Interesting article about the future of Madden

[SageInfinite]

Madden created a culture by omitting certain things in their game, and now we all have to deal with it if we want to play a football videogame.

[jfsolo]

Quote: Originally Posted by SageInfinite

Madden created a culture by omitting certain things in their game, and now we all have to deal with it if we want to play a football videogame.

If you looked up salient point in the dictionary, your post would be there.

Yes, technological limitations prevented a lot of things from being in the game during the early years of the franchise, but I would argue that there was an opportunity when the game transitioned from sprites to polygons to fully commit to a more sim oriented game with all of the strategy, complexity, and randomness that occurs in real football.

Of course the implementation of many of these aspects of football would have been crude and undeveloped at first, because of the aforementioned technological limitations, but everyone playing the game would have become accustom to a fundamentally different kind of game play experience. It would have been one in which player agency didn't strangle, during the design stage of the game, so many potential gameplay additions. Alas we cannot put the genie back into the bottle.

[Gridiron]

Quote: Originally Posted by bjanko5

I think the simple answer is no. Unfortunately the people here on operation sports and the people in sim leagues are in the minority. EA wants to create a game that appeals to the masses, a game that can be easily picked up by a casual player and they can have fun without knowing the intricacies of football or madden. That is who they try to appeal to. I understand it too, they are after all a business. With that said, I do wish they would cater a little more to the hardcore fan, and they could do that without giving up the casual appeal. Make a "sim" mode for gameplay and connected franchises that allows for more depth. That would require more resources though, and they may not want to dedicate more resources to something that realistically probably wouldn't increase their bottom line since the more hardcore people that it would cater to are already going to buy the game.

The thing I'll never understand though, is how this is even an angle for them when other AAA sports games are trying to be a straight up sim and are selling extremely well. I don't believe a straight sim Madden would bomb any more than I believed a straight sim MLB The Show would bomb. Considering how well NBA 2K sells, even besting Madden, and how well MLB The Show sells when considering that it's only available on Sony systems, and then considering the popularity of American Football, I'd bet that if Madden's animation, presentation, graphics, and mode depth were at the same quality of those other sports games that Madden could be a 10+ Million seller per year and I'm on the conservative side with that. Why not? There are more football fans today than there were when Madden was at its sales peak in the PS2 era, and American football has a WAAAAAAAAY bigger American fanbase than basketball and baseball.

Seriously, I think that's real issue. Madden is just not as quality of a game as those others and people can see that. Even if it weren't a straight up sim, the other games still have better graphics, better animations, better presentation, and deeper modes.

[Gridiron]

Quote: Originally Posted by jfsolo

If you looked up salient point in the dictionary, your post would be there. Yes, technological limitations prevented a lot of things from being in the game during the early years of the franchise, but I would argue that there was an opportunity when the game transitioned from sprites to polygons to fully commit to a more sim oriented game with all of the strategy, complexity, and randomness that occurs in real football. Of course the implementation of many of these aspects of football would have been crude and undeveloped at first, because of the aforementioned technological limitations, but everyone playing the game would have become accustom to a fundamentally different kind of game play experience. It would have been one in which player agency didn't strangle, during the design stage of the game, so many potential gameplay additions. Alas we cannot put the genie back into the bottle.

And even with the limitation angle, how deep has it really gone? I remember back in the day Tiburon came out and said that polygonal football wasn't possible on PS1. The next season, NFL Gameday '98 was fully polygonal, kicked Madden's booty, and whudda ya know? Next season, Madden '99 was polygonal on PS1.

But that's another case for what competition can do. NFL Gameday was a real opponent of Madden back then, so Madden had to bring it every season because there was a real threat of losing that market share. But what threat is there today? We have no idea the extent of what can be done because we're only getting the NFL from one developer. I believe a lot of things that we think are limitations are just matters of priority, and the quality of their internal development focus. I say that because a lot of the things we ask for are already in other sports games and Madden gets things other than those specific things.

[roadman]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gridiron

The thing I'll never understand though, is how this is even an angle for them when other AAA sports games are trying to be a straight up sim and are selling extremely well. I don't believe a straight sim Madden would bomb any more than I believed a straight sim MLB The Show would bomb. Considering how well NBA 2K sells, even besting Madden, and how well MLB The Show sells when considering that it's only available on Sony systems, and then considering the popularity of American Football, I'd bet that if Madden's animation, presentation, graphics, and mode depth were at the same quality of those other sports games that Madden could be a 10+ Million seller per year and I'm on the conservative side with that. Why not? There are more football fans today than there were when Madden was at its sales peak in the PS2 era, and American football has a WAAAAAAAAY bigger American fanbase than basketball and baseball. Seriously, I think that's real issue. Madden is just not as quality of a game as those others and people can see that. Even if it weren't a straight up sim, the other games still have better graphics, better animations, better presentation, and deeper modes.

Grid, you make some good points, but it's been proven over and over again there are more world wide fans of NBA Basketball. You can tell by the number of units sold world wide of each game.

Plus, I'm seeing people complaining about the MLB game this year and people complaining about the last NBA patch.

From the MLB Forum:

The check swing for strike animations must be fixed. I have never seen such choppy, bad animations on this title ever.

I have to believe the team is aware of the check swing issues. It happens all the time on check swing strikes and is a total eye sore. This is from offset zoom camera but I have seen it with other cameras too.

Plus I have never ever seen an appealed check swing called for a strike yet.

[CM Hooe]

According to NPD, Madden NFL 16 was the best-selling game in North America in calendar year 2015 behind only Call Of Duty: Black Ops III. As such I'd venture to guess that any difference between NBA 2K and Madden sales-wise is due to basketball's greater popularity internationally. The always-reliable VGChartz (heavy sarcasm) has M16 ahead of NBA 2K16 domestically as well - backing up this idea - with NBA 2K more than making up the difference in (combined) Europe and Japan where it doubles up Madden.

I'm not really sure why it matters at all anyway - clearly lots of people are buying Madden, lots of people are buying Ultimate Team cards, and EA is making a lot of money. EA has very clearly built a successful product which people want to buy and EA is very obviously connecting with their target audience very strongly, given that the only game that outperformed Madden domestically for the calendar year and to-date is the most popular video game franchise on the planet.

Could EA make the game the top-selling game in North America? Sure, but any game dethroning the Call Of Duty juggernaut is unlikely. Worldwide? Probably not, given football's largely domestic appeal. Am I concerned at all with what their sales numbers are? No, and it's not really my problem to sell copies of the game. Are sales numbers correlated with quality whatsoever? I think Madden's biggest critics would be the first to argue that this isn't the case; at least, that's what they used to say in the past when Madden dominated the sports gaming scene.

[Gridiron]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

Grid, you make some good points, but it's been proven over and over again there are more world wide fans of NBA Basketball. You can tell by the number of units sold world wide of each game.

True. But the North American sales aren't even separated by a big margin, it's like in the hundred thousands. In the rest of the world, Madden is holding its own pretty well and they always do well in Europe, usually about half what NBA 2K does which is a big deal considering it's American Football.

I think the big indicator is that, today, Madden is only doing slightly better in sales in America than a basketball game. Rewind 10 years ago and Madden 06 was doing almost 8 million units in America alone while NBA 2K6 didn't even crack 1 million in the U.S.!

What the heck happened in that time span? One game went to the next level. The other stayed stuck in the mud.

All sports games have their problems. But when we look at Madden, it has lesser graphics and animates, presents, and has less depth than the other AAA sports games. We ask for the most basic things but never get them while the other AAA sports games do. Something is deeply wrong with that picture.

I know sales aren't always the biggest indicator of quality, but in this situation I think it speaks volumes. I do believe the reason the sales of other sports games are on or above Madden is simply because they look better, move better, and have more depth. You mention the animation issue in The Show, but there's a mountain more animation problems in Madden and many of them have been there for 2 generations, and I have to believe that all the time going into MUT and other things is a big reason.

I know they have to make money, but the rest of the game is suffering and I don't think they see if they improved these little things they'd probably have a larger fanbase. I mean c'mon, how does a basketball game beat an American football game in America like NBA 2k14 beat Madden 25? That's CRAZY when you think about it. A decade ago that would've never happened. It's not like the NFL has less fans or that way less people want a football game.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gridiron

What the heck happened in that time span? One game went to the next level. The other stayed stuck in the mud.

The NBA also exited the post-Jordan funk, climbed back from its Malice At The Palace low-water mark, and created a smorgasbord of new international superstars: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki, Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Paul George, Yao Ming, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, and Jeremy Lin.

Let's not ignore the fact that the NBA itself is a better and more popular product than it was ten and fifteen years ago.