If you’re anything like me, you’re an NBA fan who honestly couldn’t name more than a handful of WNBA players. But I think the WNBA could gain a lot of new fans, and the NBA 2K games might sell even better, if the WNBA were included in the NBA video games.
So why hasn’t this happened yet?
It won’t sell any more copies of the game, so the WNBA would have to provide some incentive to 2k to add rosters and likenesses of WNBA players and teams to the game, then 90% of the players would avoid playing them and a small percentage would protest about their inclusion.
It would be weird to have powered down players who can’t do as well as the guy players. I mean, the best WNBA team would only be able to competitively beat the other WNBA teams.
I guess I’m assuming they made it realistic. Otherwise, they cold just make their own WNBA game.
There are tennis games that contain men and women. I think the women’s game is more spin and control based, so there is a distinction.
Because absolutely no one cares about the WNBA. Why would a gamer want to play an inferior version of basketball, anyway?
They should start by adding in some WNBA stars to the regular NBA games as a bonus, like how NBA Jam used to add celebrities to its roster. Then, maybe in some special mode of the game, have a WNBA team in there for the hell of it. Call it the Fantasy Mode or something, where you get a full roster of WNBA All-Stars or the current WNBA championship team play against a men’s team. Maybe add in female options to the character creation. After a few years of this, it normalizes WNBA players being in the game as a special addition, then you can drop the full league in there. There’s only 12 teams, it won’t take too much more effort to put them in as opposed to a full set of men’s teams.
I’d rather see an independent developer tackle a WNBA game; if I had the capital, I’d take a shot at it, myself.
Of course, I’d be doing it as a labor of love, not with the ambition of turning a profit. If I sold 10,000 copies, I’d be ecstatic.
If 2k thought they could get two nickels in micro-transactions it would be added in a second.
NBA Jam was a wacky, arcade style (and originally arcade) 2 on 2 game. Adding people that don’t belong competing against the regular NBA players just added to the wackiness. That’s not the same sort of game 2K puts out at all.
Furthermore, they’d need to acquire the WNBA license (which would cost money), get the NBA’s approval to do this sort of thing in “their” game, beyond the license fee it would cost more to develop and test, and likely wouldn’t do jack to increase sales.
And if they did, a college game would probably sell better.
The short answer is “because there is no demand for it”. Attendance at WNBA games is the lowest of their 19 year history. Cite, and half the teams in the WNBA lose money.
Regards,
Shodan
Probably for the same reason FIFA 16 and 17 include women’s national teams? Not to mention England’s League 2 (three divisions below the Premier League) and Italy’s Serie B.
The actual answer is probably along the lines of, because the increased revenue wouldn’t come close to the licensing costs, and even if the league gave the rights to use the team logos and uniforms for free, I doubt the WNBA players’ union would do the same concerning the players’ names and likenesses.
EA used to include the NFL Europe teams in Madden NFL; I’d occasionally play against them, just for amusement, because they were so much weaker than even a bad NFL team. I imagine that the NFL wanted them in there to bolster interest in their minor league, but it was always kind of weird.
It’s probably relatively easy to stack up NBA players vs. each other based on physical characteristics and statistical information, and probably equally easy to stack up WNBA players against each other in the same ways.
But how do you stack up NBA vs. WNBA players and get a realistic comparison? That’s something that the game developers would probably have to try and model, and I suspect the comparisons would come out pretty much uniformly in favor of the NBA players.
Combine that with a lack of demand, and that’s probably why it’s not getting done.
Other WNBA teams are the teams they should be expected to beat. If they added the WNBA to the 2K series, I wouldn’t expect users to be able to play WNBA teams against NBA teams any more than they could play D-League teams versus NBA teams in previous iterations. Allowing the men to play against the women is a self-fulfilling, bias confirming and, frankly, stupid idea.
So you’re proposing a WNBA2K game to try and market alongside the NBA2K game? If there was a market, there would already be one.
The OP more or less suggested including the women in the men’s game, which would require being able to pit them against each other, I’d imagine. Otherwise, you may as well split them out entirely.
At least one previous 2K game had a mode in which you could manage a D-League team: I don’t remember whether you could actually play as the D-League team, but I do know for sure that the D-League teams could only play against other D-League teams. Presumably, if they put the WNBA into a 2K game, it would operate similarly.
People actually care about female soccer though, mostly because it’s soccer but still.
They have women’s (national) teams in FIFA and they can’t play against the men - the women’s skill scale is also separate from the men’s.
I expected someone to bring this up.
As one poster said, theres infinitely more interest in women’s soccer than women’s basketball. Heck, when it comes to the soccer World Cup, I’d argue the ladies get more press than the men in the US.
Also, from a spectator point of view the women’s game more closely matches the men in soccer than hoops. They won’t lower the rim height in basketball for women because that would be an embarrassing admission that female basketball players aren’t equal to the men; therefore you have a hard to watch a game of overhanded passes and bad shot taking, while the mens version features athletic dunks.
In soccer, the playing field is more equal. Soccer requires the average player to run about 6 miles per game, which women can do. Footwork and passing, which women can do. The shooting v goaltending matches in women’s soccer should be close to that of men as well. Physicality? Watched enough games to tell you lady soccer players can be NASTY.
This is not to imply, as some soccer-haters have stupidly implied here and elsewhere, that women soccer players are equal to the men in ability. Its just that soccer, like tennis, gymnastics, combat sports, and other sports allow women to entertain on almost an even, if not better level than the mens version. Basketball cannot unless you lower the rim, equivalent of moving the tee forward in golf.
Now they could do that in the WNBA, and put that in the video game, but why would I want to play a version of the video game that is inherently inferior by its nature?
Therefore I while I haven’t tried it yet, I see no reason why I couldn’t play the women’s soccer module in FIFA and not be just as entertained.
These statements imply the belief that dunking is a required element of entertainment in basketball. That’s not a position that I’m willing to stipulate.