Pro sports are not as fun or interesting
We all know what happened. EA Sports was churning out NCAA Football games until 2013 when after the final entry, NCAA Football ’14, lawsuits regarding amateur players getting paid put the series on hiatus. The NCAA as well as several individual conferences and schools were going to stop licensing their trademarks due to the same issue. Despite the difficulties, Peter Moore told IGN last year “One day, I know we’ll be back.”
Afraid of legal trouble themselves, individual conferences and even schools began backing out one by one in 2013. Considering their reason behind that action was to avoid lawsuits regarding using the amateurs’ likeness, it stands to reason they would be back on board if the player issue was resolved.
How do you get around player likeness then? Just don’t put them in! To my knowledge there are no other obstacles regarding aspects like bowl games, trophies (Heisman, etc), or playbooks. So just have all the teams and players set to a flat skill level with randomized jersey numbers, hometowns, physical features, and names. Just leave in that good ole custom roster feature.
In the games that were released, people did (and still do) update the rosters and share them online. Gaming communities will come up with accurate rosters including names, fair skill assessment, and physical appearance within a few days of the games release. Complaints regarding player likeness have been about their physique, number, hometown, stats, and all information except their name that was put in by EA Sports. EA can’t be held accountable for custom rosters made by fans/communities.
Worst case scenario don’t have the custom roster either. People will still mod in the correct rosters and share the hacks. Plenty will enjoy just playing as the teams with randomized names, just as they did in the old titles when they got six seasons into their dynasty and all the real players graduated, leaving only randomly generated players.
I know the NCAA Basketball and MVP Baseball games didn’t sell great, but maybe with all that new tech used in the NBA titles and college baseball’s growing popularity they could make a comeback too. Or just make them especially for me so I can beat down my rivals by 300 points.
