Tag: electronic arts

Turns out you CAN put a price on former glory

Pictured: The real man behind the lawsuit.A class action lawsuit filed by former college athletes against the NCAA and Electronic Arts (EA), the former evil empire of video games, focuses on the potential unlawful use of athletes’ likenesses without their consent. The case, filed by former Nebraska and Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller and former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, is now a couple of years old, but the judge has already said that if rights were violated, EA could be paying big damages.

How big? Try a quarter of EA’s annual revenue, or approximately $1 billion. The geniuses at USA Today did some fancy math, but to boil it down, it comes out to the law saying that the players can get $1,000 a likeness. Add up all the players (3,630), games, and then triple it thanks to a statute that says that it can be trebled if the violation was “knowing, willful or intentional,” and you’ve got about $1 billion that EA could have to shell out.

EA has argued that it has a First Amendment right to use the players likenesses. They just might need all of the amendments and then some.

You win some, you crash some, you keep some

You all know the story by now: Tiger Woods crashed his car due to a massive conspiracy involving the PGA, his wife and auto insurance.

It’s a tragedy. A true tragedy.

But it’s not all bad! Sure, his body may be a little bruised and roughed up, but luckily, his checkbook won’t be. Gatorade, Nike, Gillette and Electronic Arts have all issued statements showing their support for the man.

“Nike supports Tiger and his family. Our relationship remains unchanged,”

“Tiger and his family have our support as they work through this private matter,”

“At this time, we are not making any changes to our existing marketing programs,”

“Our strong relationship with Tiger for more than a decade remains unchanged. We respect Tiger’s privacy, we wish him a fast recovery and we look forward to seeing him back on the golf course.”

When 109.3 million dollars of your yearly income was made off of the golf course, it’s reassuring that your sponsors become aspects of a Tammy Wynette song.

OH SNAP! It’s not over until it red-rings!

We’re no stranger to athletes needing cause for attention and thus making insanely large jackasses of themselves regularly in the public spotlight. So, of course, when recently signed Seattle Seahawk, T.J. Houshmandzadeh found out his rating on Madden NFL 10 was only a 91, he became upset. And decided to let the world know that he was upset. Because you’re apparently allowed to do that when you make more than a million dollars a year, even in this economy.

EA Tiburon wasn’t having any of that. Nuh-uh.

Just last week, two developers for the game, Ian Cummings and Donny Moore went on to ESPN First Take to set the record straight. Houshmandzadeh (thank you copy and paste combinations) also appeared on the show.

It was predictably anti-climactic. No names were dropped, no fists were thrown (a little hard with Houshmandzadeh appearing via telephone, mind you), no challenges were uttered, but a resolution was sorted of sorts. Houshmandzadeh (once again, thank you Command + V) wishes very much for a mid-season update. Let’s just hope he’s earning his money by Week 9.

The faker it is, the more vile its nature

EA’s recent PR stunt at E3, in which they organized a protest outside the LA Convention Center and hand out pamphlets directing people to WeAreSavedGroup.org for their upcoming game Dante’s Inferno, was a stroke of genius. You can call it dumb, or cheap or dirty, but the fact remains that it got them a crap ton of press in both the gaming world and the mainstream, and it fooled a whole lot of people — whether they admit to be fooled or not. This would usually be what you call a successful PR move.

Not so much on all fronts. It would seem that even a fake group can offend — though, in this case, it offended those they stereotyped. Like Pavlovian dogs trained to raise their head if someone mocks an aspect of Christianity, some Christians were offended.

“‘It’s been clear for a while now that the entertainment industry views Christians on the whole as priggish, thin-skinned fun-killers,’ writes Margaret Cabaniss on her website.”

Sadly, she’s not alone in her ability to present an ironic statement about how Christians are actually hip and with-it when it comes to gaming. Catholic Video Gamers had a few choice words to say too, culminating in,

“So instead of engaging in a shamelessly anti-Christian stunt to promote your poor excuse of a product, maybe you ought to work on making this game, you know, something better than a blatant God of War rip-off and make it, ya know, something worthwhile?”

Newsflash, people: we’re talking about a game that’s already made. So your admonishment to pour the effort spent hating Christians back into making the game is moot.

So, we should expect Random Name 2010 instead?

Just last week, SG informed, thanks in no small part to an exclusive blog post, that John Madden was retiring. BAM! That was tough actin’ Ti-blog postin’. Well, hold on to your seats, faithful readers, as you might get exposed to some BAM!, tough actin’ Ti-litigation.

Fresh off a $28 million victory over their own union, a retired NFL player says his comrades are targeting John Madden and Electronic Arts for their roles in games using their likenesses without compensating them.

Readers might recall that more than 2,000 retired NFL players won a collective $28 million judgment against the National Football League Players Association, upheld in January. Their suit alleged that the union advised EA to “scramble” the players’ likenesses (numbers, heights, sometimes races, but not stats) in order to use them in historic team rosters without compensation.

Well, having beaten one end of that shady transaction – the union – it sounds like the players want blood money from the other end-no, not that end-that being the deep-pocketed EA and Madden himself. According to an interview on Dave Pear’s blog:

The retired NFL players who were used in Madden EA video games will be suing Madden and EA for using us in those games without compensating us. We probably will not use … the attorneys who obtained a $28.1 million verdict for us against the NFLPA for “scrambling retired players identities” in those video games. The jury found it a “grossly fraudulent” action taken so they wouldn’t have to pay the retired players. … In my opinion, Madden should have been included in our licensing suit against the NFLPA and so should EA.

Bernie Parrish, the former player being interviewed, asks the retirees, who are due some $13,000 each under the verdict, to set aside $1,000 for a legal fund to continue the pursuit. Because, you know, everyone just has a spare grand lying around for purposes like suing the pants off a union. I keep mine in a glass jar underneath my bed, despite the fact that I’ve never been a member of a union and don’t have any plans to sue former employers of mine.

…..

…..

…….please don’t rob me.

NBA Live used by NBA teams, Pacers still suck

The NBA says about half of the league’s 30 teams employ NBA Live 09 in making personnel evaluations, which, y’know, makes Electronic Arts all kinds of happy.

What makes NBA Live 09 better than the competition, NBA 2K9, is a feature called Dynamic DNA. Essentially, the DNA system is a statistical aggregator that feeds new information such as shot and scoring tendencies directly into the game. The reason why GMs would want to use it is that it’s constantly updated and directly affects gameplay.

Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, is a devotee of talent-evaluation demigod Billy Beane (the general manager of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics), and swears by video games — and not as a diversion.

“I don’t play EA Sports as a game. I use it as a tool,” he says.

Pretty impressive, right? I mean, it sounds like NBA Live just can’t be stopped by anything, right?

Yeah, keep thinking that.

It took you how long to get around to this?

Tilt to rock out. Set down to sue.Schools, could we get you to file this under “surprised it took them this long”, please? Thanks, you’re a peach.

Yesterday, Konami’s lawyers in the US filed a patent lawsuit against Harmonix (and MTV, and Viacom) in the federal court in Tyler, Texas. They allege that Harmonix’s Rock Band violates a pair of patents Konami obtained in 2002 and 2003, which relate to “simulated musical instruments, a music-game system and a musical-rhythm matching game”. For this unmitigated affront to them, Konami seeks justice.

They also seek cash money.

Loads of cash money.

As well as an order blocking Harmonix (or Viacom) from using technology that violates Konami’s patents. When asked for comment, Viacom didn’t even know they were being sued. Apparently Konami’s legal department is as slow to the punch as their own recognition that another guitar game has been pumping out sequels the last three years.