EA Madden rant - trey31's Blog

trey31's Blog

EA Madden rant

Posted on November 11, 2013 at 12:20 PM.

I was pissed last year at EA when I first loaded up 13. When I read all the mediocre reviews about how 25 was still a lot more like 13 than 10, 11, or 12 I decided to spend as much time as I could getting 12 (and 13) to be as up to date as possible so everyone else who is fed up with EA recycling the same garbage year after year and slapping new promises of improvements only to let us down with basically every release since 04/05/06, something to play.

EA doesn't care about these roster updates. They don't care about me, they certainly don't care about you. They care about the money, the bonuses, and keeping their jobs (the board and corporate officers) by maximizing profit and minimizing costs. This means pulling features one year, just to re-introduce them in another.

X1 and PS4 releases of 25 are going to be more disappointing than 13 or 25 were on PS3 and 360. That's going to continue on Madden 15 too. Anyone arguing about how 25 got slight graphic improvements on PS3 is insane. Please realize that in looking at the game files for as many hours as I have now, they have changed almost nothing in the data parameters of the game for YEARS. 08/09/10 are nearly identical. 11/12/13/25 rosters are exactly identical. Nothing changed. Even Potential ratings (which supposedly got removed for 25) are still in the roster files. The Madden team is creating new menus every year, but mostly give us 95% of the exact same thing as the year before. Even cyber faces are only done for about 15 players each year. For 12 I only had to change about 30 faces from 25. That's about 15 guys updated each year. The worst part is that the 2K basketball games have literally well over 100+ cyber faces introduced or updated every year, and Madden is still roughly 95% generic faces. Even worse, I remember seeing a video years and years ago showing a videogame developer creating "realistic" cyber faces on a PC using their 3D modeling software. During the 30 seconds the programmer was shown editing the face, he was able to make drastic changes in the shape of the brow ridge, nose, and eye depth to the player model he was working on. Hell I remember making a Breton character in TES: Oblivion that literally looked like (at the very least) a digital relative of me. All I did was grab a single photo of myself and start moving face shape sliders around. Even my wife said "holy crap that looks exactly like you" after I finished. And I did that face in about 15 minutes. I'm not saying a cyber face only takes 30 seconds, or 15 minutes, but even if it took one programmer 1 full work day, and there was only 1 programmer working full time on it, why are there only 15 cyber faces being done each year??? That's an insane amount of under optimization.

The reality is that large release videogames make more money than moderate budget feature films do. EA "franchise" games get a Blair Witch Project-like budget every year, yet rake in Avatar-like sales. Madden 13 did over $82,000,000 gross......

......in its first week. How many millions do you think Madden 25 will do on PS4 and X1 leading up to, and just after, the holidays?

Anyway, rant over.

Comments

# 1 trey31 @ Nov 11

what are your thoughts? Please share.

# 2 DASKCREW1 @ Nov 11

i think you're overacting...yes you got some good points but i feel like you're taking this too personal, at the end of the day is a video game and next gen is already looking good in my opinion so i doubt madden will stay the same way.

# 3 cusefan74 @ Nov 11

People are all excited about the next gen Madden 25 and I don't get it. I've been saying since day one, does anybody remember the first Madden on this gen? It was terrible, I went back and was playing on the PS2 because it was way better. No doubt it will look better, but I would be willing to bet most people will think the game sucks. I hope I am wrong and people can tell me that and say EA came through for us, but I'm not holding my breath.

# 4 trey31 @ Nov 11

@2DASKCREW1 no doubt it will look better. Madden 07 looked great compared to Madden 06 on PS2 or XBOX. But, it played like crap. I kept going back to 05 and 06 all the way up til Madden 09. And even then 05 was still a better game, I just got fed up looking at 480p on my 65" TV year after year.

# 5 jaynral @ Nov 11

NBA 2k14 is said to 43GB in size and madden is said to be 12GB.....that is really making me nervous

# 6 sportzbro @ Nov 12

I think the general consensus here is that Madden has been terrible-to-mediocre for years, and looks to be a massive disappointment on NG consoles. EA will milk that cash cow for as long as possible, though.

# 7 H to the Oza @ Nov 12

I dont get it. If you know the game is going to be the same year after year (which you should know by now). Dont buy it. I only bought one CG version of Madden, didnt keep it for long, and regret nothing.

# 8 Dolphins88 @ Nov 12

I haven't bought 1 madden this gen in fact I'm still playing 05/06 last gen, tecmo bowl and APF2k8..I'm waiting on reviews first on here of nag madden but have faint hopes..why doesn't the nfl do us a favour and give all companies a chance to make a nfl game..

# 9 Sheba2011 @ Nov 12

Sigrant, I agree with you on FIFA and NCAA but the NHL series is stuck in the same rut that Madden has been in, the franchise mode hasn't changed in 5 years, the GM and Trade logic is a train wreck, the commentary is old and stale and the on ice graphics haven't changed since they switched to this generation.

# 10 dre2 @ Nov 12

I forewent Madden most of this generation because of the issues you've presented but still I had hope for next gen...right up until I saw the videos, I'll be playing 2K 14 and BF4 on PS4 with no Foorball again.

# 11 South318 @ Nov 14

As long as people continue to buy Madden, only minor changes will happen. EA wants the money, not a better game.

# 12 trey31 @ Dec 21

In case anyone is interested, there is a thread to "fix" some of the game engine issues with Madden 12 over here.

# 13 trey31 @ Dec 21

There is a thread here that confirms some of the issues with the design of th e sim engine of Madden, as well as the game engine.

# 14 trey31 @ Dec 21

check this out... Looks very interesting. It looks like on 360 Modding Madden should be a very real possibility.

# 15 RAVENOUS @ Jan 14

I think the Madden issue is part of a greater trend in America (and possibly the world) as a whole, and is the cause of me quitting my last job. Companies prioritize how little money they can spend putting out a product over putting out a quality product. Period. We could have made millions more dollars per year investing maybe 10s of thousands more per year just to not be putting out a garbage product (and all of our customer reviews confirmed that, yes, we were putting out a garbage product), but our GM wanted to hear none of that ^&$#. You say Madden 13 pulled $82M in its first week, but I have read elsewhere they sell about half as many copies of the game as they did 10 years ago. Then the less $$ they make the less they feel they can justify spending on the next version. Anyway, that's how I think things work now, and it makes me sad.

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