On Tuesday evening, in the splendid setting of Via Dante in Milan, the launch event dedicated to NBA 2K18 was staged. The guests of the rapper Emis Killa, Milan’s defender Alessio Romagnoli, and above all, Rob Jones, title producer, with whom we had the opportunity to exchange a few chats and let us know some interesting details. Waiting for the arrival of the review, which you’ll find on these pages next Monday, after an intense racing weekend on the parquet floor, here are our questions to Rob Jones.
SpazioGames : Hi Rob! During the event, as in the last few days on the web, we have come to discover the Quarterly Life mode, the new way of understanding the “campaign” in 2K single player. How big is it and how does it affect game experience?
Rob Jones : Hi! Quarterly Life is the great news this year, an all-new way of understanding the experience. First of all, we are not talking about single player in its more classic sense, because the player can find themselves in a persistent online world inhabited by other people’s cutters.
Everyone can decide to do what he wants and experience in his own way: in recent chapters to advance in the plot he was obliged to play NBA games now, no longer, if he wants to spend all the time on the periphery camps or wandering around the neighborhood doing other activities is free to do so. The same applies to the “social” aspect, you can interact with others or stay on your own.
SG : As for the Switch version, what should we expect? Cuts were needed or even Nintendo users will have the full experience?
RJ : Look, the goal we’ve got right from now is to make the Switch version the same as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, since it never came out a sports title that was the same on fixed and portable consoles. We had to compromise on a technical level only, while for some online features we were limited by Nintendo’s infrastructure, but I can assure you that all modes are also present on Switches, from the Quarter to My GM, to My Team and all the rest: Local Play is also present.
SG : Surely a good news! A question that more than this year we have to ask you is about the WNBA, the American women’s basketball league – do you plan to enter it, maybe through DLC or next year?
A : This is a question that I make each year, but choosing to introduce such a method entails a tremendous effort: at present we have about 300 people working on the series, and it is difficult to find other time and resources to invest in recreating all necessary assets, faces, technical features and dozens of other elements for another full alloy. In addition, you should also consider the actual interest around the topic: how many users really want to play with WNBA teams?
This year we are lucky to have an example (NBA Live 18 of EA has introduced the female league in this edition, NdR), we will see what will be the feedback and we will make our own idea, but at the moment there is nothing at work.
SG : One last question, though it’s a curiosity more than anything else: we know that many NBA players love 2K, can you tell us who’s the strongest?
A : Well, I know Paul George is very good like Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, although having a season full of games, training and events, players do not have so much time to dedicate themselves to video games. I know, however, when there are Team USA rallies in Las Vegas, the team rent a movie theater and make tournaments playing on the big screen, they also told me they are betting very hard! (laughs)
