Madden NFL 17 Interview with Rex Dickson (SimFBallCritic)

[bloobloouk]

Quote: Originally Posted by SolidSquid

I find it weird that there's such a disconnect between the devs and marketing.

It's always been like this, and it isn't limited to EA, or even the video games industry, it's a battle that takes place regardless of the product being promoted.

Instinctively you'd think there would be overlap in objectives (and to a degree there is), but you need to remember that each department's performance is being assessed by very different measurements; the devs are being assessed by the quality of the finished product, which needs to be good enough to sell a baseline number of units, meanwhile marketing are expected to get a lot of exposure for a product, and generate new business, regardless of product quality.

I work in PR and it can be a nightmare when a product team wants to tweak a press release to make it slightly more relevant to their core sector. The tinniest change that makes a press release 1% more interesting for a core set of consumers, could potentially make it 90% less interesting for other groups.

As an example, last week I was working on a release to celebrate a client attaining a top standards rating in their sector. Our draft copy was exciting, but we still ensured that it was factual throughout. The client decided that the word "award" and others similar, couldn't be used in the context of industry standards rating, and we had to reword the release. The final copy is no longer an exciting story of achievement, it is a boiler plate statement about standards compliance. One small change has meant that story will probably only appear in certain niche titles, and the client will be demanding why they didn't get more media coverage!

This is why the areasof Madden that interest us the most are not the things that appear in trailers, get announced on stage at E3 or EA Play, or form a core part of the marketing strategy. It's because the guys in marketing have to appeal to the widest audience possible, and get a big fat stack of media coverage, rather than a thread on OS praising EA.

Wait for the deep dives. Like Rex said in the interview, realistic gap play and zone coverage pattern matching is not sexy, and marketing are not going to make it their centrepiece, even if they were the only two additions made to the game (which they're obviously not!)

[DeuceDouglas]

Rex is a great dude and I really hope he sticks around for a while. The transparency is amazing when it comes to gameplay and you can see just by looking at the feature list for this year that they're set on a good direction and it just comes down to implementation which I feel like they were successful with on WR/DB so gameplay continues to have me looking up. I hope we can get a guy like him, whether that's John White or someone else, for CFM so that we can have this same kind of output and dialogue when it comes to the mode and not just gameplay.

[Gridiron]

Quote: Originally Posted by NateDogPack12

How can you not love Rex Dickson? That guy just has so much natural integrity and charisma. I hope you all will ask him about some of the little features that are very popular requests amongst the SI'm community. Stuff like 32-team control, formation subs, etc etc. I trust Rex to give us a fun football game. I can't WAIT to see what they're doing with franchise mode.

He said they couldn't do a trailer showing off football stuff, but here is one from Madden 25 where they did exactly that, and he was in the trailer, too:

[bad_philanthropy]

It's such a shame that marketing views the way to grow every game as the same, and that is to make it simpler.

Not every game is a simple f2p phone app or military-themed shooter. It almost makes me think of a movie like Deadpool. Marketing actually got what was going on there and didn't shy away from an advertising campaign that made clear it was an R rated film with content that might offend some portion of potential customers. Obviously it was a huge success partly due to or in spite of a marketing campaign that didn't concern itself with dragging in everyone that might like superhero movies, or movies in general.

[SolidSquid]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gridiron

He said they couldn't do a trailer showing off football stuff, but here is one from Madden 25 where they did exactly that, and he was in the trailer, too:

Was this the first video they released for 25? I ask bc usually we get a "sizzle" highlife trailer first.

Listening to how they described things though leaves a lot to be desired. Locomotion/ True Step is still not that good, the line interactions dont really feel physical bc the players lack a sense of weight, the pocket still doesn't form like a true natural pocket.

Madden has always been good at marketing, I hope 17 really delivers,'can't wait for more info to roll out

[AzureEffect]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gridiron

He said they couldn't do a trailer showing off football stuff, but here is one from Madden 25 where they did exactly that, and he was in the trailer, too:

Thank you! THIS IS EXACTLY what I was referring to when I said how they should do their trailers.

[AzureEffect]

I believe the RG3 one was the sizzle trailer but that wasn't "gameplay" ... That Gronk one was gameplay.

[cthurt]

To be fair guys you cant compare a teaser cover guy trailer to an official gameplay trailer, I'm sure we will get a gameplay trailer similar to this one later on.