NBA 2K10 Crews / Team-Up

My Player Pick-Up Games
While moving through your career in My Player, you’ll have the opportunity to jump online with up to 9 other people looking to play games online to compete in 5 on 5 Pick-Up games. These games are played in outdoor courts, but keep the traditional exhibition rules through gameplay. You will be judged with the Teammate Grade, each person only controlling their player, and depending on the grade you end up with, you’ll get a range of Skill Points after each game to use towards your player’s progression. With the time and precision that went into the Skill Points tuning, it would be near impossible to advance your player much with just online games, but it’s just enough to keep you moving as you continue your career. This is a great way to see what other people around the world have done with their created players, and see how you measure up.

The great thing about Pick-Up games is that you do not have to leave your My Player mode game. The option itself is available inside the game mode, which means you can take a break from your career and play against other users online to check up on their skill levels and see where you stack up. Let’s say you just finished your Summer Circuit game, simply bring up 2K Nav and select Play Now -> Pick-Up and there you are, you will now be searching for other online users immediately. The mode will sort out an even match-up in terms of ranks and align by position on the floor.

Another way you can use your My Player online is to take them into your Crew. This is a new mode that allows you to create a team, invite friends, and play together keeping persistent stats over time. 

Create-a-Crew
 
Think of Crews as an online clan, a collection of friends and online players who want to play together as a team and compete against other groups. One thing to note: Crews do not require you to have a My Player character to play. If you want, your Crew can simply take control of any of the available 30 NBA teams. 

We didn’t just want Crews to be a simple group with a name tag; we wanted to give them an identity that actually sets them apart from each other. After all, when developing rivalries and dominating the online world, you want your Crew to stick out and be remembered, right?

When you create your Crew, you’ll have a lot of flexibility in things from logo design and jerseys, to playbooks and rosters to use. You can select any playbook or roster from the current NBA teams with your Crew. So if I wanted to, I could create a Crew that used the Hawks playbook and the Trail Blazers roster. These can be changed later if you want.

Below is the list of things you can customize when creating your Crew:
 
Team Abbreviation – A 3-letter abbreviation for your Crew. This appears on the score bar and stats overlays.

Coach First Name , Coach Last Name – Every team needs a coach, right?
Playbook – You can choose which playbook to use during Crew matches. Again, this can be changed by the GM at any time.
Membership – Can be set to either Public or Private. A Public Crew can be seen and joined by anyone, while a Private Crew will not show up in the Crews List for people looking to join one. Private Crew is invite-only.
Team Slogan – Be creative, be confident, and let others know what your Crew is all about!
Team Roster – Select from any of the 30 NBA teams as your default roster for Crew games. This can be changed by the GM at any time.
Team Logo – Choose from 30 unique logos, letters (A – Z), or numbers (0 – 9) for your crew
Team Colors – A flexible color palette allows you to set up to 3 colors for your Crew. This defines your colors for your logo, uniform, and arena.
Uniform / Jersey – You can customize your Crew uniform by selecting from 12 unique looking templates. Set the piping colors, jersey number color, trim colors, and even the shoes and sock colors for your Home and Away unis.

The next step is inviting friends or recruiting other NBA2K10 gamers to join your Crew. There are two ways to invite people to your Crew: (1) you can manually enter their Gamertag / Username and send the invite, or (2) go through the Pick-Up Games leader board and scout out users who would best fit your Crew and invite them from there. 

General Managers (GM)
When you create a Crew, you automatically become that Crew’s GM. This gives you complete control over your Crew’s management. You can:
• Edit your Crew Info, modify uniform designs, Crew colors, roster and playbooks
• Add/Invite a player to your Crew
• Manage your Crew members (remove members, promote members to designated Captain or as the new GM )

Getting into a Game
Getting into a game is a breeze. Select My Crew from the Team-Up Nav Menu which will take you into the Locker Room. You will need at least two crew members ready to roll in order to play. After finding an opposing team, you’re taken to the Team Setup screen where your team can choose their desired positions and starting player. From there, you’re ready to hit the court.
 
You might then be wondering where your My Player fits in to all this. Upon entering the Locker Room for your crew, you will be asked if you’d like to use your already created My Player. If you select yes, at the Team Setup screen you’ll have an opportunity to swap out a starter with your My Player. The player you swap out will still be available on the bench once in gameplay if you decide you want to sub them in later. 

Stats
One of the great things about playing in a Crew is that we are going to keep all the stats for each player in your crew over all the games you play. After each game you play, you can check stats for the last game you played and then go to the Member Stats screen within your Crew to check out your overall stats that have been tracked over all games you’ve played with that crew.
 
In addition to personal stats, there are team stats as well. where you’ll be ranked on the Crew’s leader board after each game played . 

This year, Crews and My Player Pick-Up games were by far my favorite features to work on. It’s no secret I’ve been a sucker for Team-Up play since 2K9, and I’m very excited about how the new features turned out, including the web components which we’ll discuss more in a future Insight. I can’t wait to get online in 2K10 once you all have created you players and rounded up your Crews!