The NCAA Debated Allowing Player Names In Video Games

[prowler]

Re: The NCAA Debated Allowing Player Names In Video Games

I don't necessarily disagree...and a few years back I would have definitely agreed. But these days the whole share/download concept seems a bit more common in other avenues of life. I am not sure that as many people as we think would be turned off by the idea?

It should be but there are still a lot of people in the dark that either don't know or still pay for rosters. The former is especially prevalent on the NCAA Facebook and Youtube pages.

EA needed to do a better job of herding people to a list of high quality rosters to choose from rather than having to know the gamertag of a user with rosters. The WWE series has allowed players to download user made non-licensed wrestlers for years and never got slammed with litigation over it.

[RedSoxFox7]

Re: The NCAA Debated Allowing Player Names In Video Games

One way or another, we'll have a fully licensed NCAA Football game, including player likenesses, within a year or two of the end of the Keller/O'Bannon cases.

IMO we'll have it after Keller/O'Bannon stomps the NCAA in court.

The NCAA is going to lose, badly, on the right to publicity issue. Their hand will then be forced into no longer violating the crap out of student-athlete intellectual property rights, and thus allowing SAs to profit from their own likeness, which will then lead to licensing agreements through NCPA or some similar future organization.

But, if the NCAA somehow gets a win here, it gives them carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want with player likenesses; there won't be anything standing in the way of a new game with real names and everything else, and it won't cost EA/CLC/NCAA a dime (beyond what it'll cost/has cost for them to get there).

[barsoffury]

Re: The NCAA Debated Allowing Player Names In Video Games

One way or another, we'll have a fully licensed NCAA Football game, including player likenesses, within a year or two of the end of the Keller/O'Bannon cases.

IMO we'll have it after Keller/O'Bannon stomps the NCAA in court.

The NCAA is going to lose, badly, on the right to publicity issue. Their hand will then be forced into no longer violating the crap out of student-athlete intellectual property rights, and thus allowing SAs to profit from their own likeness, which will then lead to licensing agreements through NCPA or some similar future organization.

But, if the NCAA somehow gets a win here, it gives them carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want with player likenesses; there won't be anything standing in the way of a new game with real names and everything else, and it won't cost EA/CLC/NCAA a dime (beyond what it'll cost/has cost for them to get there).

Ya. At the end of it all SA's will be paid for their likeness so we won't need to worry about generic this or that just to have a collegiate football game. Either by the NCAA or if they refuse the power 5 conferences will disband from the NCAA (which is probably more likely) and figure out their own player compensation system. Then other schools will follow suit. On top of that with the current court suit involving the players from North Western and the Labor Board trying to unionize, I think we as College football game fans will ultimately get the game back we so love. The only question is when? I would say 3-5 years is a likely possibility. While it is a complicated debate, neither the schools nor the athletes want it to drag on.

[Scribe1980]

Absolutely not. EA got burned & dragged down by O'Bannon while it (mistakenly) thought purchase of the NCAA licenses (and I know there are other parties involved here; just for the sake of simplicity) would have precluded such action or at least offered more protection.

Actually, if I'm EA I'm so pissed at the NCAA I wouldn't consider teaming up again even if the NCAA gets its legal house in order -- which as we all know is a complete mess at the moment. It is ALWAYS business first.

[TimLawNYC]

Re: The NCAA Debated Allowing Player Names In Video Games

Anyone that thinks that a completely generic college football game would work is fooling themselves. As I wrote earlier this is pretty much the only game that I play and I'd LOVE to have it keep going, even if generic. Hell, unless I'm using my Wolverines, I don't even care a little bit about the default rosters. I only play dynasty mode and it doesn't get REALLY interesting for me until I'm using the players that I recruited so generic default rosters wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

However, people like us are in the extreme minority for this game (and I'd imagine all sports games) and the vast majority of people that buy NCAA (thus making it viable) are people who absolutely would be bothered by generic rosters (and most likely wouldn't even buy the game because of it). Even if we could edit the rosters to be accurate and could share them, that wouldn't get the casual guys to buy the game. That also would only work for guys playing dynasty modes. You wouldn't be able to use them for online matches (even with what a horrible experience those are, there are still people who only play online matches) because people would have to have the exact same rosters and I'm sure people would complain too much about the player ratings because, for example, Winston was overpowered by the roster editor while Mariota was too nerfed.

I don't necessarily agree that "the majority" who have bought NCAA in the past would no longer buy the game with "generic" rosters. In a way, the game has ALWAYS shipped with "generic" rosters--sure, Virginia Tech's QB in the game might be the approximate size and weight as the real-life projected starter for the Hokies, but he's still named "QB #4" or whatever. To the average frat guy buying this game, either the "QB #4" thing has never bothered him before (thus he doesn't care so much about it being the "real" player), or he sought out a named roster file online from a community like OS, and fixed the problem himself.

I don't see how shipping the game with the starting QB for Va. Tech being "QB #6" instead, 2 inches taller and 20 lbs. heavier than the "real-life" starter, would change whether or not some dude in his dorm room at Virginia Tech buys the game. If he's liked college football before and enjoys the gameplay, he'll either tolerate the generic rosters (as he has done in the past), or find one of the easy ways available to fix the issue for himself.

Especially in college football, the teams, conferences, and accompanying trappings and pageantry (i.e., mascots, stadiums) is what really matters (as opposed to the NFL where actual players matter much more). As long as you have real teams, uniforms, stadiums, and mascots, I don't think most fans of this game really care about the players' characteristics.