"In defense of the Madden Machine" - New Game Informer interview

[metallicatz]

Just throwing a heads up out there about an interview in the new GI with EA Tiburon manager Phil Holt about the development of the Madden series as well as the criticism prevalent in the fan community (message boards, etc). An interesting read. Some of the points discussed I can recall off the top of my head:

- Dev cycle being usually about 10 months for a Madden game in response to why things don't move along as quickly as fans woul like.

- EA reads the major message boards and pays particular attention to the "wish List" threads.

- Addresses the issue of the pressure of being the sole licensee of the NFL and the fan backlash prevalent in the online community.

- Some members of the Madden dev team were pulled from the tournament circuit

- where ideas come from for new features and how they go from pre-production to implementation. They looks at these the major boards for ideas as well as look at competition like APF2K8

- the perception that "EA is just a big company and don't care what the fans want"

- features that came from the fans (outside of EA Tiburon) include: defensive hot routes, player specific celebrations, formation subs, slide protection, defensive assignments, friendly quitting and conceding defeat in online games, and hardcore ranked games online

That's all I can remember. It's an interesting read.

[Moostache]

It would be nice then if some of these community driven features like, uh I don't know...let's say Hardcore ranked games....where actually AVAILABLE on the PS3 and XB360 already!!!!

[Steeler99]

Are you going to post a link to the above article?

[FlyingFinn]

Quote: Originally Posted by metallicatz

- Some members of the Madden dev team were pulled from the tournament circuit

That explains A LOT!

[djordan]

you got it.............

[spankdatazz22]

Quote: Originally Posted by FlyingFinn

That explains A LOT!

lol yeah it does. That partially explains the wide open play in the H2H videos of NCAA. I was watching that Madden show on ESPN2 yesterday and was dumbfounded by how boring the game looks, and these guys were talking like it was PS2-2004 all over again. Seemed like every play they showed on offense had the same, roll left/right behavior. I thought I was looking at '07 until I saw the Chargers new uniforms. EA would do well not to take too many queues from the tournament players because they'll adjust to whatever Madden is. They should concentrate on making Madden fundamentally sound; sounds boring but everything else would fall into place.

[Blazelore]

Your misinterpreting the statements. All they are saying is that those features cam from the community. They were our ideas way back to last gen. Those aren't new now! If you take the time to read it right you could save yourself the headache.

[yamabushi]

Let me know when they interview a former tiburon manager.