3 ms·

Madden is fascinating to me because despite widespread user dissatisfaction with the game year-in, year-out, its users treat it like a necessity. I guess that'

Madden is fascinating to me because despite widespread user dissatisfaction with the game year-in, year-out, its users treat it like a necessity. I guess that's a monopoly in action. There is space for a competitive product, but it would need to be completely unlicensed. Without licensing, you'd need a simple way to customize rules, teams, players, etc. EAs NCAA series got around player issues in a similar way. If that customization were fostered, you could have a football game that with a few clicks was a better Madden and/or NCAA series. You'd just need to trade your licensing budget for a legal one.

slg 8y ago
You might notice that the NCAA series doesn't exist anymore and that is partly because that plausible deniability of using the community to circumvent licensing rules can only go so far.
- nkozyra 8y ago
  I think that's (a small) part of it. The surface reason is that EA did the same thing for a long time, creating players that looked like their real life counterparts with their real life attributes and real life numbers, etc. That's what bit them. You're really going to be hamstrung fighting an open-world, modifiable game unless you're showing obvious negligence in policing it.
  - slg 8y ago
    There would be numerous problems with 100% made up teams and players that would make it too risky for any big developer to attempt. 1. It would be hard to market without a single recognizable face or team. 2. It would be hostile to casual/novice users who couldn't play the game at its full potential out of the box. 3. It would be hard to create the online and esport modes that other sports games thrive on as you couldn't allow those custom rosters in competitive modes.
    - nkozyra 8y ago
      1. Absolutely. It would require some sort of viral approach. You won't win with traditional advertising. 2. Maybe. To be fair, I think the approach from point #1 would always come with an implicit :wink wink, nudge nudge:. 3. I'm not sure you couldn't allow it so much as you would be expected to respond to DMCA/etc in reasonable fashion.
      - slg 8y ago
        That :wink wink, nudge nudge: was exactly what I was talking about in my first post that EA had to eventually give up on. In order to have any competitive online mode, you need to have have player attributes that are in some way restricted so you can't just max out the attributes for your custom team. That would be in direct conflict with recreating teams realistically because real life teams can have huge disparities of talent between them. And just to be clear, I am not saying that this can't be done. Just that the obstacles in the way make this such a risky undertaking that no established developer would take on a project like this.
        nkozyra 8y ago
        > That :wink wink, nudge nudge: was exactly what I was talking about in my first post that EA had to eventually give up on. It isn't, though. They had to give up because they did the job themselves, not because they had an open and accessible customization system. Had they never themselves created approximations of real players, it would have been a harder legal battle.
sien 8y ago
This is exactly what happens with football (US soccer). FIFA has most of the licences while PES doesn't. PES is set up to be customised. Football fans then fight about it online. There is someone on Metacritic who pops up as practically the first review of FIFA every year and gives it 1 and says how terrible it is.

slg 8y ago

You might notice that the NCAA series doesn't exist anymore and that is partly because that plausible deniability of using the community to circumvent licensing rules can only go so far.

nkozyra 8y ago
I think that's (a small) part of it. The surface reason is that EA did the same thing for a long time, creating players that looked like their real life counterparts with their real life attributes and real life numbers, etc. That's what bit them. You're really going to be hamstrung fighting an open-world, modifiable game unless you're showing obvious negligence in policing it.
- slg 8y ago
  There would be numerous problems with 100% made up teams and players that would make it too risky for any big developer to attempt. 1. It would be hard to market without a single recognizable face or team. 2. It would be hostile to casual/novice users who couldn't play the game at its full potential out of the box. 3. It would be hard to create the online and esport modes that other sports games thrive on as you couldn't allow those custom rosters in competitive modes.
  - nkozyra 8y ago
    1. Absolutely. It would require some sort of viral approach. You won't win with traditional advertising. 2. Maybe. To be fair, I think the approach from point #1 would always come with an implicit :wink wink, nudge nudge:. 3. I'm not sure you couldn't allow it so much as you would be expected to respond to DMCA/etc in reasonable fashion.
    - slg 8y ago
      That :wink wink, nudge nudge: was exactly what I was talking about in my first post that EA had to eventually give up on. In order to have any competitive online mode, you need to have have player attributes that are in some way restricted so you can't just max out the attributes for your custom team. That would be in direct conflict with recreating teams realistically because real life teams can have huge disparities of talent between them. And just to be clear, I am not saying that this can't be done. Just that the obstacles in the way make this such a risky undertaking that no established developer would take on a project like this.
      - nkozyra 8y ago
        > That :wink wink, nudge nudge: was exactly what I was talking about in my first post that EA had to eventually give up on. It isn't, though. They had to give up because they did the job themselves, not because they had an open and accessible customization system. Had they never themselves created approximations of real players, it would have been a harder legal battle.

sien 8y ago

This is exactly what happens with football (US soccer). FIFA has most of the licences while PES doesn't. PES is set up to be customised. Football fans then fight about it online. There is someone on Metacritic who pops up as practically the first review of FIFA every year and gives it 1 and says how terrible it is.