When Did Owner Modes Lose Their Way?

The stories coming out of the tush push “debates” this week crystallized my desire to write about owner modes in sports games because it wasn’t that long ago when it seemed like “owner mode” would replace franchise mode as the go-to single-player mode. However, something happened along the way — I’m not quite sure what — and owner mode lost momentum.

This will hopefully be a shorter newsletter (at least by my long-winded standards) because part of the reason I even want to do this topic is to hear from y’all. I’m genuinely curious when you think owner modes lost their way (because I don’t think I can pinpoint it), and did you also think at one point they’d supplant franchise mode as the default mode you would play when buying a new sports game? The email to reach me is in the paragraph below, so please hit me up if you have thoughts and/or potential answers to those questions (or, as always, you can ping me with whatever other thoughts you got on anything else).

Reach out to me with “mailbag” questions whenever you want. I grew up reading Page 2 Bill Simmons during the rise of the internet, and so I give you the means to hit me up with comments, thoughts, musings, or questions. Whether you want to tell me when Owner Modes lost their way, explain why no one can ever top Bo Jackson in Super Tecmo Bowl, or talk about why Tin Cup is underrated as a sports movie, all are welcome. If I get enough responses, I’d love to feature them in future newsletters or in “mailbags” of our own.

Here is the e-mail: [email protected] (and bonus points if you also include your city, name (or alias), and some sort of subject to go along with your thoughts.

Reading the quotes and comments coming out of the tush push meetings was catnip for someone like me who loves getting the “tea” from these sorts of things. I think the money quote comes from Jeffrey Lurie, principal owner of the Philadelphia Eagles:

A truly weird analogy to make, and a good reminder that most sports owners (and probably most billionaires) are pretty weird people. Beyond being lucky, you probably also need to be a very specific sort of person to become a billionaire in the first place, and in terms of sports, that sort of person generally seems to be an easy source to mine for entertainment. So, in terms of narrative juice in our sports games, owners seem like a gold mine.

Now, I don’t think owner modes in our favorite sports games would be allowed to dive into the quirks of “real” sports owners to the extent I’d prefer, but it’s obvious that owners are another “device” we could be using to make sports games more interesting. This is a topic I’ve talked about before following the Woody Johnson mess back in December, but I think it’s time to dig a little deeper into the ways owners and owner modes.

Owners As Narrative Devices

I would contend the thing sports games are worst at is creating compelling narratives that are author-driven (see: trying to live up to a great sports movie or book). This makes sense because the responsibility to create great gameplay and have these deep systems off the field doesn’t leave much time for narratives and storytelling that aren’t driven by the gameplay. Plus, user-driven stories are very powerful. Recalling how you won Game 162 to get to the playoffs in year 4 of your MLB franchise mode is something you’re going to remember with more fondness than most stories that are created by developers and feed to you. That said, it doesn’t mean stories that aren’t wholly driven by your own gameplay don’t have a place.

I was at EA when Longshot was made for the Madden series, and as much as the first version got some positive press, it’s not something that’s likely to stand the test of time. I don’t think that’s the fault of the creators behind it, it’s just Madden is not likely to get the resources it needs to craft very specific gameplay mechanics that help drive a story like that. In addition, most of the people working at EA on the “standard” Madden game are not likely to be the best people for the job of creating a story-driven narrative like Longshot.

I think Fight Night Champion is an even better example of my point. Champion had way less restraints attached to it in terms of how it had to massage its narrative so as not to piss off the NFL while still being kid-friendly, and as much as I remember some of the cutscenes and the M-rating, it did not do much interesting stuff on the gameplay side of things. Ultimately, you got some cutscenes that gave you motivation for your fights, but you were still just playing Fight Night most of the time.

Regardless, I’m so happy things like this were made. You don’t get to a better place unless you try and even fail at doing these sorts of story modes. We’d likely be in a better place with this sort of narrative-driven story by now if developers were given more chances (and somewhat of a budget) to keep testing the waters back in the 2010s. (Then again, I don’t think the NBA 2K MyCareer mode stories really improved much over time, so maybe I’m wrong.)

The problem is that turning these sorts of stories around for yearly sports games when you’re mostly just siphoning funds from the “normal” game’s development budget means you’re being setup to fail if you attempt them. In the hypothetical universe where more of these story modes had been made by now, I also want to be clear there’s no shame if these story modes had just ended up as empty calories. As long as they’re entertaining, they would have had a purpose. Developers don’t need to be shooting for “Oscar worthy” story modes or anything like that. Instead, I hope they would have figured out a way to mesh more interesting gameplay with better writing and found their happy place.

Either way, returning from the land of hypotheticals, some of my favorite sports movies are driven by owners as plot devices — if not the thrust of the entire narrative — by being the primary antagonist.

Whether you can use real owners or not in these stories, the point is an owner is an obvious antagonist in a sports video game. It could be the source of friction outside of the teams you play against each week. I’ve long banged the drum that most franchise modes make you feel like you’re in some silo where you don’t really interact or create tension with the other teams around the league enough. I think I can extend that critique further by saying even within the silo you’re in another mini-silo because you don’t have to interact with much under your own roof either. Any tension or wall you hit is driven by your own decisions because there’s rarely another “force” that’s putting these obstacles in your path.

The other obvious point to not overlook here is these story modes I’ve referenced are glorified career modes. We get these narrative pieces to this day in stuff like Road to the Show or NBA 2K’s MyCareer mode, but unless I’m forgetting something, no one has ever really attempted something like a GM or manager vs. an owner in this sort of setting. Our “player” character has been involved in the story and dealt with the drama, but our GM role within a franchise mode has never really been challenged in that same way.

Maybe it has not been done because developers don’t even know where to start, but this idea could also be more in the background of the whole experience rather than the driving force behind everything we’re doing to manage a team. Jim Irsay lived hard and unfortunately died this week. He was an absolute character, and the entertainment he brought to the NFL was undeniable. I’m not expecting a story mode about that, but if you as the GM were having to deal with financial issues arising as a family fights over ownership of a team in the aftermath of an owner dying, there’s plenty of compelling things that could arise from that situation (owners do die in OOTP just to call it out).

At the end of the day, most of the entertainment we consume is built on “good vs. evil” in some way, and developers are eschewing half that equation by not leaning into owners as a plot device and gameplay mechanic.

Owners As Gameplay Mechanics

In 2025, I think it’s more true than ever that people are attuned to the business side of sports. We are aware of payrolls, what owners are saying at CBA meetings, TV contracts, stadium deals, and player contracts. We know more about this stuff because it’s interesting, and thus we care about it. We have strong feelings about owners, and many of us have takes we want to get off our chest about owners and how they’re running their teams.

From a gameplay perspective, the business side of games provides plenty of ammunition. It would be easy enough to mention Football Manager or OOTP as games that have tried to bring more into the fold, but I actually think some of the GM modes from Smackdown vs. Raw/WWE 2K and especially Wrestling Empire have done the most for selling people on the idea of the “management” side of things.

Wrestling Empire is a truly insane game that is inappropriate, silly, and also very fun and closer to real life than its graphical exterior might imply. No matter how many billions the wrestling business might be worth these days, it’s still an absurd form of entertainment. I love wrestling and have always loved wrestling, but tons of carny shit happens in wrestling because it’s a carny ass business. Full stop. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and Wrestling Empire gets that and does a great job of amplifying the absurdity of it all.

There is a vibe and feeling you need to tap into in order to bring out the true nature of the management side of each specific sport, and no game does it better than Wrestling Empire. But even if we just want to focus on the more “traditional” or boring elements of an owner mode, there’s so much fertile ground here. NBA 2K does do some of this with the rules committee, and every game tries to do something with budgets/salary cap/money to make our jobs as GMs tougher.

Still, we don’t really get into enough parts of what goes into owning/running a team. There is always a story about an owner wanting a new stadium (the Sixers and the Bears are probably the two best recent examples). We had games like MVP Baseball that did try to tap into this back in the early 2000s by tying your stadium upgrades to your future budgets increasing, and this is the sort of “meat and potatoes” stuff we should still be getting more of today.

My feeling for why owner modes started to stagnate goes back to stuff like hot dog prices and such because it seems like after the novelty wore off, people didn’t want to worry about stuff like that anymore. I think developers took the wrong cues from stuff like that and just sort of phased out future ideas, when instead they should have looked more at how the business decisions should have been impacting aspects of the gameplay.

If I just use more recent examples, we have WNBA teams now in a practice facilities arms race. We have Rick Tocchet at least in part leaving the Vancouver Canucks because the Canucks ownership group was too cheap to invest in an actual practice facility — you’re an NHL team in Canada, pony up the cash for the facility bozos. We have the aforementioned stadium disputes and ownership deaths. We have NFLPA report cards about food and facilities that come out every year and do impact player personnel decisions and free agency. All this stuff has knock-on effects in real sports and the same could be true in our sports games.

I focus a lot on the idea of trying to get every CBA aspect into a game so the money side of things is as accurate as possible in terms of player contracts, and we get as many realistic rules in place for things like arbitration, dead money, trade exceptions, and whatever else might exist within our favorite sports league. But I care about that stuff not just for realism’s sake, it’s to create mini bits of turmoil that we have to overcome. The same is true for all portions of the business side of games, and it’s one of many ways owner modes could incorporate more gameplay mechanics.

Bottom Line

I return to my original question and ask you all again, when do you think we lost our way here with owner modes? Was there a clear turning point or did franchise modes just evolve into something else for another reason? Am I even correct in saying you want more “business” in your franchise modes or am I off-base there too? Let me know.

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

-Chase