Another view on the NFL/EA debate

DEN’s own “American Idle” weighs in on what EA’s NFL exclusivity move means.

Tags: Categories: Features, GBA Features, Game Cube Features, PC Features, PS2 Features, PSP Features, Tech Features, Xbox Features

Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Dec 16th, 2004

Recently, Electronic Arts, the National Football League and Players Inc. announced that, beginning in 2005 (the 2006 edition of Madden), EA Sports would have exclusive rights to a bunch of stuff, apparently including player IDs, team names and more. The move has set off a firestorm of controversy and contention, even among DEN’s own staff.

So what does DEN’s own “American Idle” think about this? Okay, here’s my two cents.



I understand the arguments on both sides, let that be understood at the outset…

But what I see as the net result of this decision by the NFL and NFLPA is this: All EA football games will be true-to-life and accurate, in terms of team names and rosters. All non-EA football games won’t.

Is it good for EA?

In the short term only.

Yes, this gives EA a competitive advantage. Like being the only nation with a nuke gave the US a competitive advantage over Japan near the end of World War II. But how about the long-term? To illustrate how that advantage can deteriorate over time, let’s take a look at a parallel licensing issue.

A mere five years ago, there were three major brand names in pro wrestling: WWF (now WWE), WCW and ECW. And there were three companies making wrestling videogames, each with one of those licenses attached.

WCW was with EA Sports.

WWE was originally with Acclaim, then moved to THQ.

ECW was picked up by Acclaim when they lost the WWE license.



Now, opinions vary, but the plum of these licenses was WWE. Unfortunately, WWE was stuck at Acclaim (ACK! LAME!), then moved to THQ (Terribly Horrible Quality). Cheapshots aside, THQ’s games has improved over time but is still not where it should be. WCW had the better company behind them in EA Sports, though those last couple WCW games before WCW’s demise did nothing to prove it.

The big Monday Night Wars came to a conclusion a few years ago and several things resulted from Vince McMahon’s ultimate victory.

1) WWE and WCW absorbed ECW talent, sending the company under, with the license eventually falling into Vince McMahon’s hands.

2) WWE bought out WCW when Turner/Time-Warner was absorbed by AOL. It can be argued that the decline in wrestling’s ratings on Monday Night is due directly to the fact that there’s no major-league competitor today to WWE programming, and McMahon’s company doesn’t have to be a sharp, cutting edge or competitive.

3) Wrestling games went from a choice of three official licenses down to one, where it stays to this day. (Ultimate Fighting Championship isn’t wrestling and NWA-TNA hasn’t caught on enough to attract a videogame maker to them… yet.)

4) WWE remains stuck with the inferior THQ/Jakks Pacific license (at least for the moment) despite being the only big brand name in pro wrestling… and the lack of competition from licensed games has caused THQ’s “slow to improve” attitude. Meanwhile, I personally remain conviced that EA Sports BIG/EA Canada and even Activision O2 could both to better jobs with the WWE license than the current licensee.


5) Yes, fictional and “alternative license” games exist, like EA’s DEF JAM VENDETTA, but it ultimately comes across as a regular fighting game. BACKYARD WRESTLING had no stars in it. RUMBLE ROSES is… umm… no comment. And LEGENDS OF WRESTLING can only use long-ago stars that many of today’s younger audience don’t even recognize… but who are available because WWE holds no license over their likenesses, such as Kerry Von Erich, Terry Funk, etc. With the possible exception of RUMBLE ROSES, most of these games don’t come close to competing with THQ’s WWE games, and they aren’t serious competition to THQ’s WWE titles, because there’s no recognizable current stars. Let’s be honest, if you were 15 years old, would you rather play LEGENDS OF WRESTLING with Tito Santana facing off against Terry Funk… two stars most kids may not even know… or play SMACKDOWN VS. RAW and fight as John Cena against Randy Orton? Hell, I remember Santana and Funk, and even I’d prefer to play as stars I am able to see every week on RAW or SMACKDOWN…

6) So, yes, other “wrestling” games still exist, but without an officially-licensed game to compete against, these other titles are mere drops in the bucket… and again, THQ’s WWE games started terrible and have improved over five years to the level of competent, but the lack of any real competitor is a big part of that. And in the same way, a lack of competition could lead to a degrading of quality among videogame football titles, because fake pro football titles are no substitute for real NFL games, when it comes down to hardcore sports fans. RUMBLE ROSES may be a cheap thrill, but if it had the WWE DIVAs license? It’d be through the roof.

Is it good for gamers?

No.

What I see ahead is a lot of “pro football” games (rather than NFL games) with teams like the MINNEAPOLIS NORDICS and the WISCONSIN CHEESEHEADS, rather than the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers. And, if other companies come to close to mirroring the real thing? Sega may have waved the white flag of surrender, deciding to drop football altogether at least for next year and possibly forever, but other sports game developers who don’t fold up shop could even end up getting sued by the NFL and NFLPA! This is a level of patheticness that the sports videogame world hasn’t seen for at least the last 10 years. Guess it’s back to the days of TECMO BOWL. (Not that the game wasn’t fun for it’s day.)



This was definitely a power move by EA Sports, and while it may be that Microsoft was their intended target, the whole industry gets the shaft along with Microsoft. About the only thing one could say is: At least it’s EA Sports that pulled it off and not Microsoft or Sony! Can you imagine a world in which ONLY Xbox or ONLY PS2 gamers get to play videogame football with the real NFL license? And if those games were developed by Microsoft Game Studios or 989 Sports? Oh my… excuse me for a moment…

Back. That’s better. Good ol’ Pepto Bismol.

As I was saying, at least EA Sports is multiplatform. In other words, it could have been worse. I agree with those arguing that competition is necessary to ensure quality.


As for the arguments about which franchises are better, that’s the realm of opinion. Both SEGA and EA SPORTS make good sports videogames. Personally, I think EA has the upper hand in football, baseball and hockey, while Sega/ESPN has the clear upper hand in basketball. But opinons about which company’s games are better isn’t the point; the point is that, now, there will be MADDEN NFL and … nothing else.
While it’s not the apocalypse, it’s not a great prospect either; there should be more choices than one when it comes to sports videogames, and whatever brand people prefer, they should be able to play the VIKINGS vs. the PACKERS, not the NORDICS vs. the CHEESEHEADS. They should be able to play as BRETT FAVRE or DAUNTE CULPEPPER, not a couple fictional guys who bear a vague resemblance.

See, that’s where the wrestling/football parallel breaks down. Because WWE and the NFL are NOT alike. The WWE is home to the best names on pro wrestling today, but it’s basically the equivilent of a traveling road show or a circus; it’s a private company that travels around and comes to town every couple months or maybe once a year, depending on where you live. There’s not a local stake in it, unless one of the WWE superstars originally comes from your neck of the woods.

The NFL is different. There are 32 franchises with “home towns” and each is deeply rooted into the psyche of that community, which is why there’s such trauma when, say, the Baltimore Colts move to Indianapolis. Although the NFL can be considered a private consortium of sorts, there’s a lot of public funding tied up in their stadiums, media contracts and the like, which complicates the issue. That makes the NFL entirely UNLIKE the WWE. The NFL, therefore, is a complicated mix of private holdings and public interest. That’s what makes it problematic when the NFL decides to award one videogame company “exclusive rights” to team names, player IDs, etc.

Sure, I like MADDEN. I’ve bought it the past two years and this year I went literally ape over the Collector’s Edition… But for about three years before that, it was SEGA that earned away my hard-earned sheckles. This year, I was so torn on NBA LIVE/MARCH MADNESS and ESPN’s NBA/NCAA College Hoops 2K5 that I ended up getting all four titles in order to decide which I like best. (The jury’s still out.)


What worries me is that this will set off a precedent where EA, Sega and Microsoft – maybe even Sony, Konami, Eidos and others – start scrambling to get exclusives to the remaining pro sports and their player’s unions. Could you imagine a world where only Microsoft had the “real” NBA game, only Sony had the “real” NCAA sports games, only Sega had the “real” NHL games, only Nintendo had the “real” major league baseball games, only Konami had the “real” PGA games?

A nightmare is what it would be. And I’m afraid this EA/NFL move may set off just that sort of firestorm. Finally, consider this: unless EA Sports can win the battle on every single pro sports license there is, they’ll have ended up hurting themselves more than helping themselves.

(mommy, i’m scared….)

Father, Forgive EA. They know not what they do.

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