Madden: What to Look for Out of the NFL Offseason

Feature Article

Submitted on: 02/17/2014 by Zac Arthur

The NFL offseason is officially underway and this one in particular seems like it might just have a few tricks up its sleeve for NFL fans.

Especially when it comes to Madden.

We’ll get the normal NFL draft, mini camps and training camps, with the usual roster shuffling and rookie additions for us all to drool over.

There happens to be some other NFL-related issues that could have a direct impact on Madden’s product and what consumers see come August, though — assuming that is when the new version releases.

Here’s what Madden fans should be looking out for as the NFL offseason takes place.

Potential Rule Changes

One of the biggest potential rule changes currently being talked about is doing away with the extra point. Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, proposed the idea of every touchdown automatically being worth seven points. The teams then had an option of going for two that would give them eight points if scored successfully, but only give them six points if failed.

There are a lot of opinions on the right way to handle extra points—I particularly like Sports Illustrated’s Peter King’s idea—but regardless of what’s actually done, an actual rule change would have a drastic effect on Madden.

I truly believe that the effect would be a positive one.

Other rule changes to be aware of are the always changing tackling rules in order to prevent head injuries. These kind of rule changes are much harder to distinguish when it comes to a video game like Madden, but the NFL is good at making sure products with their name on it are presented in ways that make the game look positive. Head trauma is a hot topic right now, so it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to see some kind of educational tool put into Madden in order to promote safe play at some point in the future.

Does the NFL Still Have an Exclusive Deal with EA and Madden?

In my opinion, this story flew by under the radar a bit too much.

For those who don’t know, the exclusive deal between EA and the NFL was set to expire at the end of 2013. The deal basically stated that EA Sports was the only company who was able to use all of the NFL’s names and player likenesses in their games.

This was the deal that pushed 2K Sports out of the football market.

There wasn’t any word of what took place with the exclusivity deal as 2014 got underway, but EA CEO Andrew Wilson eventually addressed the issue of Madden and its future with the NFL. Here’s what he had to say via Polygon:

"Contrary to some reports, we still have a number of years left on our agreements there, and the relationship that we have with both the NFL and the NFL Players Association continues to be extremely strong. We are currently in planning on the next Madden property right now, and we expect to make a number of Madden games in the future."

The key to his quote is that the word “exclusive” didn’t appear once. Is it possible that EA no longer has an exclusive deal with the NFL? It's not unreasonable to think that it is a possibility, but it also is just as likely that Wilson simply didn't feel the need to qualify what type of deal was in place.

We can’t get too ahead of ourselves, though. If EA didn’t have an exclusive deal in place, then any company looking to make an NFL game will have a number of challenges ahead of them. The most difficult one being money. The financial undertaking to both sign a deal with the NFL and create an engine to run the game with would be huge, meaning we probably wouldn’t see one for a number of years. On top of those, promoting the game to match the name recognition of Madden would be incredibly difficult.

With that said, there is one company who might draw enough excitement to legitimately compete with Madden and I think we all know who that company is if the opening is there...

Can Madden Finally Responds to Customer Pressure?

There’s no need to tip-toe around the subject—there hasn’t been an absolutely fantastic Madden title in quite some time.

Sure, EA Sports has put out good Madden games, but nothing that screams great or all-time classic.

The time is now.

While Madden 25 on next-gen consoles was well received by most, there was still a sense of “that’s it?” The Playstaion 3 and Xbox 360 had extremely dated technology that was around eight years old, and the next-gen version of Madden 25 didn’t really do anything to blow games of the past out of the water. Instead, we got a game with some solid improvements that will hopefully build a foundation for what’s to come. Madden certainly needed some upgrades in basic areas of a football game—such as offensive/defensive line interaction—but there was an overwhelming feeling that more could have been done.

The next-gen version of Madden 25 wasn’t truly a next-gen game. It was simply a more polished and well balanced game of football. The question now becomes can the Madden team respond to customer pressure and truly take their game into the next generation?

It is time for real-time physics that don’t feel like an extension of Madden’s old animation engine. If the game is really using real-time physics, then why do we see the same animations over and over again? Backbreaker was far from a great game, but it did thrive from a physics standpoint. You could truly feel the power of a big hit, or the anguish from clipping somebody but not getting enough of them. I could just be speaking for myself here, but I’ve never consistently experienced these feelings in a Madden game up to this point.

Real-time presentation and true next-gen graphics also continue to get mentions amongst fans. Madden 25’s next-gen version was a better looking game, but it appeared as though there were only lighting and texture changes to improve its look. The new crowds definitely helped, but it was far from what people visually expected the game to be. Also, can we PLEASE do away with cut scenes that we get sick of after playing the game for just a few hours? Real-time presentation would be crucial toward giving a new feeling of immersion that’s been desperately missing from this franchise.

These are a handful of issues that Madden must fix over the offseason, but it’s in the hands of Madden’s development team now. They know how consumers feel about their game and what needs to be fixed or improved on.

It’s time they finally do something about it.

Do you expect any huge changes from the NFL or the Madden franchise this offseason?

Madden NFL 25 Videos

Member Comments

# 1 SVCbearcat10 @ 02/17/14 02:45 PM

Madden needs to be torn apart and rebuilt for next gen. However, I doubt they will do much more than in the past due to everyone will still be buying it. If you look at install sizes: NBA2k 41.8 GB, BF4 33.9 GB, AC4 21.2 GB, Killzone 38.5 GB... then there's the EA games with Madden at 13.1 GB and FIFA at 9 GB. You can't tell me they were trying their hardest or pushed last gen's hardware to the max when they, on average, had a game size less than half of everyone else this time around. All they care about, and rightfully so, is maximizing shareholder profits. Until the bottom line is hit, I wouldn't expect the game for the next few years to look much different than today or for them to pay attention to the details like NBA2K has or MLB The Show has.

# 2 NicVirtue @ 02/17/14 03:28 PM

As long as it keeps selling, they have no incentive to make the game how it should be in the year 2014 with all this technology. I may sound like part of the problem, but if I was selling a sub par product, the only product around, and people kept buying it, I wouldn't change a dam thing.

# 3 tbook24 @ 02/17/14 03:31 PM

i would like to see them do the extra point kick the same way they do in rugby. you have to line up to kick directly on line with where you scored the td. if you score on the sideline you line up to kick with the angle from the sideline

# 4 asu666 @ 02/17/14 04:06 PM

NBA 2K14 had a huge install size and ruined the franchise (imo). FIFA 14 has the smallest install size of the bunch and is a wonderful foundation for continued improvement over the course of the new-gen consoles. NFL 2K5 on Xbox has better presentation, and arguably gameplay, than Madden 25 on PS4/X1. The MLB series looks like it may school all other sports game franchises. Some teams have it, some don't. The Madden team's leadership clearly doesn't get it. NCAA 14 on Xbox 360 is more fun and a bigger and better game than Madden 25 on any platform. Hopefully they keep some of those devs to improve Madden 15.

# 5 CM Hooe @ 02/17/14 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVCbearcat10


	Madden needs to be torn apart and rebuilt for next gen. However, I doubt they will do much more than in the past due to everyone will still be buying it. If you look at install sizes: NBA2k 41.8 GB, BF4 33.9 GB, AC4 21.2 GB, Killzone 38.5 GB... then there's the EA games with Madden at 13.1 GB and FIFA at 9 GB.

Disc footprint has absolutely no correlation with game quality. It is solely the amount of content (specifically textures, audio, meshes, and other game assets) used in the game. Rather, it's how the developers use the content that affects the quality of the game.

I wish I could say that this was the first time I've said this on this forum.

# 6 SVCbearcat10 @ 02/17/14 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	Disc footprint has absolutely no correlation with game quality. It is solely the amount of content (specifically textures, audio, meshes, and other game assets) used in the game. Rather, it's how the developers use the content that affects the quality of the game. I wish I could say that this was the first time I've said this on this forum.

Zero correlation between amount of content in the game and gameplay?? Really??? It's not a correlation coefficient of 1, but it's fairly high. So if Madden would take out half their content, they could make a better game? Let's see what would happen to them next year if that happened. I agree amount of content does not guarantee a good game but lack of content to work with does.

It's funny how NBA2K and The Show have much more content and are considered great games while Madden lacks the content and wouldn't you know it... hasn't made a great game in years. But I'm sure it has nothing to do with it. NBA2k and The Show where 3+ GBs bigger on last gen than Madden and they were considered the best sports games of the generation.

You better keep preaching on these forums that the amount of content doesn't matter because as far as I can see, it absolutely does.

# 7 roadman @ 02/17/14 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVCbearcat10


	Zero correlation between amount of content in the game and gameplay?? Really??? It's not a correlation coefficient of 1, but it's fairly high. So if Madden would take out half their content, they could make a better game? Let's see what would happen to them next year if that happened. I agree amount of content does not guarantee a good game but lack of content to work with does. It's funny how NBA2K and The Show have much more content and are considered great games while Madden lacks the content and wouldn't you know it... hasn't made a great game in years. But I'm sure it has nothing to do with it. NBA2k and The Show where 3+ GBs bigger on last gen than Madden and they were considered the best sports games of the generation. You better keep preaching on these forums that the amount of content doesn't matter because as far as I can see, it absolutely does.

Maybe past 2k NBA games, but I traded mine in after 2 months. The push of VC and online connectivity was bothersome.

Good article. Time will tell what happens.

# 8 newmich @ 02/17/14 09:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roadman


	Maybe past 2k NBA games, but I traded mine in after 2 months. The push of VC and online connectivity was bothersome. Good article. Time will tell what happens.

To each there own, I actually am in love with 2K on the PS4. That being said I do agree with you that the push of VC is bothersome, also I am not a fan of the menu layout on the PS4 version.

# 9 CM Hooe @ 02/18/14 12:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVCbearcat10


	Zero correlation between amount of content in the game and gameplay?? Really??? It's not a correlation coefficient of 1, but it's fairly high. So if Madden would take out half their content, they could make a better game? Let's see what would happen to them next year if that happened. I agree amount of content does not guarantee a good game but lack of content to work with does. It's funny how NBA2K and The Show have much more content and are considered great games while Madden lacks the content and wouldn't you know it... hasn't made a great game in years. But I'm sure it has nothing to do with it. NBA2k and The Show where 3+ GBs bigger on last gen than Madden and they were considered the best sports games of the generation. You better keep preaching on these forums that the amount of content doesn't matter because as far as I can see, it absolutely does.

The five best games I played last generation were Portal (less than 650 MB on XBOX 360), Portal 2 (4.5 GB on XBOX 360), Rock Band 2 (4.6 GB on XBOX 360), NBA 2K11 (6.7 GB on XBOX 360) and Minecraft (113 MB on XBOX 360). As you can see the disc footprints of those games are all over the board, yet all are great games. Game mechanics are a far greater piece of the puzzle, and that's just code which has a trivial disc footprint.

If Madden doubled its disc footprint, the only immediate results you'd see are higher-res textures, higher-poly-count geometry, and a larger sound bank to draw from for commentary (note that this is completely separate from the commentary being any smarter, that is all code-side).

Again, file size absolutely has no bearing on how fun a game is.

# 10 CM Hooe @ 02/18/14 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ovie832


	I guess Im just confused why superior games like Mlb the Show and Nba 2k always have a big hdd minimum requirement.. and Fifa, Madden and NHL are always much less. *not meant to be a wise crack or start an argument.. i truly want to know why.

In the case of the most recent NBA 2K game on next-gen consoles, I'd guess that a ton of the disc footprint relative to other games is related to a few things. Foremost, the sheer amount of audio assets. 2K has always been praised for their robust commentary, which has always had tons of lines for a smart commentary engine to play back in a variety of situations, and then on top of that you add in any game mode specific audio for MyCareer and MyGM, the sideline report audio, stadium arena audio, presentation-related audio, the on-court player and coach real voice interviews, and so on. Then add in HD texture assets for pretty much every player and coach in the league, signature animations for a large number of players in the league (2K does a tremendous job at capturing unique player likenesses), and so on, you end up with a game with a huge amount of assets.

I can't speak much to MLB The Show as I've never played it, I have no interest in purchasing a PS3/PS4 right now, and I have little interest in baseball to start with, but I imagine it's a similar set of circumstances; tons of audio, tons of unique animations, tons of texture assets to capture unique player likenesses.

All of these things with respect to assets show more attention to detail and increase player immersion, but don't necessarily make the games play better. The majority of that can be attributed to gameplay mechanics, game design, opponent AI, and online gameplay network code if the game is online-enabled.

# 11 SVCbearcat10 @ 02/18/14 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CM Hooe


	The five best games I played last generation were Portal (less than 650 MB on XBOX 360), Portal 2 (4.5 GB on XBOX 360), Rock Band 2 (4.6 GB on XBOX 360), NBA 2K11 (6.7 GB on XBOX 360) and Minecraft (113 MB on XBOX 360). As you can see the disc footprints of those games are all over the board, yet all are great games. Game mechanics are a far greater piece of the puzzle, and that's just code which has a trivial disc footprint. If Madden doubled its disc footprint, the only immediate results you'd see are higher-res textures, higher-poly-count geometry, and a larger sound bank to draw from for commentary (note that this is completely separate from the commentary being any smarter, that is all code-side). Again, file size absolutely has no bearing on how fun a game is.

I understand your point and agree to a certain extent. However, let's look at sports games specifically, since the goal is real life simulation. I still play my NES from time to time and love Tecmo Super Bowl. I probably enjoy it more than any recent copy of Madden. However, times have changed for sports games. Having 4 offensive and 4 defensive plays is now unacceptable. Expectations out of sports game back then weren't that high and all were arcade like, because that's all the technology would allow.

I guess I'm arguing that footprint may matter more in sports game. Having accurate faces for all players is important, realistic stadiums and cities are important, details in the gear is important. While, like you said, those don't make the game better per say, it goes hand in hand with recreating what you see on TV (which is part of the goal and what makes the games fun). The technology is there to produce a life-like product. When they don't put in the extra content for realistic sidelines, player models, variety of player models; then, bugs in gameplay are focused on even more. That in turn makes the game worse because you are less likely to overlook these flaws.

In short, yes I agree with you because I find some older games (like NES) just as fun as PS4 games. However in sports, the attention to detail is every bit as important as the gameplay itself. That's what takes the game from being good to great and that's the direction Madden needs to take.

# 12 CM Hooe @ 02/18/14 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVCbearcat10


	In short, yes I agree with you because I find some older games (like NES) just as fun as PS4 games. However in sports, the attention to detail is every bit as important as the gameplay itself. That's what takes the game from being good to great and that's the direction Madden needs to take.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, particularly with respect to Madden which lags behind its simulation sports game counterparts with respect to attention to detail. That doesn't make it a not-fun or not-good game for me - I've spent quite a lot of time playing Madden over the years, so I obviously enjoy it - but it certainly doesn't capture the little nuances of the NFL the way NBA 2K captures the minutiae of the sport it strives to represent.

# 13 elgreazy1 @ 02/18/14 10:27 AM

The problem is management and suits who have absolutely nothing to do with the creation and development with the games. I've seen far too many times creative teams (across design, advertising, gaming, etc) having to crumble or submit to half-thought marketing campaigns that turn into "features" instead of add-ons. It's a complete waste of the creators' time and resources and it doesn't allow the creators any time to polish or improve the final product.

# 14 FreAk47 @ 02/18/14 06:06 PM

Well, if the NFL can just keep doing away with things involving kicking, the broken wind meter might just eventually correct itself...but I digress.

What do I expect from next gen Madden? Nothing. It's just as dumb to hope that this game will change as it is to hope the exclusive license is gone. This game just absolutely lacks any "Wow" factor...it never does anything creative or innovative. You would think one of the top selling sports games of all time would be on the cutting edge of every thing...but it's not. Games before it have done better, games representing other sports do better, and what does Madden do? Nothing...just bobbing along riding that exclusive license.

# 15 roadman @ 02/18/14 08:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBuddyHobbs


	VC was a terrible idea and should be killed. I'm not an online player as far as sports games go. So I can't really comment on it as far as that. I do know one thing though. The gameplay, animations, presentation, and graphics were great in NBA. Those are the most important areas of a sports game and those are the areas Madden always lacks in. I think that's why it's much a better game than Madden.

I would agree with you, but after two months of an unplayable game on my end, I lost all patience.

I couldn't enjoy what you mentioned above.

No doubt Madden lacks in those areas.

# 16 CM Hooe @ 02/18/14 09:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBuddyHobbs


	I don't think the disc space argument with last-gen products is a good route to go. This is a new and much bigger generation of games.

Minecraft is scheduled to release on PS4 and XBOX One this year, and when it drops it's still going to be a great game, and it's still going to have a disc footprint less than half a gigabyte.

On XBOX One, FIFA 14 is the highest-rated game by Metacritic score, and its install size is 8.7 GB.

On PS4, the two highest rated games by Metacritic score are Flower, coming in at 1.8 GB, and Rayman Legends, weighing in at 9 GB (it will most assuredly get a high score on XBOX One as well, and it's only 4.3 GB on that platform for reasons unbeknownst to me).

Point once again being that you don't need a massive amount of content to make a great game, even in this generation of consoles. There's absolutely no correlation. Game design and game mechanics matter foremost.

# 17 piffbernd @ 02/18/14 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVCbearcat10


	Madden needs to be torn apart and rebuilt for next gen. However, I doubt they will do much more than in the past due to everyone will still be buying it. If you look at install sizes: NBA2k 41.8 GB, BF4 33.9 GB, AC4 21.2 GB, Killzone 38.5 GB... then there's the EA games with Madden at 13.1 GB and FIFA at 9 GB. You can't tell me they were trying their hardest or pushed last gen's hardware to the max when they, on average, had a game size less than half of everyone else this time around. All they care about, and rightfully so, is maximizing shareholder profits. Until the bottom line is hit, I wouldn't expect the game for the next few years to look much different than today or for them to pay attention to the details like NBA2K has or MLB The Show has.

Wow nba 2k has 41.8 G. Soon your xbox one or playstation 4 will be full with only 500 G. I don' t understand EA they have so many feature they could put in without removing and later selling as new feature. There is many things the could use what nhl or fifa has.

# 18 CM Hooe @ 02/18/14 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBuddyHobbs


	But we are talking sports games here. You can't really compare games of completely different genres to sports. It just doesn't make sense.

The original assertion from the first reply in this thread was that quality games, regardless of genre, were ones with larger install sizes. That's what I have been responding to. That's absolutely not true and I've provided a large number of counterexamples to that end. There's simply no correlation.

Madden absolutely would not be a better game, for example, if the game was 10 GB and then EA Tiburon added 40 GB of NFL Films footage accessible via some hypothetical digital recreation of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, accessible only after you achieve a certain Legacy score with a player in Connected Franchise mode. This hypothetical version of Madden would still be a 50 GB game, but it'd play no better than last year's version.

To repeat myself from earlier, the thing that changes by adding more content with specific regard to a sports game is atmosphere and presentation. More content adds more player faces, more player-specific animations, more stadiums, more lines of commentary, etc. These things are nice and can make a good game great, but they cannot make a bad game good. A good game must stand up foremost solely on the gameplay itself. With respect to Madden, the offensive line play, WR-DB interaction, defensive play calling AI, defensive run fits, and what not don't magically improve because the game has a bigger disc footprint. Seeing those gameplay mechanics addressed are the things that everyone in the simulation sports community wants, and those things are almost entirely code implementation and refactoring (admittedly with some supporting animation additions will be needed, yes, but that's a difference on a scale of megabytes, not gigabytes).

# 19 CM Hooe @ 02/19/14 12:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ovie832


	I understand what you are saying.. but would not adding more animations add to the disk size? take wr-db interaction for example... say they have 3 jamming animations at the line of scrimmage for each pairing of players (idk if they even have that much)... if they extended that animation to 15 or 20.. would data not go up? .... now imagine if each player and position was added animations by 10-20..etc. I am pretty sure disk size would increase. I guess it just frustrates people to see 50 gb in one game.. but under 10 for an ea sports game. What would make madden a more quality game is more animations and fluidity. They can no longer use disk space as a crutch.

For keyframed animations, it'd be dependent on the number of bones and keyframes in the animations, but there's not a whole lot of information being stored in a keyframed animation beyond the positions of joints between bones at given points in time (each keyframe). You're talking maybe kilobytes of additional information for each additional quick and repeatable animation that would be useful for Madden, assuming that all of this ultimately gets compressed before getting stamped to the disc, to be decompressed by the software when the animation is needed by the game (i.e. during the "Loading" screen after team select and before a game starts).

The character geometry, the textures for the character, the texture mapping information which correctly places the textures on the geometry, and materials defining lighting and shading properties used by different pieces of the geometry are going to have much more impact on the size of the game than any keyframed animations.

You're more likely to see an impact on the game size if Tiburon decided on a whim to add 1000 arbitrary lines of commentary to the game, or if the NFL decided tomorrow to put a team in London and Tiburon had to add their home, road, and alternate uniform textures along with the stadium mesh and textures required for rendering that stadium.

# 20 Demoncrom @ 02/20/14 03:17 PM

I remember when a certain other company used to make NFL football games and I played 15 full seasons straight on it in a matter of almost a season per week. So many in fact that my made up player retired and when I was done there were no more REAL names on my team. This was possible due to a a wonderful sim engine, awesome sound and presentation and a game that just kicked booty.

A decade later I play Madden for maybe 2 seasons and get so annoyed with the AI that I just stop playing the game outright. I miss playing a game where the stats counted and the games had ebb and flow. Too bad we will not be enjoying that level of fun any time soon. Thanks to EA and the NFL stifling the sport I love.

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