Post your questions about the game here!

[sahilnatu]

You do need a licence to use a player's real name. The older games like International Cricket 2010 had real names for the England and Australia teams only.

I get that. Don't give us rosters with perfect names. But if you are gonna record 'any reasonably common name' for commentary, don't miss out on names of cricketers. We can edit the players and their names, not the commentary audio. You've 7 billion ppl, every name is reasonably common, if not as common as the other.

 

[Gone4aDuck]

We have those sorts of files encrypted and checksummed for PC and protected for PS3/Xbox360.

We leave files we don't mind being changed outside of the protection.

I might have got the wrong end of the stick here, but does this mean edited names will stay edited for an online match? But stats will revert to default.

 

[BigAntStudios]

I might have got the wrong end of the stick here, but does this mean edited names will stay edited for an online match? But stats will revert to default.

We have lots of different modes for online play, with stats normalised to the oposition, and other modes not - I am sure there will be one that will suit.

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It's similar to trademarks - you can have a McDonald's Plumbing company in most countries, but you can't open a restaurant called that because even if that's your last name, you are still causing confusion with a brand. Players names are more or less the intellectual property of the cricket boards and/or the players' association (or in some cases the players themselves) - sure a lot of people might have the last name Tendulkar (for example), but because in the cricket context it is so powerfully associated with one specific Tendulkar it needs to be licensed like anything else.

When something is genuinely very common - say Smith - you can't associate that extremely specifically to one particular player - so it's fine to include something like that - though equally you couldn't include a 'Graham' Smith in a South African side on account of it potentially being a common name, because in the context of South African cricket it is clear who it would be referencing.

My understanding is that it also depends on jurisdiction, from a state to federal level in some cases, and there is no international standard that is followed globally. Even discovering which is the right jurisdiction for a hearing is questionable (see Dow Jones vs Gutnick). I only studied one semester of Trade Mark law but I took good notes

Mostly, the reasonable persons test is applied, that is, would a "reasonable person" think that you were "passing off".

We will not be shipping with player names that we have not licensed taking the field. That said, we have no control over what a user might do with the player editor, nor could we control the sharing of that data.

 

[Gurjot95]

Clear me if I am wrong but EA Cricket 07 (and Cricket 2005?) had all the cricketer commentary's names in their player editor even when they had none of the subcontinent teams licensed. I even remember Richie Benaud, commentator in Cricket 2005 used to speak about Tendulkar in a general conversation during game. As far as I know, they didn't had licensed for most of the teams yet all these names were introduced in commentary.

 

[MattW]

Clear me if I am wrong but EA Cricket 07 (and Cricket 2005?) had all the cricketer commentary's names in their player editor even when they had none of the subcontinent teams licensed. I even remember Richie Benaud, commentator in Cricket 2005 used to speak about Tendulkar in a general conversation during game. As far as I know, they didn't had licensed for most of the teams yet all these names were introduced in commentary.

They were leftover audio files from Cricket 2004 that weren't removed - you had to manually change the roster outside the game to reactivate them, which then flicked back on the licenced mode. I'd imagine that basically they designed the game around being fully licensed but then had to take things out later (BLIC2005 might have been the reason) - so just simply disabled them without removing it.

I'm not sure what licences Cricket 2004 had that Cricket 2005 didn't - but that commentary quirk is simply that EA didn't update the commentary to any big degree in 4 years.

I only studied one semester of Trade Mark law but I took good notes

One more than me though.

 

[BigAntStudios]

Clear me if I am wrong but EA Cricket 07 (and Cricket 2005?) had all the cricketer commentary's names in their player editor even when they had none of the subcontinent teams licensed. I even remember Richie Benaud, commentator in Cricket 2005 used to speak about Tendulkar in a general conversation during game. As far as I know, they didn't had licensed for most of the teams yet all these names were introduced in commentary.

It's complicated. This is not criminal, it's civil, so even when there is a violation of a person's "mark" then they need to personally take action, perhaps they didn't have a case or perhaps they just chose not to pursue it.

I expect that you will be able to create any player you like in our game and get the expected result in commentary and on the field. We could not condone the creating or sharing of the likeness of non-licensed players.

 

[angad]

I expect that you will be able to create any player you like in our game and get the expected result in commentary and on the field.

That should answer all our concerns !!!!!

 

[barmyarmy]

Nor would Konami yet it was their primary business model for years

 

[BigAntStudios]

They were leftover audio files from Cricket 2004 that weren't removed - you had to manually change the roster outside the game to reactivate them, which then flicked back on the licenced mode. I'd imagine that basically they designed the game around being fully licensed but then had to take things out later (BLIC2005 might have been the reason) - so just simply disabled them without removing it.

I'm not sure what licences Cricket 2004 had that Cricket 2005 didn't - but that commentary quirk is simply that EA didn't update the commentary to any big degree in 4 years.


One more than me though.

Often we will record many things just in case we might need them, so you might be right, but knowing EA reasonably well I tend to think this was not an oversight, I think they would have pursued a legal opinion.

Can I ask if the recordings had the first name paired with the surname or was it the surname alone?

 

[kothanalloor]

is there any multiplayer option on one machine.....

 

[barmyarmy]

I'm pretty sure EA commentary was all surnames back in 2004/5.

 

[Gurjot95]

Nor would Konami yet it was their primary business model for years

I was going to ask same thing so opened PES just now. My understanding is that they have real and commentary names for players in local Club is because they have license for national teams they play with. So it's not an issue to use the licensed players in any other unlicensed club teams.

Often we will record many things just in case we might need them, so you might be right, but knowing EA reasonably well I tend to think this was not an oversight, I think they would have pursued a legal opinion.

Can I ask if the recordings had the first name paired with the surname or was it the surname alone?

Surnames only. I am not sure about C07 but in C2005, commentators even mentioned Tendulkar when there was conversation of who is greatest in world. So it was not just about names.

 

[MattW]

Can I ask if the recordings had the first name paired with the surname or was it the surname alone?

Last names only. Someone who edited the game might have a better idea how all that worked, I've only ever just seen the end result of the patches.

 

[Gaurav_7]

It was mostly last names. But, there were Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh IIRC.

 

[Gurjot95]

Yeah they had full names for some players like Yousah Yohana, Abdul Razaq and last name for those who had common names.