Lawsuit not meant to prevent NCAA games
One of the co-lead counsels for the players in the class action NCAA suit against EA says nothing in the agreement prevents them from making future games.
EA's recent settlement in a class action suit brought by former NCAA players seemingly resulted in the cancellation of the next title in the franchise. But the lawyers who brought the suit say they didn't have any intent of stopping NCAA games from going forward, and EA is still free to do it under certain guidelines.
"We would've been happy to have the game go forward," Leonard Aragon told Polygon. Aragon is a partner at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, and served as co-lead counsel on the suit. In an interview, he was insistent that the legal action didn't cause the cancellation. "It was never our intent to not have this game [continue]," he said. "That's not us. We didn't tell them to do that. We would be fine if they published a game."
If EA did choose to proceed, they would simply have to follow some guidelines. "There's nothing stopping [EA] from making the game, so long as they don't use players' names, images or likenesses. Or [they could] pay the students, which they didn't really agree to," Aragon said.
The fate of the series seems fairly etched in stone, though. NCAA 14 was cancelled, and the NCAA opted not to renew its licensing agreement after that point. Even if nothing technically forbids EA from making new NCAA games, the business realities don't seem to be shaking out in their favor.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Lawsuit not meant to prevent NCAA games.
One of the co-lead counsels for the players in the class action NCAA suit against EA says nothing in the agreement prevents them from making future games.-
"There's nothing stopping [EA] from making the game, so long as they don't use players' names, images or likenesses. Or [they could] pay the students, which they didn't really agree to," Aragon said.
Which they already don't do, so.....-
Wasn't there a legal argumebt from a player's lawyer that the stats of a player (height, weight, vertical leap, 40-yard dash, etc.) constituted a "likeness" of him?
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Possibly, but considering that they're only ballpark figures, and often times off by a fair margin, I'd say that's not exactly definitive.
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the only way this argument holds up is if you could prove that Madden had a significantly more accurate modeling of players when controlling for the differences in resources between the two teams and the relative work (far more NCAA players to model, but only the top guys actually need to be that accurate). But any quick perusal of Madden forums will prove how much is off in Madden as well from the objective (uniforms/accessories/skin tone) to the subjective (ratings) in a game where their goal is obviously to model the players as accurately as possible.
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Madden is infinitely more accurate than NCAA. Hell the fact that they use player cards versus generic avatars is enough.
For instance, NCAA for the last 2 years has been using a white guy with red hair for Northwester QB #2.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/northwestern-qb-kain-colter-takes-issue-ncaa-13-162617940--ncaaf.html-
as I said, there's no shortage of inaccuracies in Madden, including such basic things as skin color. An anecdote is not data. It should come as little surprise that the less popular of the 1500+ NCAA football players have inaccuracies in their representation due to the realities of resourcing and software development on a yearly schedule. EA quite obviously makes a serious effort to accurately represent the marquee teams and players that drive sales of games like this.
If EA felt strongly that they were in the right they wouldn't have tried to quickly and quietly settle the suit against them and then forfeited many millions in guaranteed profits that the next NCAA game represents.-
I mean, what's your real argument here? That because EA gets some players wrong the ones they get right are by coincidence? I'm sure these are all just happy accidents http://traditionsportsonline.com/the-top-15-rated-players-in-ea-sports-ncaa-football-14
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yes, especially when you add in those stats on the team they're on, with their jersey number and previous stats. Everyone buying these games knows exactly what they're buying it for, it's to play as their favorite NCAA teams with their favorite NCAA players which are conveniently already included in the game merely lacking names which you can quickly edit back in yourself.
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But players on teams are almost exactly the same build, height, color, weight, number and general look as real players...
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oh please.
Let me just make a new NCAA game with randomly generated players and stats, let's see how well that version sells. The only thing the NCAA games are missing is the actual player name, everything else about their modeling is meant to be that player and just skirt the law as it was written.-
It would sell fine because the fans will have rosters created and shared which they do anyway. And no, they aren't just missing the name. There are many "likeness" that are laughably bad.
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and yet no unlicensed NCAA or Madden competitors exist. APF2k8 being the last attempt. Interesting how that works, almost as if the companies with millions of dollars riding on this decision have market research to suggest you're very wrong.
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You did't say unlicensed. You said randomly generated players and stats. Completely different things, especially since EA doesn't license the use of player likenesses anyway.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but the point he is making is that if the players did not resemble NCAA players in some capacity - less people would be interested.
I'm no sports nut, but I'm pretty sure when I buy an NCAA game a bit part of it is that the USC trojans play like the USC trojans this year. That is, the likeness of the players resembles the players on the actual team. Of course it isn't modeled absolutely correctly, but if the QB is a fast dude and the WR is a fast dude, and the lineman is super scrawny, etc. all of that is reflected. To what degree is it reflected? In my experience its enough that you notice. That when I pick up NCAA and play my team, I'm not confused as to why my players move and react how they do.
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"pay the students"?
Am I missing something, or does that just create a weird situation. They're saying that EA could pay the students based on their athletic ability. Wouldn't doing so violate the NCAA rule and result in those students being ineligible to participate as athletes?-
yes
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yes, which is why EA doesn't have an NCAA game slated to come out next year. The students already are suing the NCAA for all the ways their likeness is profited from and they already settled a lawsuit against EA that paid former players for their appearance in the NCAA games (the terms of which of course include the fact that EA did nothing actually wrong).
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Yes, but don't let that get in the way of lawyers.
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EA should just hire Key and Peele to make a random name generator. Problem solved!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gODZzSOelss-
They already did it apparently!
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/key-and-peele/east-west-
username and post kind of go together here :-P
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