Let's Talk About Football Commentary

[Madden68959]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

Um i was looking through funny jokes and lines Gus Johnson says and i noticed that when team gets a touchdown he does this laugh something like ''HA-HA''.
This would be cool to incorporate it into the game.

As for chris Collinsworth he played in the Nfl so when he talks it should always be more sophisticated and actually having to do with Football.

[CMH]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I haven't read the thread which is something I usually always do before posting, but I wanted to say this since I'm sure a lot of people are covering it:

I think what matters most in game commentary isn't that the commentators focus on what we already know, but instead on what's to come.

What I mean by that is: Less focus on the biography of a player and more focus on analysis and statistics based on their performance for the actual game/season.

Not saying you completely remove bio stuff. I am saying that bio stuff becomes extremely repetitive and overshadows the on-field action. We want to hear what guys are doing at the moment.

For too long we've been given The Wonder Years voice over when we should be getting Dexter voice over. Tell us what we see.

[ryan36]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

Actually thats a good point. The other games have commentary all about the past- it gets repetitive.

Maybe the way to set madden apart is talk about the future. Playoff scenarios during the game in a specific way... "if they keep moving the ball like this, they'll gain a game on the dolphins who won't play until Monday night"

[at23steelers]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I haven't read the thread which is something I usually always do before posting, but I wanted to say this since I'm sure a lot of people are covering it:

I think what matters most in game commentary isn't that the commentators focus on what we already know, but instead on what's to come.

What I mean by that is: Less focus on the biography of a player and more focus on analysis and statistics based on their performance for the actual game/season.

Not saying you completely remove bio stuff. I am saying that bio stuff becomes extremely repetitive and overshadows the on-field action. We want to hear what guys are doing at the moment.

For too long we've been given The Wonder Years voice over when we should be getting Dexter voice over. Tell us what we see.

100% agreed! That is why I said previously in this thread that I much prefer the commentators analyzing the plays rather than a bunch of story lines leading up to the game. The part that makes commentators interesting to listen to is when they tell you things that you don't already know. IMO it's pointless when you can recite everything they are about to say, because that means you already knew this information and have heard it time and time again.

[CMH]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

That's a good example. I think we all play franchise mode while visualizing our QB passing for 4,000 yards or thinking about that potential matchup in November against our heated rival. It's not a constant thing, but it's in our heads.

I know when I play, I'm almost forced to create an imaginary world that covers these things because the commentators simply do not.

They'll mention that my QB has throw for 4,000 yards in the last three years, but won't mention that he's on pace to make it a fourth straight year (and in franchise mode it should always, always come from a career stats page rather than a commentator's individual story telling for that player).

Actually, that's where I'm trying to go with this. Instead of these guys going into the recording booth to talk about Tom Brady's amazing 50 TD season or whatever, they should just talk about anyone's 50 TD season.

Right now, it seems the audio files pull up Tom Brady 50 TD season and they bring that up. By your 2nd game of the season, you've heard it already.

What should be happening is: the audio files should be looking at career stats and instantly know that Player X threw fro 50 TD passes so that in turn it can pull up the 50 TD commentary. And all they have to do is insert Brady's name into the dialogue.

It could read something like: "[player] had an amazing year in [year] throwing for [#][stat]."

Put that together and you'd get: "Tom Brady had an amazing year in 2007 throwing for 50 touchdowns."

Then that needs to be expanded. The game should recognize that 50 TD is the record. So you elaborate.

"He set a [league/team] record that season [that still stands today/that's since been broken]."

I'm not saying this stuff is easy but we'd still get biographies on players but they could always change year-to-year because it is stats-based rather than story-based. And I gotta imagine this sort of thing is much easier to record in the booth than to have these guys go in and tell story after story of one player only to have to do it again and again for 50 marquee guys.


edit:

I want to add that I know, KNOW that this sort of thing could sound very computerized. But that's why you have writers. The above example of 50 TDs is one example. There should be various ways of covering stats and explaining them or elaborating on them.

Look at text-sim games like OOTP. They have various ways of telling you that you hit a home run. If you read that stuff out loud, you would sound like a play-by-play announcer.

Good voice-actors, professional commentators will or should be able to bring life to a simple sentence.

[Cre8]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

The presentation for me needs to be more about the game situations and the status of the MOMENT. It would be nice to have some sort of evolving narrative that changes in every season.

One big thing they NEVER talk about is if a player is injured. They never focus on that and say something like -

"The Browns are missing Peyton Hillis this week, it will take a lot from their back-ups to help them compete without him."

Also, I have a lot of issues with no talk about trades or acquisitions. This is probably too limited by the console or medium in general, but I wish we had something that represented the NFL on Sunday, Monday and every other day.

The NFL is truly a year-round league and Franchise Mode could be SO MUCH MORE.

I think the Tony Bruno show on PS2 showed potential of how it could grow into a more interactive/involved experience.

[PacMan3000]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

Very good points, CMH.

I forgot to mention in my first post that the commentary really needs to take into account the drafted players in franchise mode. These guys come in, and by year 4, are pretty much taking over the league.

But most don't have their name said. They don't have any storylines. And most are just called "the quarterback" or "the halfback."

So yeah, the commentary needs to be crafted in such a way that it recognizes these guys' accomplishments, their draft status, their injury history, their hot and cold streaks, their stats--everything else the commentary would do for any "real" player.

I think the player face photos for all rookies was a huge step in realism for franchise mode. It trumps 2K5's blended faces. It looks 100% believable, and while it gets a bit repetitive, it's very impressive and immersive.

That same approach needs to be taken for commentary involving the drafted players.

[Madden68959]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I have read every single post in this thread and noticed that most of the post's have been about Commentary in Franchise Mode.

I think this is the thing that mostly has to change Chase. Please put our post's into consideration when you work on the audio and thank you for letting us give you feedback.


Chase, are you only working on the commentary or are you also working on everything that has to do with the audio in the game?

[CMH]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I was going to add this as an edit, but not sure if people would just skim over it if Chase has already read the post:


One thing OOTP has done is open text dialogue to the community. They have guys send in things like the above 50 TD example. The developer and his team will tell the community something like:

The scenario is a pop up to 1B.

We have the capability of loading up the 1B's name and the hitter's name. Anything else is fair game.

And then guys submit things like:

Pop up to [1B]. Caught for the out.

This one's a high pop up. [1B] settles under it. And makes the grab.

[hitter] sends this one toward first. Look like [1B] is going to call for it. He does. And there's the out.

That's just three examples of a pop up to first base. I bet you the community would jump on sending stuff in like this for touchdown passes, career touchdowns, last year's touchdowns, etc. And that's just touchdowns.

Then that stuff is read out loud to be recorded and you can have several ways to call simple plays.

Anyway, I'm sure something like this is done already for the plays. The point is, the same thing should be done whenever the audio is talking about a specific player. It needs to link to the things going on in the game/season/career.

[Big FN Deal]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I think it's important to recreate NFL game sounds and how they blend with commentary too. Anyone working on Madden audio should just listen, instead of watching, various broadcasted NFL games.

People always say, "I thought __ video game was a real football game at first glance" and the audio should give that same impression. If I am somewhere in the house and I hear a football game on a tv in another room, it has a distinct sound that goes beyond just the commentary. If Madden can simulate the audible nuances that are in a NFL game and blend that with commentary, it would greatly add to overall immersion. It would be like a certain song, that is capable of "taking you back" to a specific moment.

[WildFan22]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I think it's important to recreate NFL game sounds and how they blend with commentary too. Anyone working on Madden audio should just listen, instaed of watching, various broadcasted NFL games.

People always say, "I thought __ video game was a real football game at first glance" and the audio should give that same impression. If I am somewhere in the house and I hear a football game on a tv in another room, it has a distinct sound that goes beyond just the commentary. If Madden can simulate the audible nuances that are in a NFL game and blend that with commentary, it would greatly add to overall immersion. It would be like a certain song, that is capable of "taking you back" to a specific moment.

I completely agree with you but it might be a little advanced from where they are now. The audio is just god awful.

The names aren't used and sometimes replaced with the wrong names. The crowd audio is recycled and there is no difference between the first preseason game and the Super Bowl. The announcers are repeatitive, fake, emotionless, and the opposite of dynamic.

Sometimes while listening to Madden I picture the voice recorder from Home Alone 2....

Getting the little things right seems like a pipe dream. I'm sorry if I'm so negative about this. I'm seriously not trying to hate to hate. I will always buy Madden on day 1 because I've been doing it for 20 years and it's become a tradition.

I will say that I play less games of Madden every year. I'm extremely disappointed in this generation. Other sports have duplicated the sound and presentation of the major sports far better than EA sports has with Madden.

Making it sound like a real NFL broadcast seems miles/generations away from where they are now.

[RGiles36]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

The commentary also has to recognize the difference between the regular season and playoffs. The post-season IRL is treated as a different season, no?

It irritates me to hear Gus say 'the QB has now thrown 30 TDs this season' when it's the wildcard round. Those stats don't count towards his season total. Shouldn't he say something like that's the first TD the QB has thrown this postseason?

[Crimsontide27]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

I actually think there is a simple solution to the commentary in the latest football titles.

Simply sit down and play a game of MLB the Show or NBA2k and take notes. The commentary in those two games far exceed anything EAs football titles have ever even attempted.

There is no need to over think things or over analyze what people want. Copy what Sony and 2k have done with their commentary and you will far exceed any expectations anyone has ever had in Madden or NCAA football.

[Aggies7]

Chase thanks for doing this. It's nice to see someone from EA finally asking opinions from the gamers. I am so impressed by Russell from MLB The Show crew. He sees a picture and asks for it to be sent to him so he can add it to the game. We never see that from EA anymore. So I really appreciate asking for our input because what Russell does is what makes "the little things" come alive in MLB The Show and hope you can do the same for Madden.

As for commentary I would say the following:

1- Seems like the commentators are not recording together. There should be some back and forth conversations without it sounding like they are talking in different locations.

2- Make a second commentating crew. Or if that is too much have a third commentator and have one guy work in both groups. Example: Collinsworth/Johnson and Johnson/Jaws. Not saying I want those combinations but just trying to explain what I meant with using one commentator twice and giving us two crews to try and break up repetitiveness.

3- More excitement at the end of games and big plays. To me right now it seems like they are monotone and Johnson gets excited during random times but never for crucial plays.

4- Player specific comments from previous weeks. Example: "This is Chris Johnson's third 100 yard rushing game this season" or pre game when a player is questionable or probable "Just got word from the Patriots training staff Tom Brady will start despite suffering an ankle sprain last week against the Jets" Would be nice if they would show a highlight from the previous game and Brady stretching while saying that.

Thanks Again.

[ChaseB]

Re: Let's Talk About Football Commentary

All right, first things first. Thanks again to all who have written things in here so far. I have read every single word, and I could have responded to each and every post with a "Thanks!" but I'll take the lazy way out and simply say thank you to you all up front. Seriously, I do appreciate it. This has gone better than I expected so far -- I really did not expect to get the depth of responses I have gotten so far. (It's good to see there are lots of people like me who are obsessed with real life and video game commentary.)

In addition, I may not comment on some ideas below -- not because I don't want to -- but because it's still really early in the process, and I can't really talk about what's going on with M13. In other words, I really think this thread will be especially helpful next year once there's a Madden game in development that I am a part of from the start of the year (I joined the team not late in the process, but not at the beginning either as it relates to Madden 13), and I'll also have actual in-game examples of good/bad stuff to go off of from Madden 13 that I worked on, which we can then chat about and all that good stuff.

That being said, let me get to some stuff below:

Just take the 2k12 route with banter back and forth. For example, discussion points with my Jets.


-Try to mention previous games between the two teams. So if the Jets are playing the Pats maybe mention the 45-3 game or the recent playoff game. Then a great question would be if Gus asks Chris..."Do you ever think the Jets or even any other team in the AFC East will overtake the Pats in the future?" Stuff like that would be great.


- There should easily be lots of stuff about Rex Ryan. Whenever he plays the Chargers, mention the Turner-Ryan feud. When he plays the Ravens mention the success there. Against the Cowboys talk about the brothers, and there's so many things with Belichik. Mention his crazy quotes, his style of play, the players poll of how people want to play for him. There's atleast 15-25 lines easily on just him.


-Then move on to individual players. There should be a bunch of stuff on Mark Sanchez. What Collinsworth likes, what he doesn't like. Laugh about the hot dog stuff, and talk about how he's out of USC and how the Jets traded up for him.

-Shonn Greene, talk about his bruising run style, early season struggles, does Chris think he is a feature back? LT, talk about his historic stats, and how he should be used nowadays.

-Santonio Holmes, the great Super Bowl catch, the fallout in Pittsburgh, and the trade that brought him over. Plaxico, his super bowl catch, the shooting incident, how the jets got him, and how big of a red zone target. Even small little lines about Dustin Keller and Jeremy Kerley would be great. Just something like, "and there's Kerley with the catch. He was a 4th round pick out of TCU in 2011."

-Then on the O-Line, you could talk about the veteran presence of guard Brandon Moore, how Nick Mangold is arguably the best center in the league, talk about how lost the Jets looked without him, and then mention Dbrickishaw. How he was the no. 4 overall pick, and how he has to play some of the best pass rushers with no help."

-On defense, talk about how DTs Mike Devito and Pouha are truly the most underrated players on this defense, doing most of the team's dirty work.

-How Aaron Maybin is out to prove he is not a bust, and is slowly having a solid 2011 season. Mention the inside linebacker duo of Bart Scott and David Harris. How Scott followed Ryan from Baltimore, brought a new attitude to the defense, and how he is slowly declining. Then say how Harris is one of the best linebackers in the game, leading the Jets in tackles.

-Next would be the corners. With Cromartie, you could mention the amazing game he had against Peyton Manning, the trade that brought him over, his amazing athletic ability, and his inconsistencies at corner. For Revis you have tons of storylines. The historically great 2009 season, the holdout, mention the WRs he has shut down (CJ, AJ), even the 1 handed Moss catch, and how teams avoid throwing to him.


Now this is just 1 team, and I came up with a lot there just brainstorming. And I could come up with a lot more. 2k12 has done it successfully, and it is a thrill playing with the Clippers, and hearing the announcers mention how they think the Clippers have the most athletic frontcourt. Yeah it will eventually get old, but it's still great to hear. For 32 teams this would be incredible. It could be Week 10 and you could still be hearing new stuff. Just ask Chris to come up with storylines and believe me he will. All Sunday Night he talks about what he thinks of players, and intriguing storylines. It makes him interesting to listen to. Add the banter, with Gus going crazy at times that make sense, and we have great commentary.

Words can't express how much I enjoy the entirety of this post. I love banter, and I love storylines, and all that good stuff. It's a little late to be asking for this year, but if you guys want to put together a "storylines thread" with stuff broken down like this for each team, it actually would be incredibly helpful. And, for sure, next year I will DEMAND(!) a storylines thread for storylines/banter.

Let me add:

Record more names and use them!

"He breaks a tackle.....He's back to throw.....He makes the catch......"

And, "This guy has a great feel for the game"......Who!!??

Much too generic.

I understand CAP's and such, but not stars like Tebow.

I saw this brought up a couple times, so I just want to touch on it here. As it relates to generic names, my up-front philosophy is I despise the use of numbers. If I have to pick the lesser of two evils, I'm going with "he" makes the tackle over "number 27" makes the tackle. I don't want either in a perfect world, but at the end of the day, I am a realist and accept we won't get full coverage on every name -- at least not in a way where every name said by the commentators would sound natural and good. Simply inserting "names" into sentences will sound bad on the whole.

Simply put, I would rather use a pronoun in a sentence that then sounds normal rather than plug a player's name into a sentence where it then sounds weird. (You see this in Madden with "ROMO! makes the play" and various other names.) Proper inflection comes first in my book, which means you have to record a player's name in an entire sentence rather than just read from a name bank (for the most part). This takes more time from the voice talent, and thus, you usually will get a bit less player coverage in terms of names said.

Personally I want dynamic commentary. By that I mean I want the commentary to match what is happening in my franchise, in my universe.

I'd rather have little bits of that and more commentary on what is happening in game and during my season. Then the next year can build off that.

Example: Focus Brian Urlacher

Year 1 Game 1: Commentary about Urlacher, how long he has played. Any other stuff you hear spewed week in week out on telecast.

As the game goes on if he is having a good game talk about it. Maybe he has 10 tackles in the 3rd quarter, highlight it with commentary.

Year 1 Game 7: Perhaps is playing with an injury lets hear about it. Perhaps he got hurt week 2 and been out for 4 weeks. Highlight he is back and why he was out. Maybe he is having a pro bowl year, talk about it. Keep focusing on what he does during a game if it's good or bad. If he makes a great play, show a highlight and talk over it.

Year 1 Game 11: Maybe the Packers just lost Rodgers for the season and they are in a race for the division with the Bears. Bring that up, or talk about key players on the other team etc.

Year 1 Game 15: Perhaps the Bears aren't going to the playoffs but Urlacher is making the pro bowl for sure because of his season. Intro into the game with that, talk about his season. Due to his age perhaps he might retire, maybe some commentary speculating that.

Year 2 Pre-season Game 1: Talk about how this is Urlachers XX year, how last year he made his XX pro bowl and posted monster numbers with XX tackles etc. Talk about how the Bears drafter a rookie stud MLB and perhaps what that means.

I don't know if these examples help but to put it simply commentary gets stale. Even stale lines with new numbers can become interesting. Immerse me in my world, my franchise what is happening for me.

For me that's what I want plain and simple.

I love this concept, but -- and I'm sure you realize this -- it's incredibly hard to do this simply based on the amount of permutations that can arise. It's not that it's so hard to do one example like the Urlacher one, but creating situations where that amount of depth/coverage can be applied to many players makes it more difficult. However, I will say we are on the same page in terms of what we want out of Franchise mode commentary.

It seems you're going in the direction of "camera work" and production more than commentary.

I can understand (and would like) that as well.

In theory, it would be easier. Just have the models do different stuff (considering they do a lot of that already, but usually the "pick your play" menu pops up on top of it and the crowd/stadium reacts too slow because of loading, I'm guessing).

But...I don't even see them doing ANYTHING for game winning stuff, at least that's not substantive. I guess that's why I got mixed up with less is more...I'm thinking..."less than...what?" and thinking about the way it is now...and "he wants less?"

This really needs it's own thread - it's on a different aspect of presentation and deserves it's own full consideration and discussion, imo.

I would approve of that having its own thread on here. I may work on audio, but the visuals and audio both need to be at a high level, otherwise it brings both down. In my mind, every time you watch Sunday Night Football on NBC, the commentary seems even better than it really is because those guys nail the visual side of things. Strong visuals make commentary better. Weak visuals make commentary seem worse than it really is.

Terrible commentary. It takes away from the play by listening to it.

I would tend to agree with you about Buck's call of the Blount run. (I realize responding to this post seems out of context without the YouTube video we're talking about, so here

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Maybe the way to set madden apart is talk about the future. Playoff scenarios during the game in a specific way... "if they keep moving the ball like this, they'll gain a game on the dolphins who won't play until Monday night"

I just want to say what a headache it is to do "future outlook" stuff. I love it, it's noted, but it's a pain.

They'll mention that my QB has throw for 4,000 yards in the last three years, but won't mention that he's on pace to make it a fourth straight year (and in franchise mode it should always, always come from a career stats page rather than a commentator's individual story telling for that player).

Actually, that's where I'm trying to go with this. Instead of these guys going into the recording booth to talk about Tom Brady's amazing 50 TD season or whatever, they should just talk about anyone's 50 TD season.

Right now, it seems the audio files pull up Tom Brady 50 TD season and they bring that up. By your 2nd game of the season, you've heard it already.

What should be happening is: the audio files should be looking at career stats and instantly know that Player X threw fro 50 TD passes so that in turn it can pull up the 50 TD commentary. And all they have to do is insert Brady's name into the dialogue.

It could read something like: "[player] had an amazing year in [year] throwing for [#][stat]."

Put that together and you'd get: "Tom Brady had an amazing year in 2007 throwing for 50 touchdowns."

Then that needs to be expanded. The game should recognize that 50 TD is the record. So you elaborate.

"He set a [league/team] record that season [that still stands today/that's since been broken]."

I'm not saying this stuff is easy but we'd still get biographies on players but they could always change year-to-year because it is stats-based rather than story-based. And I gotta imagine this sort of thing is much easier to record in the booth than to have these guys go in and tell story after story of one player only to have to do it again and again for 50 marquee guys.


edit:

I want to add that I know, KNOW that this sort of thing could sound very computerized. But that's why you have writers. The above example of 50 TDs is one example. There should be various ways of covering stats and explaining them or elaborating on them.

I love the "bolded" portion, but, again, I just want to make a point about this "Mad Libs" style approach of putting lines together. I think at the end of the day the lines like "[player] had an amazing year in [year] throwing for [#][stat]." sound good when they're recorded in one full sentence. When you start mixing and matching stats and names and trying to put it back together without recording the WHOLE line again, it's going to sound bad/unnatural. Now, obviously you can just use "he" and then the one single permutation of the stat you're going for, but that's not necessarily the answer either. Of course, the final solution is you look for guys who have so-and-so 3,000 yard seasons in a row coming into the next "real" NFL season and record that for next year's game. But at that point you're really trying to figure out oodles of permutations for every stat combination under the sun -- and even then it gets thrown out after year one in a Franchise for the most part because you recorded based on last season's numbers -- and it gets a bit overwhelming.

So, again, I love this stuff, but you got to be careful with it. And it honestly doesn't have much to do with the writing. You can come up with some creative ways to maybe make these lines sound more natural when put together, but that only goes so far if you don't record full lines each time for each player/situation/stat.

Chase, are you only working on the commentary or are you also working on everything that has to do with the audio in the game?

I simply work on commentary. There are other folks on audio that handle crowd noise/stadium sounds/etc. etc. etc.

PS, follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ChaseBecotte The more followers the better. Plus, if you follow me now, then you can all come yell at me on Twitter once Madden 13 ships.

PPS, and just in case it wasn't clear, by all means continue to use this thread to chat about Madden commentary. Whether it's suggestions, what's good/bad, and on and on. I know it's been talked about a lot beforehand and is sort of played out so no need to force it, but just saying now that I've responded doesn't mean I won't still be reading/responding in this thread.

PPPS, and seriously, someone start that "storylines" thread up for teams. If it goes well, we can expand it to players/rivalries/stadiums/whatever. It's all rich stuff that can be very helpful in the long run (again, probably more Madden 14 then Madden 13, but it's a good trial run if anything).