Since its inception in 1999, the NBA 2K gaming franchise has grown to be one of the highest selling sports games in the world. With millions of copies being bought every year with the annual release, NBA 2K has evolved from the simple competitive play of battling it out on the hardwood against your friends, to being able to play online against someone on the other side of the world in real life time. One of the most distinct feature which has risen to prominence in the 2K gaming franchise, would be the addition of the career mode, which gives the player of the video game the ability to create their own avatar and follow the path to become an NBA legend. With this distinct feature, comes a unique situation that can be examined when looking at a type of play that allows a player to make an avatar that looks like how the player conceives them selves, acts and\/or plays like how they may play the real-life version of basketball, and enter into a computer generated game which follows along a fictionalized storyline inside the constructs of the NBA lifestyle and basketball gaming aspects such as practicing and playing in a NBA game against the digitalized versions of real-life NBA stars. What I look to examine, would be this type of play I\u2019ve described and how the player of this type of play interacts with their avatar, making them better in certain basketball attributes and\/or customizing them to how they would see them selves if they were in the role of an NBA star and how these two types of style of play differentiate from one another in a rhetorical standpoint.<\/p>\n

When first starting the game, the user is asked to design an avatar of there own and customize the looks of their basketball player within the realm of options of height, weight, skin tone and physique. The player may also go through the steps of changing how the face looks by sculpting different aspects of facial features such as the cheek, nose, ears, eyes, and mold them how the user sees fit to them. Then, the user is able to choose from different styles of hair and facial hair along with different colors for the hair choices. The user is able to then pick and choose different accessories and clothing items for their avatar to wear during gameplay on the court and within the realm of the story mode. Though the basis of the customization is required when beginning the game and the story mode, many players can be found within the realm of the online story mode that have gone beyond the basics of the clothing and accessories you begin with and bought, using the NBA 2K currency, clothing and accessories that further customize the look of the avatar. When examine this aspect of the game, it becomes evident that though not all users customize a close to life like representation of them selves with their avatar, many decisions regarding customization are made on the personal connection between user and avatar that result on the user gaining a positive feeling from the ability to make a character that represents ones self.<\/p>\n

In the same aspect of spending virtual cash to purchase the aesthetics of the users personalized avatar, the players of the game may use the same currency to boost the actual basketball playing aspects of the character. When looking at this side of the myCareer mode of the game, the player is first started off with several options that lay the ground work to the particular playing style of your avatar and how they will exceed in the actual gaming aspect of the game; whether that be either following the story mode or playing online with fellow users of the game in a street ball style of play, the user can explore different options of playing styles at the traditional basketball positions and\/or cross the boundaries of the various hybrids of positions that can be seen in todays NBA players. When progressing through the various game modes, the user will accumulate the currency that 2K gives to its users and can use it for a variety of measures. With regards to the use of this currency to the ability to better the users avatar in the basketball skills aspect, the user may pick and choose what skills they feel are needed to be improved on to raise their character to the status of all-time great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since its inception in 1999, the NBA 2K gaming franchise has grown to be one of the highest selling sports games in the world. With millions of copies being bought every year with the annual release, NBA 2K has evolved from the simple competitive play of battling it out on the hardwood against your friends, … Continue reading “Final Draft – NBA 2K”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":427,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions\/427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org\/WeeklyWriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}