The Ian Cummings Interview

[Cherokee]

Yeah, it's really not going to change in any meaningful way as years and years of releases have proven. It is what it is. The only thing that keeps me playing is that I can play on PC with Sabo's mods, which are the only thing that saves the game, as his changes improve the game tenfold.

If I didn't have a PC to play it on, I would've abandoned it already. I basically did for the years just prior to it being moddable on PC again.

[Lakers 24 7]

“Most of the engine don't get kept, it get deleted every year which in his opinion is a bad thing that so much stuff gets deleted and rebuilt every year.”

This is the most perplexing thing to me, but it explains so much. Could this be the reason that the game feels so similar year to year?

Instead of building on what’s there and making it better, the team has to rebuild the entire game each time, leaving them little to no time for innovation.

I wish he would have been more specific about that, because on the surface it just doesn't seem true. We're seeing too many legacy issues every year for me to believe that they're rebuilding most of the game from scratch. Not only that, but there are issues common across all of their sports games (like poor pursuit logic), which further leads me to believe that they're all building upon the same technology every year.

[UtahUtes32]

Most of the engine don't get kept, it get deleted every year which in his opinion is a bad thing that so much stuff gets deleted and rebuilt every year.

This isn't accurate, I listened to the entire 2+ hour interview - not sure how this was gleaned. Ian talked about how they created the engine brand new after ps2.

[Fiddy]

He did touch base on that, you must have missed it.

[pietasterp]

I have a special place for PS2 era games. I have a special place for NFL 2k5, and for a while, around 2019-2021, I was back playing the game and on that train because Madden was such a disappointment to me. But, a couple of years ago, I stopped having that conversation because I realized that the overwhelmingly majority of people in the "2k is the greatest of all-time camp" were not talking about that game objectively. For all of the good that game had, it had some things in it that if it were in Madden, Madden would get absolutely roasted. Being objective means you can look at the good, bad, and ugly of something and be honest about it.

You never hear people like SoftDrinkTV talk about how the AI QB's in 2k5 threw a ridiculous amount of interceptions in played games. They never talk about how the Weekly Gameplan never worked properly. You never heard about the crazy sim stat logic. If you set sim stats to be based on 15 minute quarters, you'd have running backs rushing for 4,000 yards, receivers with 2,800 receiving yards, QB's throwing for 7,000 yards, and defensive players with 300+ tackles. The draft logic was terrible in that the AI drafted 2 positions only in the 1st round and those two positions were empty for the rest of the entire draft...for EVERY draft. Lastly, and this in my eyes ring true for a game like NCAA 14...that game was saved because of editing and modding abilities. Without editing tools being available, and a very talented modding community, that game would have died with the issues that it had.

My whole thing is, if we are going to have these conversations, let the conversations be honest and with context. Madden gets stripped to the bone, and I'm not defending EA/Madden by any means. I'm just saying, scrutinize other games the same way.

I understand your overall point, but I think there is some grace built into the argument vis-a-vis "2K" that "Madden" doesn't get because the former is a 20 year old game and the latter released last week.

[GisherJohn24]

Main point I see that he mentioned a lot for the new Madden games. Is the inability to get out of an animation, specially on defense. This is a big no no for football. Good reactions don't reward you in the new madden's simple as that. Defense A.I. has been a serious issue after he left. We miss you IAN! I seriously felt his soul leaving the game when he said he was out after Madden 11. Madden 03-12 was the Golden age for the series IMO. And as soon as he leaves, we saw a big drop in quality. I wish he talked more about 10. He said Madden 10 on the (ps3-xbox) was his baby paying a homage to real football. He was very proud of Madden 10. Madden 10 had the NFL Films music by Sam Spence. And to this day, I still find it the best represention of the classic NFL.

[SmashMan]

I wish he would have been more specific about that, because on the surface it just doesn't seem true. We're seeing too many legacy issues every year for me to believe that they're rebuilding most of the game from scratch. Not only that, but there are issues common across all of their sports games (like poor pursuit logic), which further leads me to believe that they're all building upon the same technology every year.

I don’t think Ian meant it in the way it’s being talked about here. Correct me if I’m wrong (I haven’t watched the video since it came out and might be forgetting another mention), but Ian said it as part of his answer to SoftDrink’s stupid question about the menus being sluggish, with his theory being that Maddens 13-25 are all running constantly underneath the main screens.

I don’t think anyone who has played Madden thinks or would believe that they’re deleting and rewriting huge chunks of the same parts of the game every year.

[GisherJohn24]

Let's not forget, the new madden has using the Frostbite engine. Which was made for Battlefield. This is the engine for football for madden. You don't need to know programming to understand that doesnt' make sense to use that type of engine for sports football.

This was mentioned as a long term issue for the franchise when they abandoned the IGNITE Engine on the old gen Madden 25. To me, the series would be better on the old engine. But what do I know. But what i do know, Frostbite is not the best option for Football. Stick with what works. Stick with what's fun. Frostbite is the main issue with the series IMO. I would like it scrapped and Madden to close shop for 5 years till they can give us a fun game again.

[WiiMaster]

Let's not forget, the new madden has using the Frostbite engine. Which was made for Battlefield. This is the engine for football for madden. You don't need to know programming to understand that doesnt' make sense to use that type of engine for sports football.

This was mentioned as a long term issue for the franchise when they abandoned the IGNITE Engine on the old gen Madden 25. To me, the series would be better on the old engine. But what do I know. But what i do know, Frostbite is not the best option for Football. Stick with what works. Stick with what's fun. Frostbite is the main issue with the series IMO. I would like it scrapped and Madden to close shop for 5 years till they can give us a fun game again.

People always say this and act like Frostbite is just one engine. It's not. There are so many variations that in some ways it's unfair to even call it one engine. Every EA studio pretty much has their own fork of Frostbite that is tailored to fit what they need. The engine is made to fit what the studio needs. The studio isn't made to fit what the engine needs.

In fact, part of the reason the game is held back is because of old engine stuff. Even though the game uses Frostbite, Madden's Frostbite implementation has a "legacy filesystem" that is largely made up of various files/formats that are from older engines but still used for various things. As these old legacy formats get replaced with actual Frostbite formats, we start to see innovation there. As a more presentation oriented, but still relevant example: why did it take until last year to get team records on the scorebug and this year to get the multiple different nice looking scorebugs? Because until Madden 25, the scorebug was still running on APT, an old legacy format from the 2000s that has its limitations. This finally changed with 25 into a more typical Frostbite style format, and look what it got us. It's a similar story with playbooks, until 25 the playbooks were still based on DB files that they have used for a very long time, then starting with 25 they made the playbooks use a Frostbite format so they can do more with it.

[SmashMan]

People always say this and act like Frostbite is just one engine. It's not. There are so many variations that in some ways it's unfair to even call it one engine.

I don't care enough to go back and skim the whole two hours but I think Ian said something to that effect in the interview too; or at the very least it wasn't an outright dismissal of Frostbite.

'Frostbite bad, Ignite good' is just one of those generic things SoftDrink asserts as truth all the time so it's going to filter down to the conversation here eventually.

[WiiMaster]

I don't care enough to go back and skim the whole two hours but I think Ian said something to that effect in the interview too; or at the very least it wasn't an outright dismissal of Frostbite.

'Frostbite bad, Ignite good' is just one of those generic things SoftDrink asserts as truth all the time so it's going to filter down to the conversation here eventually.

It's also fair to wonder just how much insight Ian really can offer on this subject anyway considering he left long before Frostbite was introduced to EA Sports titles. I'm sure he probably knows some things but he also wouldn't have directly worked with it.

[SmashMan]

Right. I could be wrong but I'll assume that he has (from either reading about it or talking to any professional contacts) a general idea of how Frostbite would work with Madden and, based on how open he was in this interview, wouldn't have held back if he thought that was a major hurdle for EA right now.

[ApolloKids]

Thank you for sharing this.

[GisherJohn24]

People always say this and act like Frostbite is just one engine. It's not. There are so many variations that in some ways it's unfair to even call it one engine. Every EA studio pretty much has their own fork of Frostbite that is tailored to fit what they need. The engine is made to fit what the studio needs. The studio isn't made to fit what the engine needs.

In fact, part of the reason the game is held back is because of old engine stuff. Even though the game uses Frostbite, Madden's Frostbite implementation has a "legacy filesystem" that is largely made up of various files/formats that are from older engines but still used for various things. As these old legacy formats get replaced with actual Frostbite formats, we start to see innovation there. As a more presentation oriented, but still relevant example: why did it take until last year to get team records on the scorebug and this year to get the multiple different nice looking scorebugs? Because until Madden 25, the scorebug was still running on APT, an old legacy format from the 2000s that has its limitations. This finally changed with 25 into a more typical Frostbite style format, and look what it got us. It's a similar story with playbooks, until 25 the playbooks were still based on DB files that they have used for a very long time, then starting with 25 they made the playbooks use a Frostbite format so they can do more with it.

Regardless of all the variations of the frostbite engine, I was only stating the fact that things got bad when they did make the transition from ignite and obviously this was shortly after Ian Cummings left. I don’t think there’s a coincidence how bad things got. He made it pretty clear things started to get really bad when they started that connected franchise mode in Madden 13. I agree about everything he mentioned in the interview on why Madden has gotten so bad and what they need to do to make it better and nobody listens. I honestly don’t blame him for not going back. It’s all politics over there now.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[WiiMaster]

Regardless of all the variations of the frostbite engine, I was only stating the fact that things got bad when they did make the transition from ignite and obviously this was shortly after Ian Cummings left. I don’t think there’s a coincidence how bad things got. He made it pretty clear things started to get really bad when they started that connected franchise mode in Madden 13. I agree about everything he mentioned in the interview on why Madden has gotten so bad and what they need to do to make it better and nobody listens. I honestly don’t blame him for not going back. It’s all politics over there now.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Part of what happened to franchise was having to rebuild everything with the switch to the new generation of consoles. But with the existence of FranTK, they have plenty of tools to do great things for franchise, it's not an engine issue. And like I mentioned, half of the issues with the Frostbite iteration exist *because* of the old engines, not because of Frostbite.

The transition from Ignite to Frostbite for Madden happened like 7 years after Ian left. I'd hardly call that "shortly after".

[GisherJohn24]

Part of what happened to franchise was having to rebuild everything with the switch to the new generation of consoles. But with the existence of FranTK, they have plenty of tools to do great things for franchise, it's not an engine issue. And like I mentioned, half of the issues with the Frostbite iteration exist *because* of the old engines, not because of Frostbite.

The transition from Ignite to Frostbite for Madden happened like 7 years after Ian left. I'd hardly call that "shortly after".

I think he left after Madden 11 if I"m not mistaken. That's the ps3 and 360 versions. The so called physics based engine came after Madden 25 (I think). But his involvment was noticed regardless of the engine changing or not. He was missed for sure!

[TarHeelPhenom]

In my opinion, the bigger issue to me is when they changed the structure to Connected Career/Franchises etc. The reason why we can't do 32 Team Franchises without having to manually create 32 coaches is because of this structure. To me, that's also the reason why certain parts of the game, especially within Franchise mode is so limited. I hate that they went that direction and feel like the game has been paying for it ever since.

Connected Careers - Madden 2013 Guide - IGN


Great example, no matter what new features are added, they still must be placed and work within the framework built for Madden 13's Connected Careers. In Madden 13, the "Be A Coach" option within Franchise gave you 3 Base Archetypes (Motivator, Team Builder, Strategist). In EA CFB 25 and 26, all Coaches have 3 base Archetypes (Recruiter, Tactician, Motivator). In Madden 26 all Coaches have 3 base Archetypes (Offensive Guru, Defensive Genuis, Development Wizard). The names may change, but the framework remains the same.