WWE 2K25 Deep Dive With Superstars & Devs | Official Xbox Podcast

*Stamp every 5 min *MS instructions

SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E to M.

MALIK PRINCE: What's going on everybody? My name is Malik Prince, and welcome back to the official Xbox Podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox. Now, us wrestling fans know what this time of the year means. It means WrestleMania season is right around the corner. We are on the road to WrestleMania, but for wrestling and video game fans, it means the next installment in the iconic WWE 2K series is right upon us. That being, of course, WWE 2K25. It's bringing with you a two-case showcase featuring the Bloodline, The Island --

JEY USO: Hey, watch out, Malik. Watch out, Malik. Bloodline edition. Bloodline edition. Hey, look, early access, March 7th.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeet.

JEY USO: March 14th, full access.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeet.

JEY USO: Let's go.

MALIK PRINCE: That's right, Malik Prince bringing the heat. Main Event Jey bringing the yeet. Welcome to WWE 2K Creator Fest. [ Music ] All right, so one of the greatest parts about what I get to do, especially for the Xbox Podcast, is bring you, all the Xbox viewers, along for some of these rides and documenting this experience, so let's go into WWE 2K25 Creator Fest. Let's do it. We start with this incredible entrance. WWE 2K25, Xbox partnering together. I want to give a huge shout out to 2K for giving me this chance to bring this home to you all. Off here to my left we have our tribal chief. It's Roman Reigns with the WWE 2K25 tagline "Rule Beyond the Ring." Always acknowledge your tribal chief, every single morning when you wake up. Don't forget. All right, so as you can see behind me, there are tons of stations where people are getting to play the game, check it out, some for the first time ever, and they're not just playing the game. The entire game is available, so some folks are jumping into the 2K showcase, which, by the way, is hosted by Paul Heyman, our Wise Man. Also, MyGM mode. I love running a show, and I'm trying to figure out who I'm going to choose as a GM. I want to show you this incredible display of WWE championships, and not only are these available for us to kind of check out, but I'm going to get to print myself on the cover, and you know what? Once I do that, I'm going to make it mandatory that anybody who buys the game on Xbox has to buy my copy. I'm going to be on the cover, not Roman, Roman Reigns. I'm just kidding. If you're watching this, Roman, you're the man. The one thing that I love about these events is that it's so cool watching the developers, so shout out to all developers across the gaming industry. They worked for years on these games, and these events are so cool to see the reactions of creators and players when they get to jump in for the first time ever. We're going to end this tour, of course, with the classic Malik pose here, doing one of these bad boys. All right, y'all, as I showed you a little bit earlier on, there is this incredible photo op where I'm going to put myself on the cover. The first step is picking a championship belt. Of course, I want to be at the top of the game, so I'm going with the WWE championship. Oh, my God, this is heavy. I can get my curls in here. All right, so that's the first part, and then we get to pick the cover, of course. Which one do I want to be? We have the Bloodline cover, but what I'm going to do, in honor of my tribal chief, as I've been saying this entire episode, I'm going to go with this one. Here we go, I'm going to throw up the one.

SPEAKER 2: All right, there we go.

MALIK PRINCE: Your new cover. I'm acknowledging myself. I'm looking off into the distance, thinking about how I'm going to take over the world. This has been incredible. Acknowledge me. All right, we are back here with WWE superstar, of course future World Heavyweight Champion, Main Event Jey Uso. Thank you for helping me with the intro earlier.

JEY USO: Yeah, man, thanks for that, Malik.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, I had to bring a little energy. He got me up there. But I want to talk about you. You're the star of the show, for this one. Over the past few years, we've really seen Main Event Jey Uso taking it to the next level. What's that rise been like for you, man?

JEY USO: I feel like, you know, once you put all your blood, sweat, and tears into some moves, then you finally see it paying off.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, and I think the fans have noticed that, too, and I think that's kind of why they've taken to you. Like, they know that you've put in the hours, you've put in the work, they're yeeting all over the place. It's incredible. Now, we're here at WWE 2K25 Creator Fest. Of course, a bunch of creators checking out the game. Have you got a chance to check out your intro?

JEY USO: I did. It was crazy.

MALIK PRINCE: Coming through the crowd now.

JEY USO: Fired.

MALIK PRINCE: Everyone doing the yeet. It's so incredible.

JEY USO: Oh, I like it. They really amped it up, man. Really can feel that through the game, through the stream, man.

MALIK PRINCE: Obviously, this is not your first game that you've been in, but what's it like seeing yourself? It must be unreal.

JEY USO: Yeah, it was, because now I ain't got to create myself. You know how you used to create yourself?

MALIK PRINCE: All the time.

JEY USO: Now I ain't got to. I can just pick it.

MALIK PRINCE: There you go, there you go. I love that. All right, so big match coming up here in Vegas for WrestleMania 41. You versus Gunther for, of course, the World Heavyweight Championship. How are you preparing?

JEY USO: Man, just trying to stay in the gym, you know what I'm saying? Make sure I get that Waffle House in.

MALIK PRINCE: Oh, Waffle House. Is that the diet of champions?

JEY USO: Yeah, no, man, that's the diet of me, yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: How many waffles can --

JEY USO: Two waffles, six scrambled eggs with cheese, triple hash browns with scattered and covered on there. Two lemonades, maybe a coffee. Yeets.

MALIK PRINCE: All right, there you go. We're going to call it the "Main Event Jey Uso Challenge for Waffle House." That was --

JEY USO: Come on, man.

MALIK PRINCE: I couldn't even finish one waffle.

JEY USO: That's lightweight.

MALIK PRINCE: So obviously, players who jump into the game are going to have hundreds of people that they can pick in the game. Why should they pick Main Event Jey Uso?

JEY USO: Because, man, I'm Main Event Jey Uso, and I'm a 90, but, man, come on, last year I was like a 91, Malik, I think, and how the hell did I go backwards when I just won a Royal Rumble here, dog? Come on, man.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, we got to talk to somebody about that. But Main Event Jey Uso, again, it's been great watching you over these past few years, and really over the past decade-plus, do your thing, and we're excited to see you at WrestleMania 41, man.

JEY USO: Thanks, man. Thanks, Malik. Yeet.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeet.

SPEAKER 3: The crowd is on their feet for Jey Uso.

SPEAKER 4: Michael, they're not just on their feet. They're all yeeting.

MALIK PRINCE: All right, we are here with multiple-time NXT Women's Champion, multiple time WWE Tag Team Women's Champion, a very special guest, is Shayna Baszler. Shayna, how's it going?

SHAYNA BASZLER: It's going pretty good.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, we are here at Creator Fest, which is really super exciting. I know you haven't seen the inside of there yet.

SHAYNA BASZLER: I've not.

MALIK PRINCE: It is so impressive. Once you go in there, it's going to be incredible. But of course, we're here to talk about WWE 2K25. I hear you're a big WWE wrestling game fan. What's your favorite game of all time?

SHAYNA BASZLER: There is a correct answer.

MALIK PRINCE: There is.

SHAYNA BASZLER: This is not an opinion. This is a fact. It's No Mercy.

MALIK PRINCE: A hundred percent. No Mercy was so good, like the story mode, everything. It was so good. Who would you play as?

SHAYNA BASZLER: So I have a funny story about No Mercy. We had a thing, me and a group of friends, that we called "FNW," Friday Night Wrestling, and we ran it like a D&D club, where we had one guy who was the GM, but he would write out storyline and whatever, and so we would create a wrestler and then have to read what he had planned for the week and cut promos and be this character, and then we would wrestle the matches, and so it was FNW.

MALIK PRINCE: Which is so sick because me and my brother used to do the same exact thing --

SHAYNA BASZLER: Nice.

MALIK PRINCE: When we were younger, but also kind of led right into your career, which is almost perfectly. It was almost perfect.

SHAYNA: Yeah, it was training.

MALIK PRINCE: It was training for it, right? Everything happens for a reason. So now there's so many different features in WWE 2K25. We're here talking about the game creators and getting to check it out. One thing that we don't talk about as much is, like, you can actually go and get titles from the past. If you can get any WWE title from the past and put it on Shayna Baszler, what would it be?

SHAYNA BASZLER: I mean, if we're talking about any title, the Winged Eagle obviously is a classic, but I'm going to say something that I think nobody else is going to say. I also really, really liked the black and gold NXT UK title.

MALIK PRINCE: Ooh, good one.

SHAYNA BASZLER: It was big, and weighty, and looked really pretty.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, the hefty ones with the kind of intricate design. I love that. Yeah, I love that. Now, so many different modes. What are you most excited for in WWE 2K25?

SHAYNA BASZLER: Come on, come on. Underground. That's my jam. That's my jam.

MALIK PRINCE: So why are you most excited for that?

SHAYNA BASZLER: Because I feel like that's the thing I know. It's the same reason I would get excited to do it in real life, because that's the wrestling I came up in. That's the thing I consider myself to be an expert in, is that sort of a match.

MALIK PRINCE: Well, there's over 300 superstars that players can pick. Why should they pick Shayna Baszler?

SHAYNA BASZLER: Well, here's the thing, and I'm probably going to say this a lot today, the difference between me and everybody else is I have to put this mask on to live in society. Everyone else has to put their costume on to get in the ring, but that's where I get to take my costume off. So you should pick me because I'm ready all the time.

MALIK PRINCE: There you go. Play as Shayna Baszler in WWE 2K25 or else, or else. Shayna Baszler, thank you so much for joining us.

SHAYNA BASZLER: Thank you.

MALIK PRINCE: Appreciate it.

SPEAKER 5: Don't forget Baszler is one of the first women to cross over from mixed martial arts to pro wrestling. She's arguably the reason underground even deserves to exist.

MALIK PRINCE: All right, we're back here now, this time with WWE superstar Xavier Woods. Xavier Woods, how are you today?

XAVIER WOODS: I will be a lot better once we're done with this.

MALIK PRINCE: I feel like we have some history. I interviewed you back at E3 2018, you and the rest of the New Day. I feel like you've changed a little bit since.

XAVIER WOODS: I mean, I don't know what the interview was like. It was pretty forgettable. Because where there's smoke, there's fire, and you can't stand the heat, so get up out the kitchen. I mean, what happened?

MALIK PRINCE: Well, I asked you guys if I could be your manager, and you said no, so the answer's still no.

XAVIER WOODS: Yeah, yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: All right, well, you know what? How about this? Let's talk about WWE 2K Creator Fest, which is exciting. You're at this event. What are you most excited for in the game?

XAVIER WOODS: To play the game.

MALIK PRINCE: To play the game. What mode?

XAVIER WOODS: I'm trying to get on this Island, because I haven't gotten to play it yet. I got to come in, since I'm the video game guy, I got to talk to everybody, and they said, "What are your thoughts?" My thoughts on what? I haven't got to play the game yet. Ran around from here and there, busiest person in the company, easily. But I'm the one who can translate for all of the illiterate gaming people on the WWE side. I'm the bridge, so I got to do all the flapping. So what's the rest of the question?

MALIK PRINCE: He's talking to you all. Not me, of course. Maybe he's talking to me as well. So obviously you're excited for the game. When players jump in, why should they pick Xavier Woods and the New Day?

XAVIER WOODS: They should pick Xavier Woods because, first, what they've done, if they have listened as they should, they've gone into the game, they've changed the stats of Xavier Woods to match my actual stats.

MALIK PRINCE: Which would be?

XAVIER WOODS: Raising me from an 80 to probably a 93, 93 or 94, I'll be around there. And then they're going to pick me because no one else is going to be able to beat them because they will have the only wrestler on the roster with this level of charisma, this level of training, this level of mental acuity, and you can't lose with that.

MALIK PRINCE: All right, Xbox players, I think you have your mission right now. When you jump to the WWE 2K25, Xavier Woods in a New Day, that's your choice.

XAVIER WOODS: Easily.

MALIK PRINCE: Thank you, Xavier. I appreciate it. Let's go back to whatever's next. All right, everybody, I am here checking out WWE 2K25. I want to showcase to you what they just added this year, which is intergender matches. A lot of people have been wanting it, and so I'm going to play as Rhea Ripley, and if I'm showcasing intergender matches, there's only one person who Rhea Ripley really needs to just beat down, and that is Dirty Dom Mysterio, and so I'm going to do that right now. Let's set this up. As you can see here, there are a ton of arenas to choose from. They even have the new SmackDown arena. All right, Rhea Ripley, let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's get that Dirty Dom. All right, here we go. All right, we are here, Friday Night SmackDown in Roanoke, Virginia, and here comes Rhea Ripley. The team at WWE 2K25 did such a great job. The graphics have continued to get better, but the presentation, the WWE live there in the bottom right, and the camera shots, the close-ups of Rhea Ripley. Another cool thing that they've added is you can kind of switch through the cameras, see the wide shot here. Let's see this damn fool come here. Here he is, mullet and all, and this man has the audacity to think that he's the best Mysterio when your father is literally a WWE Hall of Famer. Rhea is going to kill. Oh, they're so good with the presentation. Yeah, the clothesline off the rip, right into a leg drop, whoa, crazy boot to the face. Oh, I got to make sure I get this one. Here we go. Whoa, Dom, Dom, Dom, hold on, hold on. This is not what we're going to do here. Come on, get up, get up, Dom. Elbow from the top row. That's right, head-butt. Here we go. Into the cover, into the leg. Hot rod, take that Dirty Dom. If you're watching this podcast, Dominik Mysterio, I finally got my revenge. Rhea Ripley defeating you in this ring, one, two, three, fair and square. See ya. This game is so incredible. This is so much fun. All right, probably, arguably, the most important part of this entire podcast episode, it's the interview with the folks making the game. Of course, every year we have Lynell Jinks, and Bryan Williams. How's it going, guys?

LYNELL JINKS: Hi, Malik.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: What's up, Malik? Good to see you, brother.

MALIK PRINCE: Good to see you as well. This is great because this is almost becoming a yearly tradition. Last year, we did it over Skype or Teams or one of those, and now we're in person.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: I like the in-person.

MALIK PRINCE: But speaking of in-person, this year, as everyone watching has seen, you all took it to the next level. What's it like building a game over the course of a year and then seeing the creators and fans get their hands on it?

LYNELL JINKS: Oh, so we were just talking about it. It's nerve-wracking. We didn't sleep much last night. Like, we found out this morning, bags under our eyes, like, oh, man, I was like, it's like having a baby in nine months. We always say our death cycle is around nine months, and then you're showing it to the world, and they're like, "Is it ugly or is it cute?" And we're hoping our baby's cute, and so far, so good. Everyone seems to be responding really well to what we've made.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, I couldn't sleep last night either because, you know, I feel, and I know you do, too, always confident about the work that we put in each and every year with the game. It's just fun sharing the work that you've done over the course of nine, ten months with the people that we did it for. You know, WWE as well as the fans, and so overall, it's exciting.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, well, I can say the baby's beautiful. It's a 10 out of 10 baby from my perspective.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: We did it.

MALIK PRINCE: But no, exactly what you said in the sense that, you know, WWE, and video games have gone hand in hand. We were talking to Shayna Baszler earlier about her favorite WWE game of all time, and it's No Mercy, and the connection that fans have with wrestling games is so strong, but I want to talk about what's new. Your tagline this year is "Rule Beyond the Ring," right? And so let's talk about that a little bit with a very fascinating mode that I'm excited to see how you all tackle it, The Island. Now, this is kind of a spinoff of the NBA version of it in some ways, maybe, maybe not. Tell me a little bit about it.

LYNELL JINKS: Oh, yeah, no, you know, visual concepts, the creators of NBA 2K, that's where I started, and it's only right for us to kind of follow in their footsteps and stand on their shoulders. We look at like the trajectory that they've built, and they started with the neighborhood, and now they have the city, and I would say ours is very similar to like, you know, what their starting point was and the jumping-off point was when they introduced the neighborhood. It's a little bit smaller and more focused on building a foundation of what the city ended up becoming, and that was our approach, is trying to figure out how the hell do we not only develop a game that people are extremely passionate about and support all the modes that they're accustomed to and add new match types and new stories, but to build an online environment with 49 of your other closest friends or in this other server with real people and play matches and go through the story and progression and unlock cool things. That was probably the hardest thing we've done since taking this franchise over from Yuke's in 2K20.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, I mean, I was watching everyone play out there and having a great time, and what were the experiences that you were hoping to accomplish in bringing that? Like, what do you want players to take away? You know, you called it a "starting point," like obviously there's going to be a journey, but like with this iteration, what do you want players to take away from it?

LYNELL JINKS: For us, you know, we know it's not the end-all be-all of the progression. Like, oh, you can't go and purchase taunts and moves, like something similar that you would do in NBA in the city, where with us, we're like, no, all that stuff's just kind of unlocked, and you're like, for this first year, let's be a little bit more forgiving with the systems and just try to focus on making sure that people are having fun with their friends in this online world where it's just littered with so much WWE pop culture, right? There's just so much fanfare in there, and you're just like, oh, look at that Easter egg, look at that, and then the story that our designer is telling there, Andrea, just going through the progression and the different stories and stuff that's going to be unlocked later in different seasons. It's just fun, right? We're really leaning into making sure people are just having fun in this world with their friends.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, really excited to see how it evolves. But I want to shift gears a little bit to showcase. I'm super excited. I said it at the beginning of the show. I'm so excited for the Bloodline, what you all are doing. Yes, acknowledge. We've been saying "acknowledge Roman Reigns." Wherever you are, Roman, I hope you can feel us acknowledging you. So I almost don't even have to ask, but I will anyway. There's so many storylines in WWE history that you can go with, but why this one?

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Well, you know, I am speaking on behalf of our showcase designer, Dino. I think it was just, you know, it's an obvious choice. Yeah, I mean, the year that Roman had this past year, not just him, but the whole Anoa'i family, the Fatu family, you know, Jay Sutton break out as a singles act, having been part of a tag team in WWE for more than a decade. I was actually just speaking earlier about Jey Uso and how, for someone who has been with WWE for as long as he has, and in a tag team, to then break out as a singles and feel as if he's a brand-new person who was slotted into the WWE universe is incredible, and his family is incredible. The sudden rise in popularity and business in the WWE can largely be attributed to the Bloodline storyline, Roman Reigns' dominance. Even now got Jacob Fatu, another loose cannon who's been inserted into the storylines, and I think, you know, focusing our showcase on them, and shining a spotlight on these families who have been holding it down within the WWE, providing us fans with all these great matches, these fantastic performers, and being able to just share that love of that family has been something that for us has felt like a given, right? And to focus it around Roman, and the thing is, too, it's not just Roman. The thing that I love about this year's showcase is that we're doing both paying respect to historical matches that have occurred and also having fun with it in saying, hey, you know, AOP and Three-Minute Warning never wrestled in a tag match, but what if they did?

MALIK PRINCE: What if they did.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: How cool would that be? And I actually might have gotten one of those matches mixed up, but we had some fantasy matches in there with, you know, the Dudleys, the Wild Samoans, the Street Profits, the Headshrinkers, and it just gave us an opportunity to not only pay respect and homage to these families, but at the same time, we have all these characters who are making their first in a WWE 2K video game.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, and I think that's the joy of video games, right? I think video games allow us to live out things that hadn't happened, but because of the magic of interactive media, we can actually see what would happen, and I love that you all, again, are allowing for some of these moments for fans to be able to choose how it ends and how it plays out, and also more feedback. I hear that you were putting more in-game engine pieces as opposed to like -- what was the reasoning behind that?

LYNELL JINKS: So the slingshot tech, you know, I think, you know, we tried something, and I think the first few years it was like, we got a positive response, but, you know, fans were like, you know what? It's kind of taking us out of the game, where it's just like, we were listening to what everyone was saying. It was like, oh, there's a little bit of a disconnect when you're making that, even though our transitions were smooth as hell.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Smooth as butter, baby.

LYNELL JINKS: But like, people really love seeing the amount of detail and hard work that we put into our models, our lighting, like the hair, like all these things are like, oh, I'm taken out of it, right? And so we're like, okay, let's go back to that, and now we're able to kind of play around with history as well, like there are different outcomes and different matches or just we couldn't do that when we were trying to stick to the script of what really happened. You know, we're recreating these historic matches, but the rapper on all of it is Paul Heyman.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: I'm glad you brought -- I was going to mention him, too.

LYNELL JINKS: Oh, my God, like, his delivery on our intro videos to each match to give you the history lesson behind and have his perspective on all the videos, and he gets really emotional when he talks about that Roman-Seth match, and like,I got goosebumps, and I was just like, oh, man, I was like, is this a work or a shoot, and you can't tell, like, and I'm like, I think this is, you know, legit. H's like, no, I don't even want to touch this, and I was like, oh, my God, and I Slacked Dino, and I was like, "Dude, I'm about to cry," like this is intense. And then Dino is the mastermind behind the showcase, but we will always go to Bryan because he is, along with Dino, my wrestling encyclopedia, and I'm like, "Dude, we're thinking about doing this, is this cool?" You know, and we we're like -- like, one of the cool things that we did this year was the interactive intro to the Mo [phonetic], which we coined the "wow intro" because I wanted like a wow moment. You brought up NBA before, like NBA 2K11 when I was the art director on that, like, we had the Jordan intro into the mode where you started off in that, you know, that game against the Lakers is Jordan, and the curtain falls, and the bull is over there waving the flag. I was like, I want to like, you know, to get that intro like, where it's like, but it's interactive, and you feel like attachment to like what you're about to experience in this mode, and so, you know, I shot it to Bryan. I was like, "Dude, I really want to do this around WrestleMania 40. You know, what do you think about it?" He's like, "Oh, brother, that sounds amazing. If you can pull that off, that sounds amazing." And I was like -- and so me and Dino were workshopping it, and then we, you know, again, once we found something that we thought we liked that we can try to produce, shout out to Brian, he was like, "Am I off in thinking that we can do this, and this is going to, you know, miss, or is it going to hit?" He's like, "If you pull that off," he was like, "Yeah, you'll get that NBA 2K11 moment."

BRYAN WILLIAMS: We call it "wow" internally. I mean, it's just wow in reality. There's no better opening to showcase, really, because you're there. You're both in it and you're playing, and he's like, "Oh, okay. I guess this is happening now."

LYNELL JINKS: Yeah, you know, we tried something for the first time where Dino has like had this, you know, brilliant idea, he was like, "Hey, what if we switch to first person in this view?" And I was like, "Oh," and then we were trying it, we're like, oh, my God, like this unlocked something new, and so like, we were really curious to see what people think about this and get their feedback because it's like maybe we lean into this, kind of like how we leaned into the slingshot tech for a few years, you know, like, you know.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: I hope so, and I think one of the things that makes it hit that much more, too, is that of its recentness. I mean, WrestleMania 40 wasn't that long ago, so it's still in a lot of people's minds. They're like, "Oh, my God, I remember all of this," and yeah, it just pulls you in right away, and then it's like, all right, strap on that seatbelt. You're in for a ride.

MALIK PRINCE: It's so good. I love that you guys have Paul Heyman. I don't think there's a greater order in wrestling history such as Paul. I mean, like you feel the words that he's saying, so it's so incredible. I will say the one thing that is not accurate in the game is, WrestleMania 40, everyone with their coats. There's no coats in there. I was there in Philadelphia last year and that place was freezing. If people watch back the first night of WrestleMania and why they said, "Oh, the crowd wasn't into it," we were just freezing cold. That's all that was.

LYNELL JINKS: I was there with you, and I was in a suite and I was cold. I had my gloves and my beanie on, I was like, yeah, I want to get back to the Bay area, like this is too cold.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, I heard it was cold.

MALIK PRINCE: Second night was better, but the first night it was horrible.

LYNELL JINKS: Oh, my gosh.

BW: But let's jump into the gameplay. Obviously, every year you all are making the game that much better, right, even better. What are some of the changes you all made for the gameplay, when people jump into matches?

LYNELL JINKS: There's a few, but like, I want to call out one specifically, underground match. Bryan Williams came to me after I courted him back to our team a couple years ago, and he was like, "You know, I really want to try this." It's been something in the WWE, and so he would like send me some design docs, and I was like, oh, man, we ain't never tried nothing like this, you know, something with no ropes, and like there's a crowd around. I was like, "B, this is a lot," and he was like, "I know, but I talked to this one engineer and he's kind of prototyped it already," and I was like, that's the thing I love about our team is like, now that the game is ours, we can kind of play around with like quick little prototypes to kind of test things out rather than just in a concept form, but like, no, you actually play it a little bit, and we're like, ooh, I think you're on to something, and then sometimes you might not see it in that dev cycle, but we'll build the foundation for it in a previous cycle, which was the birth of it last year. And then Bryan was like, "All right, can we sign off on this?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, since we have the prototype, we got to," right? And so it was a lot of work. Like, I think one of the things that surprised us the most was the amount of work it took to get the spectators working.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, that was the spectator, and it's funny, because, yeah, when I mentioned it to like now, we were thinking about possibly doing this as DLC 2024.

LYNELL JINKS: Like, oh, yeah, that'd be easy.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Give me that much of a lift, and having gone through 25 and standing this match type up, I look back and I'm like, what was I thinking? To think that, I mean, our team can move mountains, but to move a continent in the span of like a DLC pack, it was like way too much. So going through that, you mentioned, Josh, the engineer who reached out to me who liked the idea, and on his own time on the weekend put together our first prototype of the ropeless ring, and that's just the level of passion that this team has. I mean, he didn't even know about the underground match, but Josh was intrigued by it. And so, yeah, for 25 and pre-production, we got to sign off to get it kick-started, and having these NPC spectators at ringside --

MALIK PRINCE: Or dynamically, I was playing it earlier, so that was the first match that I jumped into, and I knocked a few of them over at one point, and so it was just cool to see, but it worked so well. We were speaking with Shayna Baszler earlier, and that's what she said she was most excited to jump into. So I did a match with Shayna versus Nia, and it was done, so well. To your point on making sure that everything worked without ropes, and stuff like that, it just played so well together, and it was just cool seeing the ravenous people around. It almost looked like they wanted to eat the -- (laughter). They're like, "We're going to eat the loser alive."

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, banging on the apron was one of those key hallmarks if you've ever seen it in the NXT underground match, is that they get so pumped, they start banging on the apron, so we have some gameplay situations that will trigger that apron pound, like submission attempts or using a wake-up taunt. Anything where the spectators are in anticipation of a big move, they'll start pounding on the apron. And I think for anybody who's new to our franchise and maybe isn't all the way familiar with how a wrestling game works, it's a great match to play just because of the simplicity of the rule set where it's knock out or tap out, you know, and it's just you can get in there, start pressing buttons, [inaudible 00:27:04], and bingo-bango you either won or you've lost, but it was like, wow, that was fun, it was different, so I hope the fans like it.

MALIK PRINCE: Just don't grab a weapon by default because it is not -- it is a DQ match.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: You will get DQ'd, yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: By default, but you can change that.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: You can change those.

MALIK PRINCE: Good thing I didn't. No, I actually lost a match. Nia Jax, she suplexed me off the announcer table on to the outside, and it was a KO, instantly knocked out, but it was okay. Hopefully we don't put that in. Let's cut that out. I won, I won. I won.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: The power of editing, bro.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, so we have a few more questions here as our time winds down, but I want to talk about GM mode. I'm a big fan of GM mode. I've been playing, like since smack numbers raw 2007, I remember that was what I loved. Yeah, man.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: My man.

MALIK PRINCE: That was the mode that I was -- you all cooked with that one, oh, you cooked with that one, and so now we have MyGM mode. Can you tell us a little bit about the improvements this year that you're bringing to MyGM?

LYNELL JINKS: Yeah, like I think the biggest one that everyone has been waiting on since we brought it back was, when is this thing going to be online and know officially supported online, and we have supported it online this year, and up to four players can play, and just seeing people's reaction to that alone, it's just been amazing, right? Just setting up different timers and getting that sense of urgency, like I got to hurry up and pick, and it kind of creates this cool drama, right? Where you're like --

BRYAN WILLIAMS: That's what got me the tension, of being put on the clock for your turn. It's like you can't dilly-dally. You got to make your move, set this show up.

LYNELL JINKS: Yeah, and I think that to me was probably one of the reasons why some people who weren't familiar with that mode probably weren't trying it, right? You know, we know, like, most modern games is a shared experience, right? And so not having that, I really felt like it hurt that mode, and now that it's here and up to four players, I really feel like the reach for that mode is going to expand a lot.

MALIK PRINCE: I cannot wait to jump into it. Me and my brother, even before GM mode was added back in the day, we would always pretend we were GMs. Like, I was smackdowning, my brother was raw, and we would like compete who could put on a better show, and so like the fact that you all added it in there and continue to improve it year over year, it's just, oh, chef's kiss. Love it. Cool, so obviously running out of time here, but I wanted to give you all a chance to kind of talk directly to the community. Obviously, we're at Creator Fest with a lot of your creator community, but then even as people jump into early access on March 7th and then on a full release on the 14th, I just want to give you a chance to kind of address them what you hope they kind of enjoy from the game, take away from the game, anything you want them to know, essentially.

LYNELL JINKS: I think a lot of people would dismiss this year's title, and be like, oh, they added this Island thing, and that's probably where they put all their effort. It's like, no. We have the underground match type, intergender wrestling. We have the Bloodline rules match. Chain wrestling is back

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Back in universe mode.

LYNELL JINKS: Being able to climb the barricade, and destruction on the barricade, and women can actually bleed this year. There's so much that we've put into not only just the base game, but to my rights, having two different stories and having branch points and replayability there, universe, like adding a ton of features that people have been asking for, for years, like multi-day PLEs, tournaments like King of the Ring, Queen of the Ring. We didn't sleep on our fan base, and we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into this game. If you haven't played a wrestling game in a long time and you're a little intimidated because you're like, oh, yeah, I'm more used to playing traditional games like Platformers or whatever, turn on that third person camera, right? And you can do it in the entrances to kind of like get a different perspective and see what it's like to get that pulled-out view, and see like, you know, the crowd going nuts when you're coming down, or while you're playing in a match, right? And it adds a whole nother element to it that feels really familiar, right, where you're like, oh, this is a wrestling game where I'm running around almost like, you know, someone from GTA, you know, whooping somebody's candy ass. You know, like, I think it scratches the itch that you didn't know you had.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, absolutely, and it's funny because, to tie the third-person camera back into The Island, is that we made the decision to move forward with the third-person camera because of his need for The Island, and early on in development, Jennifer Lear, who was helping out with that, she had it working probably earlier than anticipated, and it was working so smoothly, it was like, wow, and so he dropped it into normal gameplay, and it just became a hit amongst the team, and it was like, wow.

LYNELL JINKS: We made it the default for a month just so we can test all the different scenarios, make sure it didn't break. One of my favorite things is like hell in a cell. You climb up on that hell in a cell, and all of a sudden you almost feel like you're in like a zombie, like, horde mode, right, where like you see all the guys climbing up on the side, you're like rotating the camera around, like, oh, here they come, and then throwing someone off and getting that view where you just see them falling down, and going, you're like, oh, man, it's just -- it's something special about it.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, something special that we didn't even think.

LYNELL JINKS: No.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: Where it was like, and again, it's one of those things where our team, our team is so great, and she came and was just like, "Hey, maybe we should try this," because she cared and she thought it was cool.

MALIK PRINCE: I love that.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: And I mean, I'm just so blessed to work with yourself and everybody else on this team. Like, this is the best group of people that I've worked with, and I've been doing this for almost 20 years.

MALIK PRINCE: Honestly, it feels like a labor of love. I'm getting my hands on the controller and playing. Everything you all said is so true, especially in the points of these additions that you're making. I was playing an intergender match. I had Rhea Ripley on a T-shirt versus Dom, and even listening to Michael Cole kind of comment on the actual storyline and the fact that they were fighting, like those things have to be added, so there's so many things more than just the addition of a mode and all the work that goes behind it, but the tiny little details, and you all nailed it. You all nailed it. And so again, the game is out March 7th in early access, March 14th for everyone. Lynell, Bryan, thank you so much for joining me. I feel like we need to make this a yearly thing. So this is the second year. We'll see you next year, right?

LYNELL JINKS: Tradition.

BRYAN WILLIAMS: It's tradition. It's a streak now. Let's go.

MALIK PRINCE: Awesome. And that is a wrap on WWE 2K25 Creator Fest. I had such a blast. Huge shout out to 2K for inviting me, and of course all of you. I got to talk to WWE superstars. I got to play the game. I got to put myself on the cover of WWE 2K25. It was a blast, so remember WWE 2K25 is out in early access March 7th, and of course, for everyone else, on March 14th, and if you pick up the Deadman edition, you walk away with something extra special. That is the dynamic background for The Deadman, The Undertaker. Again, thank you so much for watching. I'm going to go play some more games. I'll catch you next time. Peace. [ Music ]