Is MLB the Show 21 the Video Game of the Year?

The official Major League Baseball video game, MLB the Show 21, and the developers of the game, San Diego Studios, have been making an amazing effort to push out consistent content updates to keep the game interesting.

This year’s version of the game was released on April 16th, 2021. There has been a total of four million copies of the game sold since its release. Previous years of the game had only sold roughly 1 million copies. There has been a big jump in sales this year simply because Xbox has made the game available to play. Previously, MLB the Show 21 has been a PlayStation exclusive. In addition, players who own the Xbox Game Pass also have access to play the game completely for free. Thanks to this, the player base has been expanded, and popularity began to grow thanks to YouTube and TikTok. For example, a YouTuber known as “Littlemann17” has amassed over 130k subscribers who has become an internet sensation.

The most popular game mode in MLB the Show 21 is Diamond Dynasty. Diamond Dynasty is a game mode where you build your own team using baseball cards of real players. These players can be acquired through gameplay, such as events, daily moments, and team affinity, or these players can also be acquired through the online marketplace by using the in-game currency called stubs. These stubs can be obtained by simply playing the game. All of these variables allow the user to make a squad of his/her choice. The Diamond Dynasty game mode is a fan favorite; therefore, San Diego Studios spends most of their resources making recurring updates to the game mode.

Some examples of what San Diego Studios does to make Diamond Dynasty so great could be such as the Inning Programs. The Inning Programs is a monthly update where the player can acquire certain items/players by playing the game. There is also the Daily Moments Program that is updated monthly. There are certain players and packs that are available if the player completes a simple historic moment per day. Next, there are Team Affinity programs that have been typically bi-monthly updates. San Diego Studies does a great job with the Team Affinity Program as the content in it takes a week or two of playing to complete. With all of this just being the bigger content updates in the game, it can become easy to see why so many players have continued to play the game. Since the game constantly updates, the meta is constantly changing. The same player card that was good one week ago may be completely useless if San Diego Studios releases a bunch of big hitters thereafter.

Many people may argue that some popular game modes are just a copy and paste from previous years. For example, Road to the Show mode (RTTS) is a popular game mode where you build your own player and take him through the Minor Leagues until he becomes a Major League legend. The developers have made major changes throughout the years, but users who play RTTS regularly will come to find that the game mode becomes repetitive. Every player is excited when their player gets the call up to the majors, but the content hits a brick wall after that. This is just another example of a gaming studio killing off great potential for single-player modes.

Franchise mode has the potential to be good, but most users just draft superstar players. One issue with the game in general is that in order to acquire certain players/items in Diamond Dynasty, they require you to play game modes such as March to October or Showoff. These are dead game modes that a player shouldn’t be forced to play.

On top of this, there have been numerous glitches that have made online games unfair. First year Xbox players have also complained about having a disadvantage in online matches since the PlayStation players have had many years of experience.

Of course, RTTS has gone downhill, but overall, it is still an exciting single-player mode. One could argue that Diamond Dynasty could be used as a single-player mode since you can play against CPU. Diamond Dynasty is really the pinnacle of the game. The best aspect by far is that all players and items can be acquired purely by playing the game. San Diego Studios purposely made the in-game currency expensive so that players would grind to receive items. Some cards can be near impossible to acquire unless you are in the top bracket of global players, but yet again, other gaming studios would make it so that you would need to pay real money for the item.

Other sports games get a lot of hate because they copy and paste from years past. This is not the case with MLB the Show 21 as the they update the game significantly from prior years. Players feel as if they should go out and order the game each year. MLB the Show isn’t changing from year to year, but from day to day. There is something for everybody, from beginners to pros.