One of the biggest things sports tries to hammer in is that it's a meritocracy. The best players get to play and get paid the most. For a lot of players, they need to work their way up as a rookie to earn their playing time through practice, and performing in the little bits of time they have. Even then, though, they still typically have to sit behind players with more experience who have more skills than they may have. Why do sports games, the games that try to simulate these sports, not follow that track?
Well, the easy answer is that it's not fun not playing for weeks at a time, as your character never makes it into a game. Sports games have adopted a "Skip until I'm in the game" option, which can speed this process up, but still, you end up staring at a menu a lot. But still, realism! It accurately emulates the sport!
It'd be nice if more games took this approach though. A lot of sports games don't. I've had the same exact issue happen in the last 4 iterations of FIFA career mode, NBA 2K (to an extent), MLB The Show (To an extent), and the Madden franchises the most. The biggest budget games for their sport, and they drop the process of growing into a useful player on a team, instead opting to treat you like a superstar out of the gate, when your stats and abilities don't match that.
For example, I started two careers in FIFA 20, just to test this. Both times my player came out of the generator around rating 66-67 on the 100 point scale. One was an attacking midfielder for Minnesota United, and the other a striker for Borussia Dortmund. For MNUFC, I ended up starting over a higher rated player who was, at his time of signing, the biggest signing in club history. For Dortmund, a major world power team, and I was starting above their striker who was listed at 80, and above the team's veteran star who could play striker, Marco Reus (88 rating). On both teams, my rookie is listed as a "rotational" piece, which, y'know, I could buy for MNUFC, since the quality of play in MLS pales compared to European leagues. It's just a shame the player I was starting over was listed as a "Critical" piece of the team. For Dortmund, I was listed as a Rotational piece again, instead of like, Prospect, so... neat.
EA in particular seems wary of letting players site. Then again, they tend to not have many interesting things happen on the periphery of the actual games. In the last Madden game I played a few years ago, I had a rookie running back who ended up starting ahead of a pro bowl running back who was coming off a great season. I know when EA talks about how accurate of a simulation they claim their games are, they're referring to the on-field product, but man, it's so disappointing to be a player who shouldn't be playing, but you're actively making your team worse.
NBA 2K isn't much better, but they at least try. In 2K they'll at least sit you on the bench, but you'll still earn some playing time. The downside is how they just like... judge how you earn more playing time. You earn playing time by upping your team chemistry and performing at or above your expected level. You can increase your chemistry on the team and game score by successfully setting a ton of picks for your team. My 67 rated Shooting Guard is the Sixth man on my team, the first player off the bench and plays more minutes than anyone besides the starters, because of this system. This is less than half way through my rookie season.
MLB the Show gets closer, due to the nature of the Minor Leagues in baseball. You first start off in your team's AA affiliate, and try to work your way up to AAA, then the main roster. Again, though, nobody dreams of playing for Erie SeaWolves in AA or the Reno Aces in AAA, so you can kinda speed through this process. Three months into my AA career, I was called up and finished the season with the AAA team. Next season, I'm on the Spring Training roster for the main team, which isn't surprising but if I performed there, I could end up on a major league roster in my second season with mediocre in game stats.
Maybe the key to this is to play at a higher difficulty, but I'm currently playing at a level that's comfortable when I'm playing the game normally, where it provides a challenge. For some reason, in these career modes, that slips away more and it becomes easier to, I don't know, game the system in a way that takes a lot of the struggle out of it. There's no putting in extra shots at practice to impress the coaches. There's no like... I don't know how to put this. The balance feels really off, and it's kinda disappointing that you can't really get a mentorship under a teammate. You can set protoges and mentors in the GM mode of NBA2K, but it wasn't quite an option in the career mode.
I could very well be in a minority. I like the idea of working from the bottom to get your starting time in these games, but it always feels so unearned. Guess I'll keep trying til something hits the mark.
