Another big sports game is making steps towards adding greater female representation in the genre. 2K Sports announced that NBA 2K20 will feature the series debut of the WNBA. The NBA 2K20 WNBA announcement comes in the footsteps of similar efforts from FIFA 20 and 2K Sports’ own WWE 2K20.
2K Games made the announcement with a new short video feature. The announcement also confirms that all 12 WNBA teams, with their complete rosters are coming included. Sadly, no WNBA stars are making the cover of the game — that’s already taken up by the NBA’s Anthony Davis and Dwayne Wade.
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Originally founded in 1997, the WNBA stands as the women’s counterpart the the NBA. With this, it should come as no surprise that five WNBA teams have direct NBA counterparts: the Atlanta Dream, Indiana Fever, Los Angeles Sparks, Minnesota Lynx, and Phoenix Mercury. These clubs, and the eight other teams, will all be playable in NBA 2K20‘s Play Now and Season modes.
To help properly represent these players, 2K Games has gone ahead and created unique animations, play styles, and visuals for the women’s players. The video feature actually shows WNBA players Candace Parker and Breanna Stewart during motion capture sessions. NBA 2K20 gameplay director Mike Wang states in the video that their team created “at least” 3,000 to 5,000 new animations just for the WNBA players.
With this announcement, as well as WWE 2K20‘s increased focus on women’s wrestlers, it seems that 2K Sports is doubling down on including women athletes in its sports titles. With many of the women athlete’s involved in these old enough to have grown up playing these games, some would say that the addition was a long time coming. Hopefully, this means that more women athletes will get represented not just in 2K Sports’ other titles, but in sports games in general.
