IGN: "The largest addition that's been made to this year's game is a new feature known as Family Play, one which obviously takes its cues from the Wii's All-Play mode that's designed to simplify the gameplay mechanics. The concept is to make the game easy for casual football fans and newcomers to compete against the computer or another player by condensing the controls of the game to four basic game inputs. Regardless of what side of the ball you're on, Square makes a player dive, triangle makes a player catch and X makes a player perform a special move. Only Circle is different based on offense or defense (you spin on offense, while you change players on defense). Along with this basic control scheme comes a number of changes to the traditional gameplay."
As GamePolitics has reported, Electronic Arts may soon face a lawsuit by retired NFL players who believe their likenesses were unlawfully incorporated into EA's best-selling Madden game. But former college players now want their slice of EA's money pie as well.
SF Weekly reports that a one-time college quarterback is now making the same claim as NFL retirees in regard to EA's popular NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball franchises. Samuel Keller (left), formerly of Arizona State and Nebraska, is the lead plaintiff in the class action suit.
But College athletes aren't allowed to be payed. A roster download is done by third parties, and merely makes renaming every player in the game much, much quicker. Which is what many gamers will do anyway.
And the players aren't always right anyway. Austin English (#33) from OU is black in NCAA 2008, but is clearly white in real life.
I don't know what he wants EA to do, they aren't allowed to pay the players, and gamers want to play as the players. It's a lose-lose.
The NCAA Football 09 $1,000,000 Challenge, sponsored by House-Kidder Entertainment, is a new nationwide Tournament that will allow U.S. video gamers to compete using the NCAA Football 09 video game on the Xbox 360 for a Grand Prize that could be as much as $1,000,000.
Operation Sports' Wil McCombs examines NCAA Football 09's recruiting model and gives suggestions on how to improve it for NCAA Football 10.
Excerpt: "The main system 'improvements' in '09 were, in my opinion, aimed in the wrong direction. Last year, EA developers presented gamers with ways to streamline the process via features like Quick Call and CPU assistance. Sadly, many sports games -- particularly EA Sports games -- yearn for the casual gamer, and these new tweaks made it nauseatingly evident. Considering the over-the-top, hardcore nature of most college football fans (and NCAA gamers), it seems counter-productive to dumb down the product for the masses, at least in this department."
