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The WNBA has taken over ESPN, Nike's new commercials screech "I am woman, hear me roar!" and Sheryl Swoopes has her own tennis shoe. And now women are getting their own digital basketball game as well.
Today, Electronic Arts shipped the PlayStation title "NCAA March Madness '98," based on the annual college basketball tournaments, with the first women-only team in an electronic sports game.
"Women's sports in the last few years have gained a lot of momentum, awareness, and coverage," says EA producer Ken Balthaser. "We felt the time was right to dip our toes in the water and see how appreciated this would be."
Sports titles, although one of the most popular genres of games, have never sold well with women. Balthaser estimates that fewer than 5 percent of the sports-gaming audience is female. The woman behind March Madness, Mitzi McGilvray, hoped to increase the female audience by offering game characters that women would relate to.
Rather than simply grafting breasts onto male players, EA took the time to differentiate the women's play from the men's. The EA producers motion-captured college basketball stars like Kate Starbird and Yolanda Griffith to come up with 100 to 125 unique moves. The results, says Balthaser, is that the women's game consists of "less showboating, and more the roots of basketball" - teamwork, strategy, and discipline.
There is, however, still inequality on the court. Men's teams in the game number 107, while the women's teams constitute only nine. What's more, the women's teams can only play exhibition matches. Tournament play is male-only.
But a small step, say female gamers, is still a step in the right direction. "I think this is probably one of the first games where the company has recognized the potential female consumer base, and has included elements in the game to appeal to females (i.e. the use of women players in the game for women to play... not the use of sexy women in games for men to play)," emails Vangie Beal, editor of GameGirlz, a women's gaming site.
The gaming industry is, in fact, mimicking the sports industry's sudden interest in women. Realizing the huge potential audience for female gamers, games such as Tomb Raider, Virtua Fighter 2 and Quake 2 have added female characters and begun marketing to women. Beal says that GameGirlz traffic has tripled in recent months, and due to reader request the site is now adding a sports games area.
EA is using the March Madness game as a test, and will only continue the girl-jock trend if the title sells well. To help it along, they plan to skew their advertising to address the female market. But if it is a hit, Balthaser says, we will likely see other sports titles with female teams - and perhaps eventually even women-only games.
