The NBA 2K Give You the Most True-to-Life NBA Experience

NBA 2K16 gameplay director Mike Wang told IGN "it's not as much about changing Curry himself, as it is changing the way to suceed while using him as a player." Curry's avatar is already a "very potent scorer" in the game—especially "in the hands of a skilled player." However, Curry abides by the same rules as every other player in the game. And those rules, Wang said, "keep the game balanced and fair." The makers of “NBA 2K16,” the popular basketball simulation game, felt they needed to deepen their tale of a player’s ascent to superstardom. That could not have been an easy task.

Guide your MyPLAYER through the complete NBA journey, take control of an entire NBA franchise, or hone your skills online competing against gamers from around the world. With animations that provide smoother movement and more realistic articulation, it's certain to be the most authentic NBA gaming experience yet. Just when we thought that Stephen Curry could not amaze us anymore, he proved us all wrong. As expected, the Golden State Warriors were in an absolute dog fight with the Oklahoma City Thunder, with the game going to overtime.

Well, with the clock running out it looked like we were headed for a second overtime, but Mr. Curry had some other thoughts. It’s one week until the soft launch of NBA 2K16, and Mike Stauffer is feverishly typing values into a lengthy spreadsheet, his shoulders hunched and his face obscured by dual monitors. The 25-year-old leads a modest team at 2K’s headquarters in Novato, Calif., working tirelessly to make the world’s most popular basketball video game as authentic as it is addictive. It’s 2K’s development team that creates the universe within which the greatest basketball players in the world are digitally confined, but it is Stauffer who creates the boundaries that keep those 1,500 players in check.

In video games, real life sports franchises and their accompanying superstars are sacred to the point of being banal because game publishers walk a fine line between trying to please the leagues for whose license they’ve paid millions and the demanding game fans who always want more features. NBA 2K16 is a basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K Sports. It is the 17th installment in the NBA 2K franchise and the successor to NBA 2K15. It was released on September 29, 2015 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 3. A mobile version for Android and iOS was also released on October 14, 2015.

There are three different covers for the main game, one featuring Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans, another featuring Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, and the last featuring James Harden of the Houston Rockets. While the “NBA 2K” series, now 16 years old, generally garners good reviews, it hasn’t received great reviews since 2013. So, a big name was sought to improve the story. But who could they trust to tell this expansive tale, spanning the years from high school through a player’s first NBA season?

I love this goofy part of an otherwise serious game, and that’s why it hurts me to tell you that 2K and Spike Lee have come together to ruin its newest version. This year’s version of MyCareer marks a major step away from the loose narratives and scattered cutscenes of games past. Lee wrote, produced, and directed Livin’ Da Dream, the framing device for the first half-dozen hours of NBA 2K16’s career mode, like it was a feature film; you’re invited to rewatch it in full on your player’s private practice court after you’re led through the conclusion by enough gameplay.