Gaming Friday: What's Ed O'Bannon have against Gaming?

I have to admit it was a bit surprising to see this article up on ESPN about Ed O'Bannon. Essentially he's leading a lawsuit against the NCAA for using player likenesses in video gaming, jersey sales, and DVDs with no consent from the players and with the players receiving no money.

Now before I talk about what this means for gaming, let me say this. As a former D1 player myself, I understand this concern a little. I get that at the bigger schools players drive a lot of revenue for the school and NCAA. But where I disagree with Ed is that the players aren't compensated. You get a scholarship, and if you use it for the full 5 years you can that's around 100-150K in money you don't have to pay. (Not to mention the interest that would pile up!) Add on to this your books, your food, the travel, and the contacts you are able to make and it's just hard for me to say athletes are not paid anything.

But let me turn to gaming. I've written before on Synergy Sports Tech, the group that powers the NBA Live franchise (link here). They have a system of archiving and tagging every NBA game and a fast growing number of NCAA games (over 2,500 games last season). And NBA Live is only using the first pieces of what it could become -- Dynamic DNA -- which tells you if Greg Oden catches the ball on the block, what percentage of times he goes left versus right versus passes the ball out. EA's NCAA Basketball franchise games don't yet leverage Dynamic DNA. But the data is there.

So here's where I bet the lawsuit pays out in the world of gaming. If Ed's lawsuit wins (or scares people enough), we won't see a player-specific Dynamic DNA hit the NCAA franchise. We might see a team-specific DNA (which could be cool still) - what percentage of possessions teams go right versus left, play man versus zone, work the shot clock versus rush it, etc. But it won't be down to the player level. Still cool, just not laser precise. And for me, if games are capable of being laser precise, that's what I'd love to see. Imagine simulating the NCAA tourney on Selection Sunday with player specific tendencies. Crazy.

So for now we sit back and watch at this interesting crossroads. Are player stats equal to player likenesses?