MLB The Show 24 adds “Female Player Mode”

[Fingolfin]

“Vladimir Guerrero Jr Is Your MLB The Show 24 Cover Athlete”
https://theshow.com/news/vladimir-guerr ... r-athlete/

“MLB The Show 24 unveils female player mode 'Women Pave Their Way'“
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/396 ... -their-way

Cool to see Vladimir Guerrero Jr on cover: he’s a badass power hitter, following in his father’s footsteps (now in Cooperstown, Vlad Sr was on 2006 cover).

Personally haven’t owned MLB The Show since 2018; only rarely play Xbox 360 FIFA 2014 Brazil WC and other than that only racing games as far as sports games go these days.


Wondering what you think about MLB The Show 24 adding/having a “female player mode.”

On my end it’s not a big deal at all but it is interesting to see this in MLB The Show 2024:

A) as a movement towards inclusiveness for women (and folks who identify as women/female) but also men who want to play baseball or other sports video games as a female character/female persona

but/and also

B) additionally interesting regarding (might be a decade or more away) the possibility of having qualified women playing historically male sports in the future

That may never happen but pro baseball would be one of the more likely sports where that may possibly happen at some point: little contact involved — and less and less hard contact on base paths/sliding into a base due to rules changes; could easily imagine an athletic woman who is so inclined to play/try to play pro baseball being a great fielder, good at the plate (hitting for average), being a good base runner/base stealer and maybe even a good MLB pitcher.

***Gotta be PC cause it’s Women’s History Month and often (always?) it’s a good thing to keep in the good graces of the fairer sex.

(How ironic is that last statement?
Many layers/levels of irony there)

[BryanM]

I initially "pfft'ed". Assuming it was probably going to be performative unequal representation anyway, since there was no way they'd pay for likenesses that wouldn't really move boxes.

Spending a little time to learn that there currently is no women's professional league made that impression kind of moot. So um, yeah. Add women to the character creator. An incredible innovation available on wrestling games on the Nintendo 64 about 25 years ago. Sometime is the time, and now sure is sometime.

(The people angry over this are ridiculous little dweebs. "A feature literally nobody asked for. 65 trillion people on this planet and not a single one, not a single one, wanted to see girls play baseball.")

(I mean, they're wrong about the world of video games. But... kind of have a point about it, the real life situation taken into account. I think and hope it's mainly a massive disinterest in baseball that was the cause. Even playing the sport is only fun if you're with good friends and you're all getting plastered.)

(Well at least they have a softball league~)

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I don't care much either way with the addition of female players. If they have a cool story mode it might be worth checking out. Something like a female who can pitch in relief really well or something like that and manages to make it to the bigs would be much believable.

I really wish they would make the franchise mode better instead. It's not bad but compared to NBA 2K the franchise modes are really lacking.

I haven't really played this series much at all since 21. I think Pro Yakuu Spirts is a much better game despite the language barrier. I have to use the Google translate camera here and there to play it. I think it has a much better system for batting.

I also think that Super Mega Baseball 3 and 4 are much better games with better mechanics also.

Not that I think The Show is bad. I think the pitching is probably better in The Show. But it's a little too involved and wears out my hands pretty quickly. It's just a little stale for me at this point.

[Jeneki]

I guess 1991 SNK's release of Super Baseball 2020 was off by a couple years with its female players. Now where's our robot players?

[Koa Zo]

I think so long as the female players wear tight panties shorts this will be a hit.
Famicom's 1989 I Love Softball set the precedent here.

[BryanM]

One of those ridiculous things I learned about the MLB recently is that they've banned little people from the league. Which would be over-turned if someone wanted to hire a player of that stature, since it's an illegal rule in current times.

Then there's the conjecture that this could be viable, the small strike zone would often earn a base. They throw a pinch runner out there. And they'd score a fraction of an extra run per game.

It kind of puts many of the things my robot brain hates about the game into relief: the subjective, arbitrary strike zone. The letting-some-other-player play the game for you rules. Cricket is so much more respectable, as a rules system.

Anyway, maybe some day a sports game will be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

You know those video games that give you total freedom to date any NPC that you want to? If you're really the team manager, and not some powerless stooge, you should be able to hire anyone you want.

Ain't no rule that says a dog can't play baseball.

[evil_ash_xero]

Guys, you know that BryanM is just gonna come in here and take over the conversation. It's like a dog whistle.

If we get too political, Mischief Maker and some other powerful beings may show up.

They beat the fight out of me, and I started the "Gamergate" thread.

[BryanM]

If we get too political, Mischief Maker and some other powerful beings may show up.

They beat the fight out of me, and I started the "Gamergate" thread.

There's nothing political about boobies and wieners ya goofball

Politics is about the share of the treasure, slavery, and death. In the real world. Everything else is just vibes and symbols

[Fingolfin]

Wieners, eh?

I do enjoy a good beer brat or beer steamed hot dog and a beer with beisbol…however…a Weiner/weiner by another name…is just not the same.

Wiener Lokalbahnen — a local train for all Wieners!
https://www.wlb.at/
https://youtube.com/shorts/x9GjSOE4J_U? ... 9awh0Q92F5

Recognizing that FIFA Soccer & NBA2K have had women since 2015 and 2019 respectively as part of their games, the reason I brought up the change to MLB The Show this year adding women players was due to the fact that baseball has historically been more conservative than other sports; also the fact that women have been playing soccer and basketball professionally on a large scale with various leagues and at several levels (national and different tiered club teams) for nearly 30 years. There is not professional baseball for women in a way that is even remotely comparable.

There are professional women baseball players and teams but on a much smaller scale than is the case for soccer and basketball: women baseball players are paid — so they are professionals — but these are demonstration teams without full fledged leagues. Similarly, there are women’s professional (American) football teams too but they are also more like demonstration teams than competitive club leagues.

Not entirely unlike the Harlem Globetrotters — professional spectacle competitions for women baseball and contact football players are quite different from the professional league based competition that exists for professional women soccer & basketball players.

PLAYERS ASSOCIATION
ALL-AMERICAN GIRLS PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL LEAGUE
https://aagpbl.org/player-association
https://www.aagpbl.org/

Women’s Pro Football
https://wfaprofootball.com/

And along the lines of a future for women in Major League Baseball…

“Will Women Play Major League Baseball? (And Not Just on TV)”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/well ... on-tv.html

Trying to restate another thought about what adding women to MLB The Show this year does for the game itself and video games in general, what do you think about the RPG aspect of what this new mode offers? — that gender isn’t defined/doesn’t have to be defined by playing the game as it has existed before and how it had been traditionally considered: as a male only game.

Point I’m trying to make (and doing so poorly) is that it seems like video games have become much less male centric/male dominated from a player standpoint. When I play most online games/games with online multiplayer/online components, it seems like a lot of dudes are playing by means of a female avatar/female personna. Yes, of course there are real women playing video games but there are also a lot of guys playing as female characters, opting for a female character vs a male character.

Lots of reasons for this being the case; I don’t care why just it is interesting that this is a prevalent thing in video games today. This is just interesting to me and not so much on a social/societal level but just a pretty big change in games and video game playing that’s been taking place since the late 90’s/early 2000’s.

Not at all “judging” this phenomenon: just curious to see how video games have changed, evolved, etc. So for me this is a history of video games thing not a political/social change thing.

[evil_ash_xero]

If we get too political, Mischief Maker and some other powerful beings may show up.

They beat the fight out of me, and I started the "Gamergate" thread.

There's nothing political about boobies and wieners ya goofball

Politics is about the share of the treasure, slavery, and death. In the real world. Everything else is just vibes and symbols

You know what I mean, Casper. That's my last comment in this thread. I know better.