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The W is sports video gaming first single-player career style for a women’s club game. It’s not a tokenized experience, nor a reskin of things NBA 2K21 does for the 2K21 MT men’s match. Nonetheless, it’s a glaringly few-to-no-frills encounter, and the lack of investment I have in my player’s development defeats the goal of a single-player livelihood. Therefore, I can’t really warm up to the mode or recommend others devote much time attempting it. Other than choosing one of 10 participant archetypes — whose attribute minimums and maximums are all locked — the only effect I have on my player’s development is simply playing well (or not) in a league match. Whatever XP (“MyPoints” in this instance ) comes out of this, the game applies mechanically in a very opaque process.

Developing my participant’s off-the-court persona is a similarly stiff and lifeless progression. Developer diaries prior to NBA 2K21’s launch implied that The W players would take on roles that real-life WNBA stars pursue, whether promoting the league itself, carrying on side gigs in fashion or media style, or preparing for a career as a coach. Well, all of this is managed in a process whose only player interaction is choosing one of 3 options off a card between matches. Again, development is repaired, and it delivers is unlockable cosmetics items on a fixed schedule. All this means is that you become a really limited core gameplay loop very quickly, and one that is extremely reminiscent of livelihood modes I watched about the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It’s tough to predict The W a excellent first shot career-mode parity when so much of its enjoyability comes out of, well, just playing with the games themselves. At least that action is distinguishable from the remainder of NBA 2K21 while still being enjoyable — but it had been when I had been messing about with the WNBA in MyLeague last year, too.

Likewise, it’s tough to criticize Visual Concepts’ design here like tossing female avatars into the much bigger world of MyCareer would be the easiest or easiest solution. The WNBA deserves to have its own career ecosystem; it is a more supportive statement to provide the WNBA its own mode, instead of just dump them into NBA 2K21’s aggressively competitive multiplayer globe and let them fend for themselves or, worse, patronize them with inflated attribute evaluations.

And, as a practical matter, most NBA 2K players do not wish to keep more than one player avatar in a mode that is already very heavily influenced by microtransactions. 2K Sports would be pilloried if it offered up WNBA players as just another vector for real-money earnings of Virtual Currency. To Visual Concepts’ charge, a WNBA player does make Virtual Currency which goes toward the Buy NBA 2K21 MT Coins user general equilibrium. It provides at least a little reward for trying the manner. Nonetheless, it’s a spectacular irony that the WNBA player herself doesn’t get to”invest” what she makes — whether on her own development, or clothing, or whatever.