WWE 2K23 Creative Director On Improving Over Last Year, Competition With AEW Fight Forever

WWE 2K23’s creative director recently weighed in on the game’s improvement over the previous iteration, AEW Fight Forever providing competition and more. Lynell Jinks spoke with WCCF Tech for a new interview about the game, and you can check out the highlights below:

On the game’s improvement over WWE 2K22: “There are so many different moving parts, but it all comes down to our process. We introduced a new pipeline last year on 2K22 that set the new bar for our visuals, and once you do that, it’s about “How can we make it better?” That bar is changing every single year with new games that look amazing, like God of War [Ragnarok], NBA 2K23, so we’re always chasing. We’re never going to rest on our laurels and will always be, hey, how much power can we squeeze out of this platform? How much resolution can we get out of our textures? How can we improve our scanning techniques? Even our simulation for hair and cloth…”

On the game’s PC version: “If you have a good enough graphics card, it is on par with the next-gen consoles. Like, when we’re developing the game, we work on PC. All our tools work on PC. We export it out and run it on the consoles. Everything is authored on the computer. So, we’re looking at all the stuff at 4K or whatever, and depending on the graphics card, you can have that same experience. Unfortunately, you’ll pay a lot more to get that experience, but it’s probably easier to find a good graphics card than a PS5 or Xbox Series X at this point.”

On how many superstars to expect in the game: “The only thing I can say is it’s more than 2K22. If we keep going at this rate, 2K24 will have even more, because WWE keeps signing a ton of talent. A lot of familiar faces are coming back to WWE that I’m excited about. Cody being one of them for 2K23. We have DLC plans we haven’t announced yet that I think are going to make people really happy. The future’s bright.”

On if they’re keeping an eye on AEW Fight Forever: “I love competition. I started on NBA 2K, I spent 10 years on it, and at that time, we were going against NBA Inside Drive. Then we were going against [NBA] ShootOut and NBA Live, and every year, we would look at what they did and be, like, “that’s interesting” or “they did this better than us.” That only makes our games better. Same thing you can say about wrestling in general — having competition, to me, it’s no coincidence that the storylines [in WWE] have been the best they’ve been in a long time. I think it’s because of that competition. It’s the same with video games. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re gonna do that’s going to drive us to be even stronger.”