A few suggestions regarding the licensing issues for Japan

This is something I've always wondered and if someone could clear it up for me I'd be grateful.

As we all know the Japanese league is unplayable and there are no Japanese players available unless they have already signed for a foreign team.

This is often frustrating in terms of playing the game as realistically as possible, and we have things like Takashi Usami who is playing for Bayern this season not appearing in the game because he is on loan from a Japanese team, Gamba Osaka. Obviously we can create him ourselves in the editor but it's far from the ideal scenario.

Is there any reason why Sega don't just have playable Japanese teams with usable players but with fake names for both, that can then be edited by the community to the real thing. That's exactly what Konami do to get round their licensing issues, as I'm sure anyone who's played the ISS or PES series will know.

So Bayern would have a Japanese player in their ranks called Katashi Isamu, who has strikingly similar details to Mr Usami and all that has to be done is a bit of renaming in the editor or through an Inc file. That way the stats are done correctly by the relevant researcher and everyone has a more complete game.

This could also be done regarding the youth intake in game. Occasionally we've seen examples of promising players, too young to feature in FM but IRL are playing reserve or u18 football early, queue loads of people asking in the Data Issues threads why XXXX isn't in game or will he be in the next update. Raheem Stirling being a good example of that.

Thoughts?

Erm...... well i thought it was a good idea.

Konami do it with well know players, this would involve SI researching all the Japanese players, only to make them under a different name when they cannot use the league in the first place, pretty much a pointless exercise im afraid.

You will always read a defensive post even for the most fantastic suggestion.

Nice suggestion, OP.

You will always read a defensive post even for the most fantastic suggestion.

Nice suggestion, OP.

Or, not everyone considers it a fantastic suggestion like you do?

Fair enough Evanescent, what do you think's wrong with it though? I honestly think it would greatly improve the game for a lot of people and it would have no bearing on anyone not bothered by it. The people who spend hours making Japanese addons for the game would appreciate it, they could even be the researchers and those threads are always popular. I'm sure Bayern fans would like to be able to play with a full squad of players too.

I think its a nice idea. Even if SI run a (fairly) basic program just changing each vowel one forward (a-->e, e-->i &c.). It would be very useful, and would make our realism that much more. Not sure of the legalitys of it, but I'm not sure too many would be opposed.

I actually have more concern for SEGA possibly pressuring SI to make the Japanese players based in foreign countries look better than they actually are. Not proven but you really have to admit their stats are way overrated.

It is a great IDEA!!! , SI should read this, man.

Licensing is more complicated than you think, good idea but no offence I will put money on the fact SI have thought of it before.

SI basically go "we can't do it but we can't stop our users creating it with the editor we provide" it's the same with the German national team, it is not allowed through licensing. The legality around copyright is incredible (I am starting to learn about it in my degree) and it's a minefield.

I have to wonder HOW it's really complicated though...

Football and Formula 1 videogames had been using slightly altered names (and likenesses) for unlicensed players/drivers in ages... like Eric Centona or A. Seena.

If they didn't get sued, I don't see what's so off about the OP proposal.

Moreso I'm quite sure no licensing issue can be raised about using common city/area names... Could you sue a VG developer for using the name Manchester or Madrid?

On the other hand I agree for a game like FM a whole nation filled with fake-yet-real players would be a bit of a silly endeavour... The community would STILL have to re-edit them after having researched them, so it's more or less double work for the same result.

Maybe the reason for no Japanese leagues goes beyond the simple licensing issue? As it's two Japanese companies involved could the reason for no work-around or fake player files be for the benefit of the larger Sega product?

No sense in annoying a domestic rival by circumventing the league/national team license when the economic upside for your product is next to negligible.

You will always read a defensive post even for the most fantastic suggestion.

Nice suggestion, OP.

FORUM USER1 : "Hey guys, I've got a great idea! Maybe Sports Interactive should release a new and improved version next year and call it 'Football Manager 2013.'"

FORUM USER 2: "We already have Football Manager 2012. This is a pointless idea, I'm afraid."

Anyway, if SI can find a competent researcher (researchers are mostly volunteers, btw, SI itself doesn't really do much of the research), then I think this is a good idea. Just because we can't have the real club names from Portugal doesn't mean we shouldn't have Portugal at all and just because we can't have the real German national team doesn't mean we should remove it all together. As in those cases, do the best approximation allowed within the law and make it easy for players to get the real thing with an .lnc file. Personally, it bugs me that Japanese players are virtually nonexistent in the game.

No sense in annoying a domestic rival by circumventing the league/national team license when the economic upside for your product is next to negligible.

I doubt this is the issue given that the other company doesn't publish a direct rival to Football Manager and likely wouldn't even notice. Honestly, how many Japanese executives even know Football Manager exists?

On the other hand I agree for a game like FM a whole nation filled with fake-yet-real players would be a bit of a silly endeavour... The community would STILL have to re-edit them after having researched them, so it's more or less double work for the same result.

As someone who does quite a bit of editing, I can tell you that having nation rules, player/staff UIDs and most player details already in place would cover 99% of the work it takes to create a Japanese database and resolve the numerous bugs that stem from potential duplicate UIDs. Changing names is a trivial issue.

Moreover, whole nations filled with fake players is what happens already in the game. When a game is created, every non-loaded nation is given fake, grey players. The key difference is that those fake players don't reflect the real players at all and there is no quick, viable means to put the real players in place (e.g., a simple .lnc name change file).

I doubt this is the issue given that the other company doesn't publish a direct rival to Football Manager and likely wouldn't even notice. Honestly, how many Japanese executives even know Football Manager exists?

Am I the only one who's simply tired of these fecking issues? It's a name and a likeness. How does it hurt anyone in Japan if SI use the proper names?

On the other hand I agree for a game like FM a whole nation filled with fake-yet-real players would be a bit of a silly endeavour... The community would STILL have to re-edit them after having researched them, so it's more or less double work for the same result.

It's not that hard. People have done it before, in one of SI's former games.

In the EHM series, there were NCAA players but these players had to have fake names because of license issues (the NCAA do not allow real names of players in any video games). The attributes of the players match a player IRL but they have a totally different name. And then you can just have another database with those names 'unfaked'.

I'm sure there are many other areas that their business overlap (the world does not just revolve around football games).

I agree completely, and the point I was actually making is that there would be no real overlap here given that they are not even competing with Football Manager. If SI were publishing a PES/FIFA-type game, there might be a potential issue, but including fake approximations of real players in an obscure (in the global sense), UK-based management simulation would hardly be treading on their turf. In fact, the Japanese teams are already there loaded with fake, grey players as it is.

Moreover, Konami already does the same thing with PES by including approximations for English teams to which they don't own the rights and even make it extremely easy for their user community to, for example, change "London FC" to Chelsea.

As others have pointed out, this workaround has been standard practice in sports games for decades.

It's an excellent suggestion.

Lets put it this way: F1 can do it as NO ONE held the license, FM can't because SOMEONE holds the license.

Lets put it this way: F1 can do it as NO ONE held the license, FM can't because SOMEONE holds the license.

Debatable and not true for some points in time...

On Sega Genesis there were F1 Official licensed games, but non-licensed games still had very recognizable cars/drivers (Super Monaco GP, some other Japanese top-down games)

F1 Racing Simulation had an installment with fake names because some other company (Psygnosis for their PSOne F1 games?) had the official license.

Some smaller F1 simulation games had slightly altered names for cars and drivers while Microprose,EA Sports and/or Codemasters had the offical license.

Let's be honest, there's ALWAYS a way to deal with license restrictions, some are elegant, some aren't... but it's a matter of WANTING it. Probably SI feel it's just not worth it, and SEGA don't want to displease the owners of the J-League license.

As far as I'm concerned it's a rather small annoyance and I won't lose sleep over Japanese football being virtually non-existent in FM, however I'm disappointed because for a franchise taking so much pride in Accuracy, Research and Completedness the supine acceptance of such a sitiation is unacceptable.

It would be ok if they just didn't cripple the league so it can't be created properly (Missing tabs, etc...), so we could still create a proper one without doing crap like replacing nations

I wouldn't mind a fictional J-League, I have no idea who any of the real life players are anyway!

Present: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/280680-%E3%80%90FM12%E3%80%91Japanese-League-DB-amp-Facepacks