WWE 2K22’s MyGM: Lots of potential, lots of time in menus

polygon.com:

Picking over the matchmaking decisions. Projecting story arcs. Ranking the events among your friends. All of this meta-conversation is essential to pro wrestling fandom, particularly in a social media age. WWE2K22, launching in March, will engage with it all by bringing back a familiar management mode, called MyGM, which puts players in the role of a promoter facing big expectations from WWE’s top management.

2K Sports on Wednesday gave Polygon a hands-on preview of MyGM, along with the game’s standard wrestling gameplay. It’s the first time the general manager’s role has been part of a video game career mode since THQ’s SmackDown vs. Raw 2008. The WWE 2K series already has analogues to sports video games’ team-based and single-player careers — MyCareer (now called MyRise) and Universe Mode. The GM career is more like a single-season mode, such as MLB The Show’s March to October package.

“Universe is like God Mode, right? Where you have full control over the entire show that you’re putting on,” creative director Lynell Jinks said in a media roundtable on Thursday. “MyGM is more goal-based. […] It’s very enthralled in the WWE Universe, rather than Universe [Mode], where it’s more like it’s your sandbox.”

In other words, players are working for “the Company” — the WWE itself — as one of five existing management personalities, or a created character. You’re answering to Triple H, a top WWE executive both behind the scenes and as a character. Triple H is overseeing a competition of subordinates, basically; players will go against an AI or another friend also managing one of the league’s four broadcast brands —SmackDown, Raw, NXT, or NXT UK. Your goal is to have the best-rated show. Triple H will, in the form of management