As a lifelong Houston sports fan, franchise modes have been my bread and butter. Conjectures and what-could-have-beens can finally be realized in a digital testing environment. My beloved Texans can play the 2017 season again as if we had never signed Brock Osweiler. My beloved Astros can play the next 15 seasons with Kris Bryant drafted instead of Mark Appel. What if I was to separate players based on their home state, city, or country, and battled it out that way? Franchise modes are a uniquely bizarre sandbox where teams can correct mistakes, rewrite history and even time travel.
The thrills of taking a bottom-dwelling franchise and slowly but surely rebuilding it your way is an experience that only video games can provide. Elevating your favorite team to a perennial powerhouse through shrewd trades, signings and immersive clutch performance is unlike any other experience in gaming. Sports games yield the only universes wherein you, the fan, can implement your ideas and explore for seasons on end. It is one of the reasons that, year in and year out, MLB The Show takes up far more of my time than it should.
Read More - Why We Need Stronger Franchise Modes