NBA 2K23’s game-changing Eras mode was a 20-year labor of love

polygon.com:

At Visual Concepts, the 2K Sports studio responsible for NBA 2K23, development usually runs for a week or two, then the team takes an entire workday to play the current version of the game and evaluate what they’ve built so far. For executive producer Erick Boenisch, that also meant some time spent reflecting. Reminiscing, even.

“Going through the drafts, you’re literally like, I have the chance to draft Shawn Kemp here,” Boenisch said with a chuckle. “This is insane! Or, Here comes Hersey Hawkins. I love that guy in real life.”

Boenisch, 43, was speaking to Visual Concepts’ transformative approach to a sports video game’s traditional franchise mode in NBA 2K23: MyNBA Eras, which lets fans start in the NBA of 40 years ago (or 30, or 20) and rewrite professional basketball history from there. There is simply nothing else like it in sports video gaming, before or since. And delivering this experience, Boenisch said, was as personally fulfilling for him, and NBA 2K’s development staff of 475, as it is for the millions of fans who have now peeked inside the mode and gone down a time-travel rabbit hole for themselves.

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“Dino Radja,” Boenisch said, calling out the 1994 Boston Celtics’ Croatian sensation alongside Hawkins. “I love that guy. In my childhood and my youth, they hold special places in my heart. Like Dana Barros [also a Celtic from that time] — always on my team. At one point, he held the NBA record for most consecutive games with a [3-point basket] made. […] I always had him on my team for that.”

Radja was gone from the NBA well before Boenisch joined Visual Concepts 20 years ago, fresh out of Sonoma State University, which is 20 minutes north of 2K Sports headquarters in Novato, California. But Radja, and