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