Electronic Arts Sued by 'NFL Superstar' Creator

[fitbabits]

Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com) has the details (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7381).

Pernell Harris, owner of independent game company Virtual Jam, has sued Electronic Arts over features in the software giant's Madden NFL 06, according to a Reuters report. Harris claims that EA is in breach of an "implied in fact contract" and a confidentiality agreement by using certain of his ideas in the game without compensation. Harris is seeking unspecified damages in the suit, as well as attorney's fees and restitution.

The specific feature in the game that Harris has laid claim to is the NFL Superstar mode, which allows players to take control of an NFL player of their creation both on and off the field. Harris says that the mode is derived from a game he pitched to EA in late 2003 called Heart of a Champion, which also has players controlling the day-to-day life of a football player, though Harris' pitch began in high school ball.
Could this be why the NFL Superstar feature was dropped for the Xbox 360 version?

[IenjoyedKingsField]

Either way, that mode sucks. Nothing like an football IQ test to make you hate exclusivity agreements.

[JazGalaxy]

This is why most professional entertainment companies won't touch an outsiders "ideas".

If EA even allowed him to show it to them, which I don't think they would be dumb enough to do, I can't see him winning this case.

[Taco]

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/itp/

This get a free pass because it's baseball? It's not like this is some new or original idea. The idea is the easy part, implementing it and making it fun is the hard part.

[t3g]

As much as I despise EA with their stronghold, this guy doesn't seem to have a lot to stand on. How can you copyright an idea like that? There has been Create-A-Player in many games for years and I am surprised nobody has done this earlier.

[Sensei-X]

So his "original" idea was NBA Ballers for football huh? Not very original if you ask me, I hate EA but this lawsuit sounds lame.

[disc]

That sounds very silly.

[netcraazzy]

As lame as this lawsuit is, his original idea of focusing on a single player starting at high school all the way to the pros sounds pretty cool. Anybody know of any games out there that do this?

[Dakar]

The "anyone could have come up with this" argument would only make sense if they came up with it independently. If they actually let him pitch the game... it's another story.

[mister_slim]

Pretty much depends on what documentation he has. Wonder if he'll be able to dig into EA's email logs?

[JazGalaxy]

The "anyone could have come up with this" argument would only make sense if they came up with it independently. If they actually let him pitch the game... it's another story.

Yeah, that's pretty much the desiding factor. If they allowed him to pitch the game then he could really sue them black and blue. But, that's why I can't imagine them acutally allowing him to pitch an idea.

I mean, honestly, who pitches game ideas? As though the thousands of gamers who love gaming so much they made it their career didn't each have an idea they wanted to make a game out of...

[vallor]

I mean, honestly, who pitches game ideas? As though the thousands of gamers who love gaming so much they made it their career didn't each have an idea they wanted to make a game out of...

Who pitches game ideas? Assuming you're not being a smarty-pants: Just about every developer that is looking for publisher to fund a project that may cost millions of bucks otherwise to make?

This guy has his own company, probably brand new with what he hoped was a selling idea. But he can't afford to hire people on his resources so he goes a-whoring his concept to the big guns (who also happen to be the only ones that can allow him to make his game using real NFL players).

Not all dev houses have a nice warchest of $20m or $30m sitting around so they can do continuous development on a 3 year/3 title pipeline (though also 3 titles being developed at the same time would be rare). Its not too bad on the PC side but console development is insane expensive and well beyond the means of your average small business loan or the pooled resources of a few credit cards.

Its the rare start up studio that can independantly create a mass market game these days with out falling back on the resources from a publisher.

Still, it would surprise me if any of the designers working on Madden would have been invited to the meeting with the biz dev guys during the initial "presentation". If it went farther to a due dilligence meeting then *maybe* a Madden producer went to that meeting... maybe. This doesn't preclude the biz dev guy talking excitedly to his friend about the game in the EA lunch room, but generally those guys are very professional to defray exactly these sorts of proceedings.

I dunno how EA works but I do have experience with a couple of other bigger publishers (with subsidary/in house studios) and generally their dev studios and their publishing studios operate outside of the other's sphere of influence.

My opinion: Its worth whatcha paid for it.

-Vallor

[MajSheppard]

Take em down. Take em down.