Big Ant Studios, one of Australia’s largest game developers, has today announced that for the first time ever, women players and teams will be part of the cricket video game experience, in the upcoming Don Bradman Cricket 17.
Known for its unparalleled, deep, character creation options with male players and teams, gamers will now be able to extend the same level of customisation with female players. They will also be able to create teams from scratch to square off against the world’s best, and upload their favourite teams so other gamers can import them into their own game.
Ross Symons, CEO of Big Ant Studios, said, “in cricket, the growth of the women’s game worldwide has been exciting to watch. We wanted to do something genuine to bring gender balance to our take on the game, and we’re immensely proud to be the first developer in the world to feature women in a cricket game with Don Bradman Cricket 17.”
Gamers can already get a taste for the female character creation options they will have at their disposal, with an update to the Don Bradman Cricket Academy app (now available through Steam), allowing them to build as many characters as they like from scratch.
Big Ant’s commitment to representing the women’s game in a completely authentic and realistic manner has meant that the developer is using full motion capture technology to accurately reflect the fine movements of the women as they play the sport. To capture the best of the best, Big Ant has called on the talents of a couple of the Australian women’s cricket team to provide the movements for the in-game avatars via motion capture.
“One thing we decided from early on was that we didn’t want to be tokenistic about this; we wanted to ensure that, just as in the men’s game, that the women’s is as completely true to the sport as is possible” Symons said.
Don Bradman Cricket 17 is slated for release in December 2016. Further updates to the Cricket Academy in the coming months will give players the ability to test other features in the game before launch.