EA’s decision last year to integrate the WNBA into NBA Live 18 was met with praise from media and basketball fans alike. This year, developer EA Tiburon is taking that commitment to the next level by adding female create-a-player.

“After releasing the WNBA Play now feature in NBA Live 18 we saw a huge response, not only from media sites but the community,” said creative director Ryan Santos. “We have a lot of female ballers out there who love the sport, who watch the WNBA and NBA, and who hoop. It felt like once we established The One, we now have a really solid foundation for a way to play the game in a new career mode; it was the right time to create that feature with female create-a-player. Because we already had the infrastructure for the WNBA - we had the models, we had the animation, we had the hairstyles - it was a natural progression for us to build off."

Fans can build their female create-a-player in The One mode and enjoy the same progression system as the male players. Users can take these lady ballers into Live Run, live events, and Streets World Tour to earn unique gear and rewards. The one major piece of the component still missing is being able to join the WNBA. Why not take this natural step forward?

“We ran out of time,” Santos said. “In the original designs, we wanted to have a professional path for the female characters to go into the WNBA. But we took on a whole new mode and all this other stuff, and we just ran out of runway to get to that mode. But it is in our future plans. It's something we want to deliver on ideally in the next version or after that."