Every professional wrestling video game that has a career mode wants you to feel like you are living the life of a wrestler. Create your character (Brett Everett, sporting a blue singlet, blue kick pads, and black sneakers with orange soles, btw), start from the minor show, gain notoriety, practice a few matches, train your stats, learn what it takes to make a five star match. Finally, you're ready for the big time. Join the main roster, go out and work you first match! The bell rings and you... proceed to beat down the computer using all of your moves at least once, your signature and finisher twice, maybe let the computer go on the offensive for a bit if you need the stars. Pin. Rinse, repeat.
The promotion that made that wrestler their world champion would go out of business. Yet, that's exactly the player's career progression in wrestling video games. Even as the wrestling game market leans into the simulation aspect, no game wants to let you actually work a match. WWE 2k series gives the player match stars, but only for actions the player takes, and rewards the player more in game points when they win the match. Firepro gives the player's matches a rating, part of which is back and forth pacing, yet the player is expected to win a fight. Even the game with the most match freedom, Wrestling Empire, has the computer fight the player even as it lets them switch characters mid match. In all of these games about pro wrestling, the player is ultimately playing as a fighter instead of a wrestler. The training, the superstar points, the match ratings, the meet and greets, all of these features walk the player right up to the curtain, inviting them inside, while the game play ultimately interrupts, looks back at the player and snaps it firmly shut.
Before THQ introduced their GM mode in SvR 2006, my brother and I used Smackdown! Shut Your Mouth to make a draft, book matches, simulate the results, and record them in a notebook. We were fascinated by the art and the craft of professional wrestling. And then, hey! GM mode in a game, that's awesome! But as I played it, I found my excitement wane and frustration grow. I was still having fun, none of the issues I'm describing have made the games not fun to play, but why couldn't I pick a winner? Why did the popularity of a wrestler drop when they lost? Why did a wrestler complain to me when they lost a couple times in a row? The mode let me hire writers and assign story lines, let me set matches and run advertisements, let me slot in a backstage promo in the schedule, all making me feel as if I was in on the secret, yet kept the essential characteristics of booking a promotion walled off.
Back when I was running the pretend promotion with my brother, I wanted to take things further. I wanted to memorize the movesets of the wrestlers and have each of us take a controller and do specific moves at specific times. Actually craft a wrestling match. A whole card, even. Unfortunately, he never had the interest in that, so I never got the chance to play my way. But the idea stuck in my head, and now I think it's time to finally make it a reality. Make a game where the player steps into the ring, not as a fighter, but as a professional wrestler, and gets to participate in the art and the craft of pro wrestling.
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