Don Bradman Cricket 14 PC PLAYABLE NOW!

[lion100lion]

Cricket Academy does rather make a mockery of having (and paying for) licenses anyway.

Absolutely.. Licencing is also a waste of money when we have cricket academy..
Money spent on licencing should either be spent on further game development or in advertising the game..yes

 

[barmyarmy]

On the other hand I would expect a challenge from the rights holders at some point to try and protect their IP. Is a "report abuse" button in Cricket Academy enough?
It's a lucrative market so you can be sure the lawyers will be getting involved as the CA model renders rights worthless.

 

[WhiteCat]

Cricket Academy does rather make a mockery of having (and paying for) licenses anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. I always feel a bit cheated when a publisher splashes out for the licenses and then the developer tells the community the game had limitations due to its budget. The latter is certainly a valid point with cricket games in general due to the niche market they fit into, but licenses are entirely pointless if the game is barely playable so I've always wished that money could be spent making the actual nuts and bolts gameplay better.

This counts for double given the existence of Cricket Academy. Triple, even. It's absolutely fantastic and makes licensing teams essentially a waste of money (to the extent the licensing factor wouldn't increase the sales of the game enough to allow for the net budget to be bigger anyway - ie. the licenses paying for themselves.. which I'd doubt personally). I'd probably go as far as to say I'd be disappointed if Big Ant did pay for the licensing - again of course it's different if the profit projections would increase by greater than or equal to the outlay for them.

 

[BigAntStudios]

Check out Mod-nation ps3 for the best Mario Karts you can get

 

[barmyarmy]

And Coca Cola, Pepsi etc have never complained to us about being given free advertising when people make pitchads, logos etc. I'd be interested to know though what your plan is if, post-release, someone at ECB/CA HQ goes through all the "real" players in CA clicking report abuse. Will that affect already downloaded players? What's your liability as you're hosting them? It does seem to me to be a legal minefield.

 

[WhiteCat]

On the other hand I would expect a challenge from the rights holders at some point to try and protect their IP. Is a "report abuse" button in Cricket Academy enough?
It's a lucrative market so you can be sure the lawyers will be getting involved as the CA model renders rights worthless.

Yeah I thought it'd be a bit dicey legally when I first heard about it too, especially with Big Ant actually hosting these creations on their own server.

I was involved in a rugby league management game project once upon a time and looked into whether we could release unlicensed teams and basically have someone not officially affiliated with the game release a patch that erm "fixed" that. The answer I got back was that there was basically no way of doing that, even if we didn't host the patch on our own site or mention it officially anywhere. The game at that stage was going to be entirely free to download as well.

I'm sure Big Ant have looked into it themselves, but what they seem to be able to get away with on that front has surprised me so far.

 

[Bluehaze]

Check out Mod-nation ps3 for the best Mario Karts you can get

Geoff Crammond's GP series still has a big following and modders working on the game!

 

[kamrul]

ross! do u guys have enough strength of doing mo-cap in the sequel or u need to earn more and do it after 4-5 years?

 

[angad]

Interesting points made by BarmyArmy.

 

[barmyarmy]

I'm sure Big Ant have looked into it themselves, but what they seem to be able to get away with on that front has surprised me so far.

Ross is a lawyer so I'm sure he has his bases covered. I would expect some kind of legal challenge though as the market is too profitable to just let go.

 

[angad]

ross! do u guys have enough strength of doing mo-cap in the sequel or u need to earn more and do it after 4-5 years?

The animations you see in DBC14 were also Mo-Capped to a large extent. As for sequels, Ross has already mentioned that adding more animations and making them assignable to certain players is something he is definitely looking to do in future.

 

[blockerdave]

i would guess it would be something like:

1)it has to be someone with the rights making the complaint - e.g. if i get upset someone made a better jimmy anderson than mine and he's getting all the downloads, my complaint will not be enough
2)that Jimmy will be taken off the server, but they wouldn't be able to remove our local copies, so it's too late
3)if the same person repeatedly uploaded the same players they might have their CA account closed
4)as soon as one player is deleted, 1000 other versions of the same player will be uploaded

it's like youtube really... they don't approve of the copyright infringement, they will remove reported abuse, but actually protecting your "rights" is an exercise in futility

incidentally, i was thinking about this the other day... we here at PC are very anit-torrents and piracy etc. but we have no compunction in linking youtube vids that are also an infringement of copyright (and have the same impact as pirating a game, since the creator doesn't get performance royalties), and we certainly have no problem infringing sportsmen's image rights... it's quite a moral maze...

 

[barmyarmy]

It's not just current players either. One of the reasons classic matches were dropped from the BLC series was the difficulty of securing licensing arrangements from former players or their estates.

----------

incidentally, i was thinking about this the other day... we here at PC are very anit-torrents and piracy etc. but we have no compunction in linking youtube vids that are also an infringement of copyright (and have the same impact as pirating a game, since the creator doesn't get performance royalties), and we certainly have no problem infringing sportsmen's image rights... it's quite a moral maze...

Interesting we actually used to block youtube when it first started up (unless the person posting the video owned the rights).

 

[angad]

Ross is a lawyer

If thats true then I am pretty sure he is smart enough to not disclose his cards on this topic !

 

[barmyarmy]

If thats true then I am pretty sure he is smart enough to not disclose his cards on this topic !

Indeed. Not expecting answers; just airing some interesting issues.