Management Games?

[Teq]

To those that are doing management games, are you allowing players to enter their own team/player names in the database, are you using fixed *similar* names, or are you actually licensing the data? Just that I know of at least one Wrestling game (online, web-based) that had to stop players from being able to add names that were from the federation.

[Jack Norton]

Probably because that was a online game/site, so anyone could see it... if I change names on my own in my computer AT HOME, I can do what I want :)

Still I haven't added that option in my games yet... maybe in future updates :)

[Teq]

Sounds fair enough, so you'd say its pretty safe to allow users to change the name of characters from fictional to something a little less fictional?

[luggage]

While I was toying with the idea of writing a management game I had a think about this.

I would be surprised if people on here license the use of the names. I guess it must be pretty costly.

If the game works online for anyone to see then allowing people to change the names would be pretty bad. Before you know it someone has changed them all to real names and it'll be you who cops the flak for it.

Offline there's no harm in allowing them to change the names. It's their data they can do what they want with it. One thing I was going to do was something similar to Sensible Soccer, they used all the proper player names but switch vowels around. So all the character 'e's became 'i's. This made it easy for people to change them back once they knew what the switches were. You could probably get away with having a 'feature' where you can switch one letter for another in all the names. Basically so it'll be a 5 minute job to correct all the names.

This kind of thing annoys me greatly. It kind of links up with a couple of other threads. Why shouldn't we be able to use players\teams names in the way that they're used. Apparently you're not even allowed to reproduce the football fixture list without permission from the Press Association. The situation is a joke.

[Teq]

The lower divisions of any sport would usually welcome a low cost solution for using their names, but the big names are always going to be out for what they can get, you only have to look at the figures that floated around for EA having exclusive rights to NFL data.

[Nutter2000]

This kind of thing annoys me greatly. It kind of links up with a couple of other threads. Why shouldn't we be able to use players\teams names in the way that they're used. Apparently you're not even allowed to reproduce the football fixture list without permission from the Press Association. The situation is a joke.
Without permission from the FA/FAPL although the Press Association hold the rights to sub-licence (renewed every year at extortionate cost) as I understand it, which is the only reason why you can read the football results/fixtures in the paper or see them on TV.

Having been working in a company doing Footy Management sims in the past. We got caught out by the scum-sucking money grabbing *********** at the FA Premier League I can tell you that they will do everything, every underhand trick they possibly can to stop you if you appear on their radar, ie if you start making any money out of it.

I personally wouldn't go anywhere near sports management simulations again (except in a contracting role), it's a serious world of hurts.

Like you say, the situation is a total joke.