Nashville Predators Prospect Seth Jones to be Included in NHL 14

[Steve_OS]

The fourth overall pick in the NHL draft was Seth Jones, selected by the Nashville Predators. He happens to be a big fan of the NHL videogame series and visited EA Sports Vancouver to play NHL 14 and also sat down in their motion capture lab to get a full facial scan.

[Schmackity]

I love how this is news and has an entire article written on it. Now if they decided to actually take initiative and go team by team over the spring/summer and get everyone's faces into the game, that'd be worth writing about.

Knowing EA, this will probably be on the back of the box as a feature since there's nothing else added that actually makes this game worth playing minus the slight fix to the defensemen turning.

It's a sad day when of all your franchises (FIFA aside), Madden is the most well defined/driven game.

[Simple Mathematics]

I can't imagine ever seeing an article about The Show featuring one player's face. I'll say this again- the NHL series NEEDS a custom face editor like The Show and FIFA have. Then we won't see the same faces on multiple players since every face would be unique. And please, for the love of god, let us edit the players' faces that aren't actual face scans. The community will make every player look realistic with a custom face editor.

[Steve_OS]

Added an image of his full facial scan to the OP.

[Matt_350z]

Nowadays the only two games I really devote a lot of time too are MLB The Show(PS3), and NHL(360). Hockey and baseball are easily my two favorite past times.

To me, the Show is the epitome of how a sports game should look, feel, play, etc. Just about everything about it is quality. The community interaction is top notch as well. Its just awesome in my book(and a lot of other peoples as well).

I wish the NHL team over at EA would put just half the time and effort into the game, and listening to the community as SCEA does for The Show.

There are so many of the same gripes year in and year out that never get addressed, and community interaction is non existent for the most part.

It kills me that I can't have a current NHL game that has at least some of the same level of polish that The Show has.

Congrats to Seth Jones though. Hope he likes his face scan, because it probably won't change for a decade. I kid, but seriously, I wish EA would step it up.

[Qb]

Quote: Originally Posted by Schmackity

I love how this is news and has an entire article written on it. Now if they decided to actually take initiative and go team by team over the spring/summer and get everyone's faces into the game, that'd be worth writing about.

Believe me, I'm tired of guys looking nothing like themselves (Brooks Orpik comes to mind), but let's try to keep some perspective. As awesome as that would be, it isn't a matter of "initiative" (which is used here to infer laziness), it's a matter of money. The NHL series doesn't have the budget to transport the mobile scan equipment to 30 cities. The only way I could see it happening is if the NHL teams went to EA studios when they where in Vancouver, but then it's a time issue. I suspect most teams don't see spending several hours at EA HQ as a good use of their very limited time.

[dlxsf18]

Quote: Originally Posted by Qb

Believe me, I'm tired of guys looking nothing like themselves (Brooks Orpik comes to mind), but let's try to keep some perspective. As awesome as that would be, it isn't a matter of "initiative" (which is used here to infer laziness), it's a matter of money. The NHL series doesn't have the budget to transport the mobile scan equipment to 30 cities. The only way I could see it happening is if the NHL teams went to EA studios when they where in Vancouver, but then it's a time issue. I suspect most teams don't see spending several hours at EA HQ as a good use of their very limited time.

This is a valid argument, but honestly we shouldn't have to make excuses when it comes to something like scanned player faces. It is an important part of every sports video game. You can make a dam good one with the gameface program. I'm sure that the Visuals team for the NHL games has a tool that works similar to this and renders player faces much more accurately. This is, in fact, a matter of attention to detail and it says alot when notable guys from every team in the NHL share the same generic faces.

It hurts when I scroll through my hometown teams bench and see that almost everyone is missing an accurate face, especially when I know that I could use simple reference imaging from Google and make one myself for each of them in about 2-3 minutes.

I also don't understand the argument some make when they say there are memory issues. Even while factoring in the CHL, AHL, and all of the euro leagues there are, the NHL series has an equal or lesser amount of players FIFA has, even though everyone in FIFA resembles themselves.

It's honestly gamebreaking, and while maybe 20-30 more players will be included into next year (Not counting removed faces- WTF EA?), there has to be a huge change in this department for the next gen versions.

[Qb]

Quote: Originally Posted by dlxsf18

This is a valid argument, but honestly we shouldn't have to make excuses when it comes to something like scanned player faces.

I hear you, man. I agree the faces could and should be better, even without full 360 scans. I wasn't trying to make excuses, but I thought it was bit disingenuous to paint it as matter of "initiative" when it comes to scanning 700+ player faces. That's a huge undertaking both in terms of money and logistics.

But in the end, the point stands that player faces are a weak spot and well behind other games.