Let’s Design a Video Game: Unrivaled Basketball

All pixel art by Stephen Williams

When I discover something I love, I tend to fall hard for it. Last year, the newest obsession I latched onto was women’s basketball. Like millions of others, I rode the Caitlin Clark wave into the sport, but by the time March Madness wound down, I was watching every game, reading draft projections, and fantasizing about unrealistic roster moves (please come to Indiana, Gabby Williams).  

UPDATE: Gabby Williams did not come to Indiana. 

The WNBA season runs for 40 games (now 44 with the addition of the Golden State Valkyries) beginning in mid May. This means the finals wrap up in October, and unless you find yourself attached to the drama of college hoops–there’s a sizable gap to fill until the draft the following April. Many players spend their offseason overseas to supplement their income, and while this presents opportunities to develop their skills against a pool of fresh talent, usually this comes at the expense of being forced away from their families and at the risk of serious injury (Seattle’s Nika Muhl being a recent victim of the latter). Partly to combat these issues and partly because women’s sports is on the rise, WNBA veterans Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier established a new league last year: Unrivaled Basketball. 

Unrivaled is a three-on-three, full court league for women (the “full” court is actually smushed a bit, but in practice this still mitigates some of the chaos of Olympic three-on-three). Currently, the league features six basketball clubs with six players on each: Mist, Laces, Phantom, Vinyl, Lunar Owls, and Rose. They offer more money than standard WNBA contracts and, at least during the inaugural season, equity in the league. I’ll quickly say that female athletes still have a long way to go towards matching the salaries of their male counterparts; but this is a good step in the right direction. For dedicated fans of the WNBA who already have their favorites, every match has the intrigue of an All-Star Game but with much higher stakes. 

After watching the first few weeks, I can confirm Unrivaled is fun. The pace is intense and most of the games are competitive. At the very least, regardless of what its legacy will be in the long run, I need basketball at every level to adopt the Elam Ending and how they chose to handle free throws. 

Assuming Unrivaled survives (and given the impressive business deals they’ve made so far, there’s no reason to believe it won’t), I’m already thinking about what its growth will look like. Some short term upgrades are obvious (like expanding their merch offering–at the time of this writing, I can’t even buy a jersey), but what about the more distant future? Video games are the lens we view everything through at Tactical Reload, and in the perfect world, it’s only a matter of time before the league gets its own. 

So let’s make one–on paper, anyway

And who better to lead this fictional design project than someone that cares way too much about both of these things? I am that specific slice of the Venn diagram. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, if we were still living in the DS and Wii era, there would already be three adaptations coming soon to a bargain bin near you. 

Before we talk pixels, one last disclaimer: I’m not currently employed by any developers or Unrivaled. This isn’t an ad (even if it does read like one), and I have no insider info. This is just for fun. But for the record, when all this inevitably comes to pass in the next couple years–I expect a producer and creative director credit.

Okay, I’ll settle for a special thanks.  

When I started planning this article, I originally played with the idea of inserting Unrivaled into the career mode of an existing video game (NBA 2K almost has a monopoly on the sport at this point, so for the purpose of this exercise, just pretend it’s there buried somewhere in all those microtransactions). In between regular seasons, your create a player avatar would receive an invitation from the league to spend the next eight weeks in Miami. Based on your performance over the course of 14 games, you would receive bonus cash and stat points to carry back. You could also use dialogue options to subtly influence free agents (it’s tampering) to join your franchise in the WNBA. I was ultimately undecided if this would be its own fully featured system with dating sim style social links. If any of my readers are talented, please draw some Persona style character portraits of Allisha Gray and Satou Sabally. 

I tossed this concept out almost immediately because the league has already done so much to establish its own identity. Lumping it in as a second thought would be doing the planners behind Unrivaled a disservice. While making this pivot, I hyper focused on the inherent attitude in Unrivaled and came to the conclusion that any game based off it should play like NBA Jam–or its spiritual successor, NBA Street. 

If you’re not as ancient as I am, NBA Jam is a franchise that was at its most popular during the early nineties. It’s two-on-two basketball with three minute quarters, acrobatic dunks, and practically drips with that aforementioned attitude. When someone references the arcade sports genre, they’re more than likely talking about NBA Jam (maybe NFL Blitz, but both series’ jerseys are cut from the same cotton blended synthetics). If you’ve ever been curious about the origins of the “He’s heating up!” and “He’s on fire!” samples DaBaby uses in the intro of some of his songs, now you know. 

NBA Jam will provide the foundation for our game. Though we’ll stick with three-on-three as opposed to two-on-two, and in the interest of speed, we’ll only allow substitutions between quarters (keeping the roster of six should allow for some fun lineup experimentation). And yes, there will be dunks so violent that we’ll never have to listen to an analyst talk about lowering the rims ever again. 

Free from budget constraints, the first thing we would do is give every team their own signature court. We’re also not bound by the constraints of reality when constructing these arenas. The Mist could play deep in the ferns of a redwood forest while the Phantom would hoop in a graveyard or the ballroom of a haunted house. Each of these would have unique stage obstacles–but don’t worry, like items in Super Smash Bros., these could be toggled off for a more “pure” basketball experience. 

In November, the rosters for Unrivaled were assembled by the league’s coaches before they knew which team they’d be responsible for leading. We’d keep the default lineups for the first entry of Unrivaled 25 (working title) but provide the option to randomize the teams in a separate mode (we’d accomplish this simply by slotting players into their new squads based on the position or the role they play). This feature alone would provide endless content. Want to push the replayability even further? Grab a group of friends and construct your own team from this pool of women in a fantasy style snake draft for a custom season. 

And that pool would only get deeper as secret characters are added periodically. Paige Bueckers and Flau’jae Johnson have already signed on for future seasons–so why not make them unlockable now? In Unrivaled: The Tournament (working title) there’s no reason to wait for your diploma. 

Beyond quickplay and the regular season, I see built-in potential for side content. You could collect and customize tunnel fits for different bonuses on the court. Some of the camera work is being handled by drone, and I think giving that control to the player to capture the action from new angles would be a wise decision. Imagine the adrenaline rush of dodging a Sabrina Ionescu bounce pass or Aliyah Boston block to get the perfect shot. You’d even be able to save and cut up the best clips from your best performances, edit them into hype reels, and upload your masterpieces directly to social media. 

If NBA Jam is our template, we might as well lean into the zaniness and include Mario Party style minigames, as well. For instance, Kate “Money” Martin’s Make it Rain Dance, a rhythm game where you attempt to lead a dance (dance) revolution but your movements become more sluggish as your pockets fill up. Another lock is Rhyne Howard’s Reckless Rotation, a three-point contest as the court spins like a vinyl record beneath your Kobe 5s. There could be full obstacle courses you’ll need to traverse to survive Hull Island (you can only hope to survive because no one escapes Hull Island), or Cooking Mama microgames with Unrivaled’s own cooking mama, Marina Mabrey. Ideally, we’d design one themed around each player (if Super Mario Party Jamboree has 110+ minigames, we can manage 36). My fantasy video game industry is thriving, there are no layoffs. We have an unlimited budget, and all the time in the world.  

If you’re not sold yet on Unrivaled Jam (working title), I’ve neglected to mention the most important feature of them all: there will be no interviews during the games. 

Mabrey’s Mac Meltdown concept art

Have you been keeping up with Unrivaled? If you’re into women’s basketball, it’s definitely worth a look. Games air on Fridays, Saturdays, and Mondays and each of these programming blocks contain a double feature (all games stream on Max). If you’ve been hesitant for any reason, now is the best time to hop in because they’re holding a one-on-one tournament next week. It’s presented by Sprite–which seems appropriate, because after studying the tournament bracket, some of these matchups are sure to be as spicy as your favorite lemon lime soda straight from a McDonald’s fountain.

As for Unrivaled: Mayhem in Miami (working title), you’ll have to wait a bit longer–though that’s probably a blessing with how much good basketball is in our lives these days. 

Thanks for reading! If you’re new to Tactical Reload, I recommend checking out the interviews tab for some thoughtful conversations with people who ACTUALLY make video games. For everyone else, stay tuned. I have a lot of cool articles lined up.