Meanwhile, with the men’s game, you can guide your favorite team to a new NBA dynasty or your created player to a Hall of Fame career. “Play Now” didn’t improve much between Live 18 and Live 19 it still features generic commentary from non-WNBA announcers, with minimal usage of team or player names, and only allows for one game at a time, played in complete isolation from anything else. EA gave players two ways to play with WNBA talent in NBA Live 19 - the aforementioned “The One” mode as well as the returning “Play Now” mode. But whatever the reason for this design choice, the WNBA players ended up with suppressed ratings.īut in the end, the ratings for the WNBA players are almost insignificant. Maybe they wanted to avoid the inevitable backlash of putting a WNBA star on par with the likes of Lebron or Steph Curry. Maybe the developers truly believe WNBA talent is inferior to that of the NBA. Meanwhile, Lebron is a 97 Overall while players like Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Candance Parker, Elena Delle Donne, and Britney Griner all find themselves in the high 80s to low 90s. The highest-rated WNBA star at launch was Maya Moore at 93 Overall. The problem with this approach is that placing everyone in the same talent pool means you end up comparing WNBA players to NBA players, something that will only ever hurt the WNBA talent. This means that if a player was rated as a 90, it meant the same thing regardless of the league the person played in.
When it came to player ratings, EA was very clear that they had employed universal ratings across the players in the game. The game’s other failings come from issues surrounding the gameplay itself.
This means that EA ignores the WNBA’s history while actively celebrating the NBA’s. And if that wasn’t enough, all three of the WNBA icons are active players while half of the NBA icons are retired legends. So even before you get into the actual gameplay, the game already prioritizes men’s basketball. In total, there are 22 icons from the NBA and three from the WNBA. This mechanic works by giving your character specific stat boosts. After choosing your playstyle, you choose an associated icon to emulate. This mechanic ties big names from the world of basketball to the game's eleven playstyles. A big feature of character creation is the icon system. Unfortunately, it’s a bold claim that the game doesn’t live up to.ĭespite what EA claimed, icons, ratings, and game modes prove that the footing is far from equalĮven before you’ve finished making your character in NBA Live 19, the inequality is clear. “We wanted to make sure that our females were on the same footing as the males” This time, WNBA players would be included in the single-player mode known as “The One,” which revolves around your custom character playing alongside NBA and WNBA talent on a pro-am circuit.ĮA heavily publicized this addition to the game, and touted it as a boon for gender equality. September 14th 2018 105 Retweets 538 Likesīut Live 19 would be different. Oh, and there were some, uh, issues with how the character models looked and behaved. However, they could only be used in a single-game exhibition mode known as “Play Now” where commentators rarely used team or player names. But until a couple of years ago, video games ignored the fact that women play basketball.ĮA broke the gender barrier in 2017, when NBA Live 18 became the first basketball game to feature WNBA teams. The company hoped that this newest installment could revive the series, and maybe even put it on par with the immensely more popular NBA 2K franchise, which was made by rival publishers, 2K Sports.īasketball video games are some of the most popular in the sports game genre. However, their basketball franchise had always struggled, and the 2010s had been particularly bad for the series.
When it came to sports games, EA had found success with games like FIFA and Madden. Mahar was in the middle of promoting NBA Live 19. “Basketball lends itself to equality,” Mike Mahar, a senior producer at the video game developer EA, told Katie Barnes of ESPN in July of 2018. Basketball video games need to start showing the WNBA the respect it deserves