WWE 2K22 MyGM Hands-On Preview

WWE 2K22 is finally adding one of the most requested features of the last decade with MyGM mode and we had the opportunity to try out the new mode ahead of the release in a hands-on preview.

It has been a few years since the last WWE game, with the series taking a hiatus after the disappointing WWE 2K20 amid changing developers beforehand.

The good news is that WWE 2K22 is already shaping up to be a much better experience and MyGM plays a large part in that.

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MyGM mode literally lets you become the GM of a brand and perform all of the tasks associated with doing so, including drafting a roster and booking shows week to week.

The way MyGM mode is setup is you select your own GM and brand to represent and go head-to-head against a rival GM and brand for an entire season of either 15 weeks, 25 weeks, or 50 weeks with the goal of becoming the most successful.

To start, you have to pick which GM you want to play as within MyGM mode, including Adam Pierce, Sonya Deville, William Regal, Shane McMahon, and Stephanie McMahon. In addition, you can also create a custom superstar to use as your own GM too, but that was not available in our preview at this time.

From there, you get to pick the brand you wish to represent between Smackdown, Raw, NXT, and NXT UK as well. For both the brand and the choice of GM, you also get special what are known as Power Cards that can be quite useful.

Power Cards are one time use power-ups that can be used in MyGM mode and are earned throughout your MyGM season. In addition, a rotation of three will also be available each week in the in-game store that you can purchase with in-game currency as well.

These Power Cards vary greatly in what they do, such as Sonya Deville’s “A Superstar’s GM” Power Card raising the entire roster’s morale by 15+ or the Raw exclusive Power Card “This Is War” randomly blocking three superstars on the opposing brand from being booked in matches the following week. These add a great deal of strategy into the mix when they can be used on the opposing GM too, which can also hurt you when they use one on you as well.

After selecting you GM and brand, it’s time to draft your roster starting with a budget of $2,750,000 across an eight or more round draft. You are required to draft at least eight superstars, with the option to continue drafting more if you want to spend additional money to keep the draft going.

The superstars themselves are broken down into Good Guys or Bad Guys first, then broken down further into five different classes that include Bruisers, Fighters, Specialists, Cruisers, and Giants. It’s very important to draft a diverse roster that includes a mix of males and females, Good guys and Bad guys, and different classes that will lead to well booked matches down the road.

One interesting thing I noticed was that not every draft seemed to have the same superstars available to choose from to draft either. For instance, my first draft had Brock Lesnar as an option, while another I tried did not. This may be a semi-annoyance for players that want to draft certain superstars and are not able to, but perhaps that is something that will change.

You may also be wondering where some classic wrestlers such as Undertaker might be, as they always make their way into games such as these. They are instead available within MyGM mode’s Legends feature, which allows you to spend money on signing them to short term contracts that are very pricy. This is also available to sign free agents to add to your roster for a specific amount of weeks at a time too, but they are much more affordable.

After drafting the team, the main goal of MyGM is to book your shows week to week and best the rival GM. This starts with booking the matches themselves, where you can’t just throw two superstars with a lot of popularity and expect it to lead to a great turnout.

Instead, you have to look at the matchups between classes first and foremost, which the game helps you with by lighting up green when selecting a matchup that pairs well. For instance, Fighters vs. Bruisers are a good matchup, while Specialists can go up against anyone and lead to a great match.

Just picking the right class matchup isn’t the only key to a great match rating, as you also have to factor in match types as well. Within MyGM mode in WWE 2K22, you have the option between five match types with escalating costs associated with them, including Normal, Tables, Extreme Rules, TLC, and Hell in a Cell. You can save money by doing a Normal match that has no bells and whistles, but paying for say an Extreme Rules Match will help you raise that end of show match rating.

Basic week to week shows feature three matches for you to book, the opener, the midcard, and the main event. There are also two promos to book as well, which vary from Self Promo to Call Outs and even Advertising.

For each of these matches, you have to pick the superstars involved and the match type, but you can also choose to book an interference as well. An interference can be a run-in by a specific superstar on one of the superstars in the match or even a GM interference as well. This will lead to a DQ in the match and can really help to setup what are known as rivalries.

Rivalries play a big role in getting viewers by getting two superstars to feud with one another. Rivalries have four levels, starting at 1 and maxing out at 4. These rivalries may start from a run-in interference in one of their matches of even from being called out in a promo. The key here though is to end a level 3 or 4 rivalry at a PPV or the rivalry will get stale and start to lose viewers due to boredom over time. This kind of helps you figure out how to book shows leading up to and during a PPV too, which is nice to see.

Speaking of PPVs, they occur every five or so weeks and take things to the next stage by expanding the number of matches and promos by one. This means you have additional matches to book, which can get a bit harder too with each superstar having a stamina meter that can lead to injury if you allow it to get too low by wrestling too often. This is where more strategy comes into place, as you need to be careful with building up to PPVs and not overuse your superstars.

For both regular shows and PPVs, Show Logistics also play a major role in the financials of MyGM mode. For each show, you must pick an Arena, Crew, Special Effects, and Advertisement to use, with the base level of each costing $0. From there, you unlock the ability to use or purchase higher end options, with arenas ranging from the lowest end High School Gym and all the way up to Big Open Stadium. The difference though is that the Big Open Stadium arena costs $150,000 per show, which means you will need to really start pulling in the money to be using that. However, picking the higher end options will lead to more money and viewers being brought in too, so it can be well worth it in the long run.

For each week of MyGM mode, you can choose to simulate, spectate, or even play each match. While you can choose your champions at the beginning of MyGM mode, it did not seem that you could actually choose who wins the title when setting Title Matches there forward though, which was kind of surprising.

While only being able to check out MyGM mode in the upcoming WWE 2K22 for a couple of hours, I very much enjoyed what I was able to play and cannot wait to experience even more. As someone who is really into fantasy sports, this felt very much like that in a way and is something I can see many players getting very addicted to within the game.

The ease of jumping in for a few minutes to book matches and moving week to week is something that will be much more accessible than full scale matches for players with not as much time to spare, which should make MyGM mode a very big selling point for this game. Even so, the key for MyGM’s success will be the long term sustainability and whether or not is starts to feel stale after multiple play sessions, which we won’t really know until we get a chance to try for more than a couple of hours.

WWE 2K22 will be releasing on March 11 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

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