non-fans who you hope will at least check in on an NFL game. The broadcasters are in on the joke, and that funnels down to the game itself having friggin’ Simpsons characters on the screen. It’s acting as a skeleton key that hopefully unlocks a person’s fandom and curiosity.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a broadcast that is putting passing icons above players…
I genuinely want to know what the hell passing icons have to do with a TV broadcast? What are they adding, and why do you feel the need to put PlayStation controller icons on a screen when there is no controller in use? This sort of stuff is just nonsense. It’s noise. It’s not going to make 2K players say “this is just like my video game, this is so cool!” Instead, it’s just a weird half-measure.
(By the way, why is there a fatigue bar under a player? Was it just being gauged off how many minutes a player was up to or did it have no basis behind it at all? It all just feels so rushed.)
Even with something like the “Glow Puck” from ’90s NHL broadcasts, while that idea was ultimately maligned, it was at least trying to solve a problem of the non-HD era. A small black puck was hard to see, so let’s put a glow around it and also have some fun showcasing the speed of a shot.
The NBA 2K25 DataCast didn’t solve any problems, and it didn’t create any unique moments. In fact, the “green” release graphic they used arguably looked worse than the ’90s Glow Puck did, which isn’t ideal.
To be clear, I do think there is a good idea in here. During the broadcast, they would use cuts to a virtual timeout huddle that was taking clips from NBA 2K. They did have a “fire” icon show up next to players on hot streaks. The predictive outcomes for shot attempts and the closest defender are originally from the NBA Advanced Stats database, but they are also something that exist now in NBA 2K. These are all additive elements in some way that are taken from the video game.
But if you want to be a video game, then be a video game. I don’t want the NBA 2K graphics themselves as part of the broadcast, but use the 2K Cam for the majority of the game. Use more unique replay angles that mimic those we see in 2K. If you want to use the badges, then actually use the badges. It’s also probably a good idea to not have half the screen taken up by things that are not the game itself because that’s not in video games either.
The irony of all of this is that many sports video games have tried for many years to be more like TV broadcasts, and now we have things like Prime Vision striving to be more like the video games. But if these leagues want to go down that road, then you either have to go to the extremes of a Simpsons-style broadcast or nail the feel like Prime Vision does. Getting caught in limbo is the last place you want to end up, and that’s exactly where the NBA 2K25 DataCast ended up.
Published: Dec 16, 2024 06:11 pm