By Alex P.
Ever since I’ve hopped on the sticks and became an avid video game player I can remember playing sports video games. No matter how bad I was at the game or even how much I understood the sport, I always had a great time playing sports video games. I still remember my first ever sports game I purchased, 2k15 with Kevin Durant on the cover, because I was tired of playing my dad’s old copies. Not until recently have I realized how underrepresented female athletes are in these beloved video games. Historically, female representation in sports video games has been lackluster, to say the least. Sports video game franchises whether it be NBA 2k, Madden, or FIFA release a new game every year and each year they become some of the top-grossing games. Unfortunately, these sports video games usually only feature male athletes or give little shine to female athletes if included in the game.
Recently, EA Sports, the video game developer behind the top sports games has been making a push to include more female athletes in their sports video games. In 2021, Candace Parker became the first female athlete to be featured on the cover of NBA 2k. Unfortunately, she is only on a special edition WNBA 25th anniversary cover that you can only get at GameStop. I think this is laughable because if NBA 2k truly cared about equal representation they would have put Candace Parker alongside Luka Doncic on the main game cover, instead of putting her on a North American exclusive special edition cover. Being on the cover of a sports video game is one of the highest honors athletes can achieve, it brings notoriety to the player and their hard work for that respective season. I did some research to better understand how underrepresented female athletes are in sports games and the results are shocking. From what I’ve gathered over the decades of sports video games, there have only been six female athletes featured on a cover and of those six female athletes three of them were featured on the cover of various WWE games.
Being on the cover of a sports game isn’t the only place where female athletes have been excluded. Until recently, female athletes were not even featured as playable characters in sports video games. For example it took NBA 2k twenty years to finally add WNBA players into the game, the NBA 2k franchise released its first game in 1999 and it wasn’t until 2019 till they added female athletes. FIFA first added Women’s International Soccer in 2016 when Alex Morgan shared the cover with Lionel Messi. FIFA 16 also had different star female athletes on various covers depending on what country or region you lived in. I think this is a great thing to do because soccer is the world’s largest sport, so women in countries who historically discriminated against women now can idolize their country’s female soccer superstar and possibly one day dream of being on the cover as well. One of the main reasons people play sports video games is for the career modes that allow you to create your own playable character and simulate what it would be like if you were a professional athlete. The career mode in a lot of sports games never allowed you to customize and play with a female character but in the most recent titles of NBA 2k and FIFA they have finally given players the choice of choosing a male or female character. FIFA and NBA 2k also just announced that they will be adding in for the first time ever female commentators. For FIFA, Alex Scott will be joining the franchise as a commentator, which makes her the first female English-speaking broadcaster in the games history. NBA 2k has also recently made Doris Burke the first female commentator in their games history. Doris Burke has been a prominent sideline reporter for the NBA and 2k for a long time but has recently been promoted to commentator. Also in NBA 2k22, Allie LaForce has recently replaced David Alridge as the games sideline reporter.
FIFA 16 cover/Alex Morgan in-game character | Photo Credit: SI Kids
Even though sports video games are taking steps in the right direction to better show equality in the world of sports, there is still much that needs to happen before true equality is reached. Throughout time female athletes have always faced problems dealing with underrepresentation, whether it be lack of funding, notoriety, or opportunity. I think that video game developers could produce an all-female video game sports franchise instead of just throwing them in as a token representation. That would show that they actually took time and money to develop a game that represents female athletes rather than just adding them into a small part of the respective sports video game.
Sources
https://screenrant.com/sports-video-game-women-players-team/
https://www.thegamer.com/sports-games-women-fifa-nba-football-manager-pga-tour/