MLB 2K12: Games Should Be More Than Their Covers
In the game of baseball and in any other competitive sports for that matter, we see tireless and ambitious athletes keep on coming back. They still have the spirit to keep on going if they have been losing or are about to lose. In some cases, though, it is much harder to keep your hopes up.
This is the problem with MLB 2K12. Although the game has an awesome-looking cover, the franchise has not shown the pure determination that athletes such as Justin Verlander has shown. In the video game industry, pure ambition is apparently not enough. In 2006, 2K Sports hired Ben Brinkman. Brinkman came from Electronic Arts’ MVP Baseball series. In a way, he was MLB 2K7’s executive producer and savior. 2K7 has made a lot of improvement in terms of game visuals but MLB 2K8 was plagued with all sorts of bugs and gameplay glitches. MLB 2K9 did not improve things. Rather, it even dragged the franchise down further. Brinkman was fired as producer and MLB 2K9 continued to become a sinking ship. At this point, the developers were already thinking of the franchise as a liability. Strauss Zelnick, who serves as chairman of Take-Two Interactive, 2K Sports’ parent company considers the franchise a “losing proposition and we don’t have any interest in pursuing losing propositions.”
The Major League Baseball 2K12 Cover (Credit: 2K Sports)
He added that they would only renew the license if there is a financial turnaround in terms of MLB. Analysts believe that the company is losing $40 million dollars a year because of the franchise. It sure sounds like a losing proposition. MLB 2K12 may well be the last baseball game 2K Sports develops, at least in the near future. So, there may not even be improvements to come soon. But without these improvements, MLB is a lost cause and 2K Sports has not given enough of a good fight to make it win.
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