Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

[kehlis]

Ian tweeted this out today, it's a very interesting read and insight.

(Warning, parts of the story are a bit NSFW)

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/super-bowl-madden-06-w516199

[ForUntoOblivionSoar∞]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

Great article. I feel bad for those guys. My brother does games and recently faced a deadline himself. He was like Ian, contemplating just giving up due to the stress.

I was unsurprised that lame *** non-football people were pushing the art direction away from realism. That was a huge mistake. Hiring those artists.

But of all the things in that article, damage that trailer has done has lasted more than a decade. Even today I think a lot of the hate EA gets ultimately stems from it. Keep the executives OUT, man.

[kjcheezhead]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

“Despite the lumps that it has taken, it built an incredibly solid foundation for that run of Madden games and was probably leveraged into this generation of Madden games,” says Strauser.


I couldn’t disagree more. This incredibly solid foundation has led to 12 years of mediocre to terrible football games. It’s an interesting article but it’s not something fans of the madden series don’t know or suspect happened with that game.

[khaliib]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

Point blank, the game needs a “Rebuild” with fresh code.

There’s simply no way to spin anything positive out of a continued building on top of a big mess of issues.

Tweak/tune one thing, another issue pops up that wasn’t there before.

We’re just at the end of the cliff with this old code and should expect the issues M18 and years past to continue to plague the game until that rebuild is done.

I really believe that this old code and the continued ideology noted in this write-up, is the reason CFM and the game in general, is at the place where it is today as a whole compared to other sports games in the genre.

When we don’t see much of the tech/mechanism/ideas from their other games not making their way into Madden for some strange reason, reference back to this article as a insight into the current foundation of Maddens build as to a possible reason why.

[kehlis]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

I’m done with Madden as of this week. The fact that their pimping their garbage on television via ESPN should tell the whole story.

Madden doesn’t give a **** about realistic football. They care about MUT and the cash that demographic cares about.

The gameplay that’s being touted on ESPN is far from NFL football.


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What does that have to do with the article?

MUT wasn't even a thing for the timeframe this story was written about.

[ASZEMPLE]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

You can see have much wasted time and resources went into the wrong things only to realize the game doesn't run with all theses bells and whistle, 3D door knobs and fire extinguishers in a football game, come on. Just poor management and scope of the project and the direction they where trying to achieve lead to a decade of subpar football video games. You can have all the talent in the world but if your putting your time and effort into the wrong things or into something that isn't go to work properly, you are not going to have a good game.


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[cable guy]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

Great article. I love the behind the scenes stuff. And what really happened

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[RogueHominid]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

I feel bad for these guys, I really do. I get that some jobs are intense, deadline- and production-oriented jobs, and that everybody knows that when they sign up, but it seems that otherwise decent people got really abused and burned out from what looks like a lack of effective leadership.

It sucks that the consequences have hurt (in my opinion) sim offline gamers since this iteration, but these are human beings and this particular team seems to have suffered through a really terrible cycle.

That was my takeaway.

And also: the importance of good, stable leadership...

[SageInfinite]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

Really stinks the position these guys were put in. Just bad management, moves and ideas all around. While the game has gotten better, we can still see the game doesn't have a clear direction imo. The wrong people are in the wrong positions.

This Dev doesn't need or deserve an exclusive license to the NFL. The time since they have a acquired it has been more than enough proof.

Also would love to hear from the people that defended this game back then

[howboutdat]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

“Despite the lumps that it has taken, it built an incredibly solid foundation for that run of Madden games and was probably leveraged into this generation of Madden games,” says Strauser.

Yeah , i had to laugh when i read that part. I mean 90 % of the time when the devs want to defend why they cant do more for the game than they do each year, or why when they fix one thing they break 10 others , or why it takes so long to fix some things, they almost always point back to - this over decade long bad coding job they are working with.

What i find most interesting in this article, and is no real surprise and something many here have stated before. They need to start from fresh code if its that bad, which clearly it is. They said in article they started 2 years before working on the new code..... so i suggest, they get to work ......It can be done.

[charter04]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

It just makes you wonder why they didn’t just start fresh for Madden 25 on Xbox 1 and PS4. It’s not like saving all this bad code should have stopped them. Just think how good the game could be if they had scraped that and started over.

It makes no sense that they still use that code. It’s kind of infuriating. Just so happened to start right at the beginning of exclusive license. Man


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[Madden08PCgmr]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

They need to take time off and reboot, as they did with NBA Live.

Too bad the licensing agreement prevents that.

[SageInfinite]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

They need to take time off and reboot, as they did with NBA Live.

Too bad the licensing agreement prevents that.

Problem is Live is still trash. This studio just isn't that good. I don't know what exactly it is that is keeping them from being good, but the games speak for themselves.

[Hooe]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

It just makes you wonder why they didn’t just start fresh for Madden 25 on Xbox 1 and PS4. It’s not like saving all this bad code should have stopped them. Just think how good the game could be if they had scraped that and started over.

As the story pointed out, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is one big reason as to how Madden 06 came to be. To that end, it doesn't surprise me that Tiburon learned from their bad experience and avoided making the same mistake twice.

[Madden08PCgmr]

Re: Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

Also would love to hear from the people that defended this game back then

I remember loathing this release. Vision Cone.... UGH!

.. and the Packers absolutely sucked in 2005, so that made it easy as well.

'07 was a pretty solid release. For me, the best of the PS2 era in almost every respect.

Problem is Live is still trash. This studio just isn't that good. I don't know what exactly it is that is keeping them from being good, but the games speak for themselves.

Last Live I played was with Irving on the cover, I believe the first version after sabbatical.

I enjoyed it, dramatic improvement over the horrid garbage before they took break. Nowhere near 2k, especially with the all-inclusive roster.