This was interesting... I would have liked to hear more of a challenge to the 'designing women into games cost too much' angle from Sports Interactive / Sega. Because that's an old and tired argument that's been going around gaming for a while. It's BS, basically, or so game designers I know tell me 🤷♀️
So glad to read about this topic. There is SOOO much more here! I do have to say, while i'm 1,000% bias, I wouldn't categorize our (NBA 2K) WNBA implementation as lazy. There were definitely shortcomings, and we have a long way to go, but it wasn't lazy.
If I remember the articles correctly, a lot of the less-visible men's leagues in the FM series are there largely through the efforts of volunteers, who do the scouting, rating estimates etc to get the basic information in place for the people who do the rest of the work. So it's not even that this would be completely uncharted territory - I suspect if they announced they would begin work on adding women, they'd be overwhelmed with volunteers who'd get player- and team-level info from women's leagues across the world.
Also, let's say that Sports Interactive had other sims in sports where women play professionally. Some of that modeling and localization could be used in ... say, a hockey sim. (It's true that they haven't updated Eastside Hockey Manager since 2015, but surging interest in women's hockey might help justify that if they had women's leagues in EHM.)
SI presumably diverted quite a few resources into making PC and mobile versions of FM Touch, which has been out for at least a couple of seasons now - as you pointed out, a one-time cost, and now they can reap profits from the annual versions of FM Touch as well as the main game. Maybe if they saw adding women's teams as a requirement for a complete game instead of as an obstacle, it'd happen ... or maybe if there were more women in decision-making positions at SI.
This was interesting... I would have liked to hear more of a challenge to the 'designing women into games cost too much' angle from Sports Interactive / Sega. Because that's an old and tired argument that's been going around gaming for a while. It's BS, basically, or so game designers I know tell me 🤷♀️
Also putting this here in case anyone is interested in more on the basketball side. https://www.wnba.com/news/wnba-player-participants-in-the-nba-2k-league-three-for-all-showdown/
So glad to read about this topic. There is SOOO much more here! I do have to say, while i'm 1,000% bias, I wouldn't categorize our (NBA 2K) WNBA implementation as lazy. There were definitely shortcomings, and we have a long way to go, but it wasn't lazy.
If I remember the articles correctly, a lot of the less-visible men's leagues in the FM series are there largely through the efforts of volunteers, who do the scouting, rating estimates etc to get the basic information in place for the people who do the rest of the work. So it's not even that this would be completely uncharted territory - I suspect if they announced they would begin work on adding women, they'd be overwhelmed with volunteers who'd get player- and team-level info from women's leagues across the world.
Also, let's say that Sports Interactive had other sims in sports where women play professionally. Some of that modeling and localization could be used in ... say, a hockey sim. (It's true that they haven't updated Eastside Hockey Manager since 2015, but surging interest in women's hockey might help justify that if they had women's leagues in EHM.)
SI presumably diverted quite a few resources into making PC and mobile versions of FM Touch, which has been out for at least a couple of seasons now - as you pointed out, a one-time cost, and now they can reap profits from the annual versions of FM Touch as well as the main game. Maybe if they saw adding women's teams as a requirement for a complete game instead of as an obstacle, it'd happen ... or maybe if there were more women in decision-making positions at SI.