For sports video game studio Visual Concepts in 2004, the possibilities to innovate felt endless as the development team worked day and night on what would become an all-time fan favorite football title.
Its partnership with ESPN served as a catalyst for bringing never-before-seen presentations to ESPN NFL 2K5. Weekly virtual SportsCenter episodes in franchise mode hosted by Chris Berman? Heck yeah. Pre-draft shows with Mel Kiper? Let’s go.
With Visual Concepts needing to differentiate itself from bigger rival Electronic Arts two decades ago, and online play not yet the all-encompassing focus of video games, company leaders pushed staff to be adventurous with how they blended ESPN into the title.
“They encouraged people to think of what they thought would be cool, and then we’d figure out a way to get there,” Brandon Justice, who worked on integrating ESPN into NFL 2K5, told Sportico.
Many of the core staffers from NFL 2K5 are still at Visual Concepts, now working as the brains behind the NBA 2K franchise. But more than 20 years since one of the studio’s finest moments, the reception to its annual releases, including this week’s NBA 2K27, is no longer so glowing.
