NBA 2K11 Developer Insights: Making a Smarter Game

Before we get into that, I wanted to reveal a new option that we’ve added for this year’s game that I am sure will excite you throughly. We have a huge team here and we all have a different perspective for how a basketball sim should be played/tuned, much like our ever-growing consumer base. One way we attempted to satisfy all parties was to introduce a new option called Game Style. Changing this option will significantly change the way you experience NBA 2K11. So when you get your hands on the game this October, play around with the different settings, as well as the difficulty level setting, to see what best fits your style of game and experience level. Here’s a quick rundown of what we were shooting for with the different settings:

With smarter player rotation and help defense, you will no longer feel like ‘babysitting’ your CPU teammates on defense to get them in the correct position on the court

Defensive Rotations are new in NBA 2K10. Last year, our Help Defense system relied on assessing the best defender to help based on distance from ball and closeness to basket. However, it failed to truly represent the fact that rotations in basketball are part of an underlying strategy by the coaches to cater to their defensive strengths. In NBA 2K10, we spent a ton of time trying to balance these rotations correctly based on defensive awareness and ball position.

The rotation of the defense usually creates an opening that the offense will have. Think of it as pulling a short blanket to cover your body. As you pull it one way, another extremity will be exposed. The game is to expose the least important extremity, and hope that the offense doesn’t realize where that extremity is.

The new fun element on defense now is a security that help comes in a timely fashion, but if the offensive player recognizes where the rotation leaves the open man, you will need to recover as quickly to him as possible, and that isn’t always feasible.

Rotations also factor in the double team logic, now. What that means to the user is that the rest of the team will rotate to cover in case of a double team. Again, all of this because playing team defense is a preset strategy and not just an awareness check.
In doing all this, we created a new dynamic in playing team offense and defense and added a dimension to our game that was previously lacking.

In previous versions of the game, fans complained that the defenders were too casual on the floor, almost looking like they are not paying attention to what’s going on around them. In 2K10, players will now appear more intense off the ball, especially when their match-up is only one pass away from the ball handler. You will see players position themselves to defend a pass, stick their arms out in the passing lane, reach out and feel their man when looking at the ball, and many other little nuances that makes defender more active and gives the game that realistic feel.