PGA 2K25 - Developer Q&A
HB Studios are continuing their love for all things golf in 2025 with the latest in their PGA 2K franchise hitting shelves soon. This studio has long been the premier golf game developer and with 2025 they are looking to keep a firm grip on that title with a host of new features and improvements. Just recently I was lucky enough to be able to sit down in a round table interview with Josh Muise, the Creative Director and Jordan Ault, the Senior Design Lead to ask a few questions and maybe get an inside look as to how this year’s entry is shaping up.
The interview kicked off with a question about the 2-year release window for PGA 2K titles as opposed to the traditional yearly release for many sports games. Josh explained that the extra year is not only great for development but for managing fan feedback as well “It gives us a unique opportunity to really try and solicit some of that long-tail user feedback that happens in the in-between years.” Said Josh. “We get to see how fans play our game after the initial release, how they play over time into the second year and it gives us the opportunity to be reflective on players’ wants along with what we are planning on our end.”
When asked about new players getting into this year’s entry Josh was super excited with this entry’s focus on reducing pushback on players who are perhaps not followers or players of golf in real life. “Golf is a tough sport and we are making a true-to-life simulation of that very tough sport and what we have realised the longer we have been able to make these great golf games is that the learning curve can be intimidating. We’ve brought in a new difficulty setting called Perfect Swing, which is our beginner entry level and it takes some of the additional challenge out of the deeper settings so that all we are asking of you is to get in there and move the stick up then move the stick down. We will take care of the rest. We hope this allows players to find success early and often and encourage them to keep playing, improving their skills and upping the difficulty as they play”
It was at this point I got to ask a question and for me, the story of HB Studios is super interesting, so I asked how the focus has changed since the early days of The Golf Club and if the core goals of that series are still what drives them. Josh immediately jumped in with a great answer “We are so lucky that the real core of this team has remained intact from those TGC days and has carried through so I think it has been an evolution year over year where we haven’t just grown our product, but our love for the sport.” he jokingly even commented on getting Tiger Woods on the cover. “If you are asking me if I think HB studios alone could have gotten Tiger Woods on the box, well I like to think we had that in us, but there is no doubt that the 2K logo makes those types of conversations easier.”
Jordan continued to explain. “We started out with a goal to make a video game for people who know and care about golf. That original goal didn’t really look at how we get people who don’t play golf interested in this. That desire to get new players through the door has become more and more prevalent in the cultural zeitgeist at the studio as time goes on. The relationship with 2K also helps to facilitate that. That fact that someone may have played our game and then went to play golf in real life, that is the ‘Chef’s kiss’ moment we are always looking for”
When asked about the significant graphical upgrades in PGA 2K25, Josh was full of praise for his art team. “The team was able to focus on the current-gen consoles for this cycle, which did result in a dramatic up-ressing this cycle. We understand that putting effort into the visual side was important so we went back, rescanned courses at higher resolutions to get better detail, and rescanned all of our pro players, we really did go back and touch about every corner of the product to give the highest quality pass we could do to push that graphical bar forward. This is a monumental jump from where we were previously and we couldn’t be happier where we ended up.”
Jordan jumped in when the pair were asked about this year’s course creator. “The import course feature will still be available and will be the same as always, allowing for courses created in the previous game to be imported. That said, there is a lot in the course designer that I think, folks who are serious about it, are going to want to spend some time exploring before publishing their old courses. It isn’t just a matter of better graphics, there are more tools in the course designer that will allow players to really go crazy with making things look amazing. We are always surprised by what the community can do when the game once it comes out and I think the things the community will come up with thanks to the changes in the course designer are going to be pretty incredible. We have had anecdotal information from testers in our community that say yeah, we need the course import feature but we don’t think people are going to want to do that because the toolset is such a big jump, serious designers will want to start fresh.”
Finally when asked about the career mode and if it was trending in the same direction as other sports titles like NBA 2K or EA FC, Josh was more than happy to explain where they are heading. “We have been able to start crafting that bespoke narrative experience and it’s exciting to see it come into the product because it is something we ourselves as gamers have longed for and it is something we have heard our fans asking for.” Jordan added “The focus really is on telling the player’s story as opposed to telling them our story. All the commentary adds to this with the conversations that come up being truly reflective of what the player is doing during the gameplay. Highlighting the player and what they are doing is our focus.”
It was great to be able to spend some time with Josh and Jordan, two developers who despite their long history in developing golf games, still have such a passion for bringing the sport to gamers everywhere.
PGA 2K25 is landing on the 27th of Feb with Deluxe and Legend edition pre-orders getting 7 days of early access. Stay tuned for a full review of PGA 2K25 on Player 2 ASAP.
