Game design-wise, Visual Concept's take on the fan-favorite GM Mode for WWE 2K22 is deep and enjoyable. However, its design actually says a lot about how WWE Creative views and treats their wrestlers, and how disconnected this perception is with what the WWE audience actually enjoys.

For those who are not familiar with the intricacies of the new MyGM Mode, here are some of the key points about the game mode's system that we would like to focus on in this article:

  1. The fact that you only have one male and one female champion per brand
  2. You always have to make faces and heels go against each other to make a successful match
  3. Likewise, you have to match wrestlers based on their classes to make good matches, like Cruiserweights going against Giants, etc.

Just to clarify. This isn't a critique of WWE 2K22's MyGM Mode. In fact, these three systems above make MyGM Mode systematic. In older SmackDown vs. Raw games, match ratings are very unpredictable because the game isn't so transparent with how it calculates its scoring system. Now, the game explicitly tells us the recipe for a successful match: you simply have to go for particular pairings like Cruiserweight Faces against Giant Heels, for example. This makes the game much more predictable, allowing players to actually make strategies around their play, and reap rewards from smart booking based on these parameters.

But these systems aren't decided on in a vacuum – instead, they do even reflect how WWE's Creative probably sees their product. Let's go over each one.

WWE 2K22 MyGM Mode only allows you to have one male and one female champion on your brand

Creative doesn't care about the Midcard and the Tag Team Divisions. It's very perplexing as to why Visual Concepts decided that there shouldn't be Tag Champs and Midcard Champs in the game. These champions are the lifeblood of WWE, give higher stakes to rivalries, and give a conclusive finish in months-long feuds. However, your Tag feuds in MyGM will lead to nowhere, while your midcard feuds will always lead to one of your wrestlers sinking down to the depths while their opponent rises up to the main event. There is no place here for below-average wrestlers – everyone has to be a superstar. And that's also pretty much how Creative treats these divisions. It's as if the US and Intercontinental Title Belts don't exist sometimes, and there would even be pay-per-views where these titles, including the Tag Champs, would be put on the pre-show! Where's the respect for these championships?

Creative Believes that every great match has to be between Face vs. Heel

Aside from the Black-and-Yellow version of NXT, almost everywhere else in WWE programming is Face vs. Heel. We've known from NXT that Heel vs. Heel contests could work – Johnny Gargano vs. Tomasso Ciampa towards the latter end of their feud was a good example of good Heel vs. Heel programming, while the Kyle O'Reilly vs. Finn Balor was a great Face vs. Face saga. But we can never replicate these successful feuds in MyGM Mode – and that's also how Creative views these kinds of matches in the main product.

Granted, most of the time Heel vs. Heel and Face vs. Face isn't a great idea, because fans will need to know who to boo and who to cheer. One of the worst Heel vs. Heel matchups in recent memory was the Cruiserweight Championship Unification Match between Jordan Devlin and Santos Escobar. Most of the time, Face vs. Heel is the way to go. However, with good buildup and utilizing histories between wrestlers, Creative could still make compelling storylines, and fans will decide for themselves who to side with. In this way, you utilize the wrestlers' star power, making better use of their motivations that are not as clear cut as good vs. evil, making them better, deeper characters in the process.

Personalities and Chemistry be damned; Cruiserweights and Giants must fight each other all the time

And finally, you can't make certain matchups in the game work in MyGM Mode because the wrestlers in them are simply not compatible with each other. Hence, as the game's GM, you'll be forced to book matches like Apollo Crews vs. Mace over and over again, because that's the kind of matchup that works in the game's algorithm.

We feel that this kind of system could have been solved by a hidden “chemistry” stat that can affect the match quality between wrestlers. This already works in tag teams in the game, where in the show notes you can be informed of whether or not two wrestlers work well together as tag team wrestlers. But we can take this system a step further – where we can nullify the wrestlers' classes when the two wrestlers have good chemistry with each other.

Sadly, we keep on seeing these pairings in WWE programming. How many times have we seen Giants vs. Cruiserweights matchups? Two Technicians can work together and still have a wonderful match, which is something that AEW successfully does week in and week out. WWE Creative could learn a thing or two in how AEW's matchups are designed. WWE's Creative should feel more comfortable stepping out of their usual, “safe” matchups and be more aware of their wrestlers' capabilities so that they can book them in more meaningful matches beyond the usual Class A vs. Class B matchups.

MyGM Mode isn't perfect but it's a good start for this series. These systems work well when played on their own without context. However, it's obvious that the basis and foundations of these systems say a lot about the current WWE landscape. We hope that future iterations of the game mode would still reflect the way WWE actually operates behind the scenes – but we also hope that by that point, WWE would have already changed their perception of their product and wrestlers.