Madden 18 Longshot Scott Porter Blog

[T4VERTS]

Quote: Originally Posted by extremeskins04

2. They want "new Madden players" to buy the game, learn the football X's and O's (from Longshot) so that they can play MUT and spend more cash.

And this is a fair point. I would look though to when they moved to the RPG style XP system for CFM progression and how they wanted to change the way Franchise was done but have not gotten the results they wanted. Trying to use new mechanics and modes to bring in other "types" of players is a tough thing to pull off successfully.

I think I'll be most interested post Madden 18 to hear about Longshot data. I am curious how they will determine if Longshot brought in new users. Maybe first time buyers of Madden?

[BlacknBlue]

For something so short and without much substance it sure was poorly written. Redundant and with some glaring grammatical errors.

And they sat on this for how long before releasing it? Probably doesn’t translate to an indication of how the game will be, but doesn’t exactly provide me with optimism, either.

[roadman]

After cooling off a bit and reflecting, I think we can all agree that the marketing department is not the developer department.

Normally, on Twitter, Clint and Rex will retweet the links for the blogs, I haven't seen much of that today.

I am hoping better days ahead this week.

[ednaaard]

Someone better tell Rex they've published their unfinished blog. One can only assume the author meant to press 'Save Draft'.

[T4VERTS]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

After cooling off a bit and reflecting, I think we can all agree that the marketing department is not the developer department. Normally, on Twitter, Clint and Rex will retweet the links for the blogs, I haven't seen much of that today. I am hoping better days ahead this week.

This is what is really weird to me. The actual Madden account hasn't tweeted the blog link. If this was a marketing ploy for Longshot it sure isn't being carried out well.

[DeuceDouglas]

I wouldn't be surprised if they may have had a different plan that changed after feedback from the community. They may be leading with Longshot but hyping it would be a gross overstatement. It was a focal point at EAPlay but until the last week there hasn't been so much of a peep and even then it's been in the form of two very similar blogs.

They have to know that people are not going to be happy with the fact that none of the story takes place in the actual NFL and there's likely still a huge part of the community who doesn't know this. Also, judging by some of the meme's I see about Telltale games, makes it seem like it will be quite a restrictive experience as well. I truly still wonder what you even do in the mode outside of watch cut scenes.

[Rebel10]

Quote: Originally Posted by Brightline

So if you cant play football games, what do you do?

To quote the voice actor playing the character...

Quote:

“It’s just something that hasn’t been seen in the realm of sports games,” said Porter. “I mean, we’ve seen where you can take control of a career, or take control of a franchise. But we’ve never seen where you can take control of someone’s actual life and play a huge part in their journey.”

So, sounds like you get to ...

...

Take control of his actual life.

...

Right.

I actually laughed out loud at that line, guffawed.

EASport's motto is still going to be "If it's in the game, it's in the game." But from the interviews and trailers for the mode that they're hyping this year, it would seem like none of this is actually about the game of football, but rather ... Devin Wade's life.

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

After cooling off a bit and reflecting, I think we can all agree that the marketing department is not the developer department. Normally, on Twitter, Clint and Rex will retweet the links for the blogs, I haven't seen much of that today. I am hoping better days ahead this week.

I honestly feel bad for the development leads on the Madden. They're the guys who are relentlessly messaged on Twitter from fans desperate for any information about how this football videogame replicates football, and the only thing that their marketing department is releasing is interviews with voice actors talking about taking control of a fictitious person's "actual life." But, the dev leads can't say anything, they can't groan about it, they have to tow the company line about how replicating the life of Devin Wade is the future of football videogames. Meanwhile, you have fans designing NFL franchise mode porn on enthusiast websites like this one, and the development leads have to keep mum on the game.

Quote: Originally Posted by extremeskins04

2. They want "new Madden players" to buy the game, learn the football X's and O's (from Longshot) so that they can play MUT and spend more cash.

This is 100% spot on, in my opinion. The management heads at EA want to be able to release an affordable "story mode" that builds on something that nobody in the enthusiast market really cares about, and then hopefully rope casual players into profitable MUT modes.

It's following the CoD approach for another genre of games. The single-player story mode is (usually) an after thought 6-hour tutorial level for how to play the multiplayer game, which is then the vehicle that publisher uses to hawk microtransactions at you.

[Kwarren3]

Y'all... they just gave us an entire blog about one character from Longshot... this means we're probably going to get more blogs about each individual characters. Who knows when we'll finally get franchise and gameplay blogs. My god. I REALLY hope the developers relay how terrible this marketing campaign has been to the marketing team. I mean, come on man. I haven't seen a single person happy about how they've went about it.