We Need More 'Hub' Areas in Our Sports Games

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When people talk about sports games and how they’re better or worse than in the past, I don’t think enough attention is given to the idea of a “hub” and what it could or should mean in our sports games today.

If you’re not aware of what a “hub” area is in a video game, it’s the spot you always can come back to during your time with a game. A hub world can be any number of things depending on the genre, but in essence, it’s home. You can think of Princess Peach’s castle in Mario 64, the Normandy in Mass Effect, or even The City in NBA 2K. They are areas that you can come back to before going someplace new.

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Hub Areas Of The Past

Whether you watch that video above from Design Doc or not, the point of it is to explain what makes a good hub world and how that changes depending on what sort of game is being made. However, sports games are not used as an example in that video. Instead, other genres are used in order to describe what makes a good hub world.

• In RPGs, it’s mostly there to make you care about other characters more.

• In platformers, it’s more there to introduce mechanics to you in a safe environment where failing is okay.

• In a roguelite like Hades, it acts as both as a story and upgrade area between runs.

In a lot of genres, it’s there to tie the world together. If you’ve ever played Mario 64, you know how Peach’s Castle doesn’t just introduce gameplay mechanics, it helps you realize there are secrets in this world. It helps to tie all the various worlds together. Without Peach’s Castle, Mario 64 is a bunch of one-off locations like every other Mario platformer before it.

In sports games, we’ve had hub areas as well. We had a dorm room in NCAA Football 06 (among other versions). Road to Glory is somewhat infamous for the “girlfriend” feature within the dorm room, but if there is one thing you can say about that aspect, everyone does remember it.

We’ve had the GM or head coach office in various games. We’ve had a full-on house we could design in something like NBA Ballers. We’ve had the aforementioned City in NBA 2K, and we’ve had something called The Crib in NFL 2K.

Much like most parts of NFL 2K5, The Crib is held up as this wonderful feature from the past — and it is cool — but it’s worth remembering it was its own offshoot mode. In other modes you earned currency, trophies, and accolades, and then you spent that currency or put your trophies into an ever-evolving crib. It was not tied to any specific mode, so you could miss it entirely. It’s also absolutely a mode frozen in time as it reminds us that things like MTV Cribs and Pimp My Ride were part of our cultural fabric in ‘04, which is how luminaries like Jamie Kennedy, Carmen Electra, and Steve-O are all there to challenge you to games that unlock items like stadiums, teams, and new celebrations (if you beat them).

The Crib showed up in other forms in other 2K games. For example, it was called The Skybox in NHL 2K5, but that version was not quite as full featured as the one in NFL 2K. Regardless, the trend of having these hubs did not continue even in 2K games. When The Crib died with NFL 2K5, 2K didn’t keep up with the feature and continue to add and add. We eventually did get The City in recent years, but even that is not really what I would consider a “good” hub area.

There is a reason The City continues to get smaller year to year, and I don’t believe it has much to do with costs. The simple fact is a large space with limited interactivity is not very interesting. The majesty of The City wears off once you realize it’s mostly nothingness.

I would even argue something like MyCourt — a feature 2K has messed with and screwed up at times over the years — is a better hub area than The City in many regards. The City is more like a money pit than a place that makes you care more about your MyPlayer. You can get to various gameplay experiences, interact with others, but ultimately 2K puts you in The City to buy things. It’s one of the various parts of 2K that can more or less turn into a microtransaction prison if you allow it to do so.

All that being said, The City is still a hell of a lot better than what we get in something like Madden’s Superstar mode.

When I see something like my “crib” in Madden 24’s mode (yes, I know that’s last year’s game), I almost feel like it’s a meta commentary on the dystopian nature of the desire for more. You get these nicer places and work hard for them, and yet you just sit in one room on your phone (or play Madden) and ignore the wonder of the world out there. What was the point of all that hard work? Why do you keep buying nicer homes when you’re just going to sit in one room and play on your phone? Now, maybe that’s a mix of the boomer and movie nerd in me fusing together to come up with that take, but it allows me to give that hub area more credit than it deserves otherwise.

And this “style” of hub area is nothing new for EA’s Madden game. There have been similar setups within franchise mode where there is a coach’s office and that’s that. Point being, these hubs are not good. They don’t add much to our experiences or tie us to the world in a meaningful way. I would argue they more or less act as a backdrop to an inefficient menu system. They are a screensaver and not much more than that.

Sports games should do more with these hub areas and should care more about them. Modern day sports games have an issue with bloat. We have tons of modes and features, but developers now struggle to tie those experiences together or make people care about all the modes within a game (assuming every mode is even worth playing, which is obviously not true in most sports games but that’s a separate issue).

What Makes For A Good Hub Area?

Returning to the earlier NFL 2K example, the question I would ask is what did The Crib do well? It was cool enough to be able to play Steve-O and unlock a new secret team or celebration, but unlockables are not a mainstay of games anymore after microtransactions. I’m not saying unlockables don’t still exist or matter, but they’re not a fundamental part of game design in the same way anymore.

The Crib also had in-game “achievements” that were basically checklists you would try to complete. We have achievement systems both within our games and then on the consoles/Steam themselves, so this is not what I think matters a ton overall in a good hub area (but, again, they do have their place).

No, instead what I would focus on first is the “progression” side of things. The Crib held your trophies from other modes. If you won Super Bowls or other awards in franchise mode, they existed in your crib. It’s a presentation element as well, so it’s comparable to something like Instant Classics from NCAA Football 14.

But whether it’s trophies, Instant Classics, or other items along those lines, these are your history. When we progress in video games, we’re building a history of accomplishments and failures. In sports games, history matters a lot. No other video game genre cares about the “record books” like us sports gamers.

In a good hub area, our history would be on display in a variety of ways. This is why people are wistful about something like Instant Classics. It was undeniably cool to be able to create an “instant classic” and then still have video and picture evidence from that magical game months later. This builds a connection with our teams within franchise mode/dynasty mode and elsewhere, and it makes us want to create new memories that have a place on that wall of instant classics.

We also talk about presentation a lot on OS in the forums and elsewhere, and something like Instant Classics also undeniably plays into the presentation side of things. Our franchise modes feel lifeless across the board, and in part I think that ties back into the lack of a worthwhile hub area. We have phones, press conferences, and conversations in these franchise modes, but it all feels very disconnected.

It wouldn’t necessarily be easy, but tying together the various jobs of a GM in franchise mode within a worthwhile hub area could do a lot. The offseason Hard Knocks for the Giants was enlightening in that way for me.

If you didn’t watch the series, it’s not that GM Joe Schoen only exists in his office, but most of the biggest moments from the show take place there and are quite captivating.

• He makes the decision not to re-sign Saquon in there

• His NFL Draft big board is in there

• Many meetings with ownership and draft prospects take place in there

• His free agency big board exists in there

• He takes in a lot of breaking news in there

It’s easy enough to make the argument that most of the jobs we do or care about in our franchise modes take place within Schoen’s office. Now, it’s obvious that just putting all our GM duties in a “hub” wouldn’t make the mode better by default. A lot of these jobs we do in franchise modes are boring or uninteresting right now because the mechanics of them aren’t that great. But the point remains that presentation is severely lacking in the front-end menus of these modes, and reassessing how we do our jobs in these franchise modes has to be part of the solution.

Yes, we all want weekly recap shows and the like, but these worlds also feel empty a lot of the time. One of the biggest complaints about Madden’s franchise mode is you feel like you’re in a silo by yourself not in a 32-team living league. a scrolling social media feed and your phone aren’t doing enough to make presentation work well either.

Instead, maybe we should be turning on a TV in our office and seeing the acclaimed weekly recap show that way (if it ever does return to our sports games). Perhaps we should be having a meeting with scouts about our NFL Draft big board in our office. We could chat and then actually move some names around a board in the office itself. Perhaps we should be able to get on the phone with other GMs and talk about potential trades. Perhaps we should be able to put the faces of the players we sign in free agency on a board in our office before looking at the remaining list of targets.

All of these things are ultimately our achievements as well, which ties back into history through progression. It won’t be enough to simply spice up the presentation to fix what ails most franchise modes, but a worthwhile “hub” can be part of the solution. Progression and presentation are the two mainstays that I think would make any hub area in a sports game matter.

I want to end this by talking about the idea of “realism” in these “hub” areas. Any issue I have with battling Carmen Electra in NFL 2K25 in order to unlock a new NFL stadium has zero to do with realism concerns. As much as we care about realism on OS, not everything has to be about realism. Building up the flashiness of your crib was fun — that element doesn’t need to be realistic. Playing Carmen Electra for an unlockable is insane if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, but it was worthwhile to be able to unlock all those new celebrations.

When it comes down to it, The Crib was cool because of what it represented in totality. There were both realistic and totally unrealistic elements within the mode, but it represented our history and accomplishments. We walked around rooms full of memories that sometimes represented hundreds of hours of video game work. Those rooms were full of in-game accomplishments like trophies, and then even bobbleheads, posters, and even a nice couch we bought with currency earned through our gameplay.

All these things, both realistic and unrealistic, are what made The Crib a good hub area in a sports game, and it’s time developers realize once again how powerful a good hub area could be in a modern sports game.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase