We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Games

[RaychelSnr]

This week's news of a college football game definitely, maybe releasing in 2020 really spurred on a...

Written By: Chris Sanner

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[jerwoods]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

the best hope other than the CLC its getting the ACC B12 and making up to 200 team build schools

[drugsbunny]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

High Impact, TV Sports Football, Front Page Football, Joe Montana Football, Walter Payton Football- were all great games that didn't have official licenses. I think a college game that has the proper atmosphere and collegiate pride will still have a great success rate minus real schools. in 2015, this may have been a true statement. Now, after all these years without one, we just want good gameplay, good atmosphere, and a focus on fun in a football game.

[tril]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

question I always have is, could a developer patch or add features to an existing college game without facing any litigation.
for example: could EA patch or add a playoff mode, update stadiums, conferences and game-play fixes into an NCAA14 without facing any lawsuits etc.
Im sure there people that would pay for such an update...

[jeebs9]

Without the player... This game is dead.....

[ElectricAggie]

Nothing is stopping someone like 2K, for example, from going the new route of using completely generic rosters with real licensed schools (or as many as they can get).

1. Update 2K football engine from APF 2K8.
2. Work out deals with the teams from the Power 5 conferences.
3. Create generic rosters from those teams, but have the same overall strength/weaknesses and offensive/defensive strategies for those teams so they each play "similar" to their real-life counterparts.
3. Literally call it "Power 5 Football" or "Power 5 College Football"
4. Once you make enough money, work on getting the rest of the NCAA.
5. Profit.

I don't see why these companies aren't jumping right now at the opportunity to pursue a college football game. I understand they are hesitant because of the risk of litigation, but once it is crystal clear on what you can and cannot do in a game, what else is the problem? The amount of media attention that an unlicensed game is getting right now should be enough to signal to EA, 2K, and other big-name developers that this could be a potential gold rush. The demand for a college football game has never been higher! All someone has to do is deliver!

[mercalnd]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

1. Update 2K football engine from APF 2K8.
2. Work out deals with the teams from the Power 5 conferences.
3. Create generic rosters from those teams, but have the same overall strength/weaknesses and offensive/defensive strategies for those teams so they each play "similar" to their real-life counterparts.
3. Literally call it "Power 5 Football" or "Power 5 College Football"
4. Once you make enough money, work on getting the rest of the NCAA.
5. Profit.

I don't see why these companies aren't jumping right now at the opportunity to pursue a college football game. I understand they are hesitant because of the risk of litigation, but once it is crystal clear on what you can and cannot do in a game, what else is the problem? The amount of media attention that an unlicensed game is getting right now should be enough to signal to EA, 2K, and other big-name developers that this could be a potential gold rush. The demand for a college football game has never been higher! All someone has to do is deliver!

As stated in the article, EA cancelled their game because big schools and conferences were starting to pull out from their licensing deals to be in the game so they could no longer have a game with all the big schools. Unless the schools change their stance on this, your scenario fails at step 2.

[roadman]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

1. Update 2K football engine from APF 2K8.
2. Work out deals with the teams from the Power 5 conferences.
3. Create generic rosters from those teams, but have the same overall strength/weaknesses and offensive/defensive strategies for those teams so they each play "similar" to their real-life counterparts.
3. Literally call it "Power 5 Football" or "Power 5 College Football"
4. Once you make enough money, work on getting the rest of the NCAA.
5. Profit.

I don't see why these companies aren't jumping right now at the opportunity to pursue a college football game. I understand they are hesitant because of the risk of litigation, but once it is crystal clear on what you can and cannot do in a game, what else is the problem? The amount of media attention that an unlicensed game is getting right now should be enough to signal to EA, 2K, and other big-name developers that this could be a potential gold rush. The demand for a college football game has never been higher! All someone has to do is deliver!

I'm sure time and $ play into the factor. And what I mean by time and money is the amount of time to sift through all the legal documentation plus having your legal beagles looking it over for a price.


"Potential" is the key word and I'm all for a college football game. Some companies will take calculated risks and jump in, some companies want a guarantee it will make a profit before jumping in feet first.

[burnt_secondary]

One thing they need to do to make the generic rosters work is add a way to know who the top players are from other teams easily.  The reason a lot of people clamor for the real players (or their likness) is that we know them by name and know their history.
We can glance at the roster, recognize a name, (basketball and football) and say, "Ooooo, that guy is trouble, he is good.  We need to account for that.  He ran for 200 yards two weeks ago against Clemson."  We need a reason to love generic rosters.  Having player likenesses in a college game is the shortcut to add history,  but there are other more exciting ways to do it.
There are a combination of things to do that all have been touched on but we need a little more than having to open a roster and look at ratings next to generic player.  The more hard core of us build these stories ourselves in our heads but there should be actual history in the game.  It has been touched on with twitter feeds, weekly highlights, rankings, etc but we want a living world with these teams and generic players. 
Some kind of weekly buzz page about the upcoming game.  Could be highlights, weekly show about the previous game and touching on the upcoming game, or maybe a brief article about how the team coming in is on a role behind their star running back, or how the team is struggling to get on track.  Also a buzz about your team for fun.   Hell, all of us get these fake news articles in our fantasy football leagues right now.  Get announcers really talking about the upcoming game.  When the players are generic the presentation cannot be!!!!!
Weekly conference or national news to follow.  I would prefer both and since I am only dreaming here, local, conference, and national feeds of some sort. There are many ways this could be done, it doesn't have to be the 2k5 weekly sports center. It could be like a twitter feed, internal memos to the coaches, local sports stories, etc.
The point is make the NCAA (or completely generic) world alive, build a world and a history we can follow outside of menus and roster stats.  That is the best bet to get a generic game to work.  You have to go overboard on the presentation once the game mechanics are solid.  Generic has a hard time against licensed competition . . . but there now is no licensed competition.

(Haven't posted on here for years and just started playing College Hoops 2k8 again.  Love that game and want to see an update some day.)

[kennylc629]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

The problem is that EA got way too greedy. They could have produced the game with, say, University of Florida and just used generic names. Jason Smith, Black QB #2 from Miami and there would have been no issues.

But no... EA wanted UFs starting QB to wear #15, lefthanded, white QB who runs well whose hometown is Jacksonville, FL then try to look at us with a straight face and say "no... that's not Tim Tebow... that's QB#15"

[Junior Moe]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

I totally get that it's on the NCAA to change their model. It looks like they are SLOWLY coming around. We still have this huge grey area though with likeness. The precedent has been set as to what constitutes a likeness in a videogame. We still don't yet know just how much different the avatar has to be to avoid litigation. It may be impossible. Still, I wish EA or 2K could scrounge up as many schools and conferences as they can and go for it. Through 2K and Madden we know that close to two dozen schools at least are open to being in videogames. This was done with car being taken to not infringe on anyone's likeness. Just do it on a larger scale. Then again, how marketable would a college game be without rosters that mimic the real ones?

[redsox4evur]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

I'm sure time and $ play into the factor. And what I mean by time and money is the amount of time to sift through all the legal documentation plus having your legal beagles looking it over for a price.


"Potential" is the key word and I'm all for a college football game. Some companies will take calculated risks and jump in, some companies want a guarantee it will make a profit before jumping in feet first.

Nevermind the time and money spent going through all of the legal mumbo jumbo, how about the time and money that would be needed to develop the game itself? Even if 2K could update the APF engine, do they have the staff that worked on the game to update it, also what exactly needs to be updated, etc? Or do you just build a brand new game because you don't feel like spending the time and resources working on updating decade old code.

[cingelsby]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

Would it work if EA Sports agreed to pay for players likeness but the money would go into a trust and once they graduate or leave school they would have access to the money.

[tessl]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

The risk a company takes on within the overall greater environment of litigation and activism from athletes is something that certainly seems to be a potential pitfall for any publisher of even a customizable generic college game these days.

The author asserted that but never explained how it is the case. If the company took care to avoid school colors, locations, logos and uniforms with generic players I don't see how any lawsuit would go anywhere.

A college game would be easiest for EA to produce because they could port gameplay from Madden to save a major chunk of developer cost. The problem is EA has no incentive because they don't stand to profit from a game which would take players away from Madden.

It would take a company other than EA to do it and they would have to weigh developer cost vs profit but I don't see how a generic customizable game would generate lawsuits.

Regarding getting schools to sign on I could envision this happening. The company agrees to set up a fund for athlete health care/research or agree to send money to each school with the condition the school will spend money on health care for the athletes. There are probably more long term health problems from football than anything else. I could see the schools and athletes signing on for something like this but even without the real schools and athletes a generic game would sell if developed at a high level.

[Kodos]

Re: We Still Need the NCAA to Change How It Works to Get Licensed College Sports Game

A college game would be easiest for EA to produce because they could port gameplay from Madden to save a major chunk of developer cost. The problem is EA has no incentive because they don't stand to profit from a game which would take players away from Madden.

I don't think NCAA cost Madden much in sales. I think a good segment of the population viewed NCAA as an appetizer until Madden came out a month later.