Back in April, 2K Games confirmed that they won’t release their annual WWE simulation later this year following the disaster that was 2K20. However, the franchise will make a comeback next year, as the developers are taking an extra year to make sure that their next WWE game doesn’t end up being as disastrous the franchises’ most recent installment.

With that in mind, Visual Concepts has posted a new job listing, as they’re looking for a new game designer for WWE 2K22. Judging from the job description, which can be seen below, it looks like their new game designer will be working on the game’s creation suite, including the design of belts, arenas, wrestlers, move sets, and more.

“In the role of Game Designer, you will dive into WWE 2K’s expansive creation systems, including character, arena, entrance, championship and move-sets, working on design documents, implementing features via our game editing tools and collaborating with designers, producers, artists, engineers and testers to help make the next iteration of WWE 2K’s Creation suite the best ever.”

Visual Concepts’ Patrick Gilmore recently did a Reddit AMA, in which he talked about what the devs are taking into consideration while developing WWE 2K22, with the biggest revelation being that they’re taking inspiration from two classic wrestling games: WWE SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain and WWF No Mercy. Also, he said that 2K’s next WWE simulation will be built around the following six core pillars.

  • Core Gameplay: making the superstar vs. superstar gameplay the best it’s ever been.
  • Emergence: leveraging physics and more generic object/environment systems to enable spectacular gameplay that players feel in control of.
  • WWE Experience: delivering an end-to-end true WWE experience in all aspects of the game, from UI and wrapper, to superstars, match types, and story modes.
  • Online: improving all aspects of the online experience.
  • Character: make the best looking superstars of all time.
  • Create: Upgrade the creation suite, and make our community creation tools feel like magic to use.

Of course, 2K is still going to release a WWE game this fall — WWE 2K Battlegrounds — but it’s more of an arcade-style game, in the same vein as their NBA Playgrounds series. As of right now, the details about the game a sparse, as we don’t know what games modes or how many wrestlers will be featured, but given that the game has a fall 2020 release window, we should be getting some gameplay details soon.