Madden NFL Designers Podcast #4 w/ Special Guest, Pasta Padre Available Now

[BlackBetty15]

Pod cast #4 reference:


Question: (dev team) Why do you think the you tube phenom on criticizing madden is so popular and how or does it affect sales, community, and madden as a whole.>>

My answer: I believe the youtube videos that criticize madden is popular only because we as consumers as you say ARE very passionate about madden and to a certain degree, expect way too much results in an unrealistic time frame. People dont realize that 2k and EA were pretty much side by side on last gen consoles. EA of course had the better metacritic score of the two in 05. If anything, those two games represented what can be accomplished when the right staff works together for several years and accomplish the "vision" they want their game to encompass. Now fast forward to now. People want a madden 05 or nfl2K experience with todays consoles. I mean why not? The technology is def better and you can only go forwards with a game right? The thing is, in my opinion, when madden jumped to the next gen consoles...the dev team with David Ortiz lacked a clear vision that resembled what we as a fan base would call an NFL experience. So when we all saw that first awesome trailer of the 360 madden where TO was doing his thing and mcnabb was there too we all expected a high flying over the top, midget kicking NFL in your living room experience and what we got for about 3 years was this half tailed game that left me, for a lack of better analogy’s, like a kid who expected a TMNT action figure with the turtle van included for Christmas and what you got was a coloring book and socks your grandma knitted instead. What does that have to do with you now? Simple, fans have been dissecting madden since it came out for 360 in 2006. The deal with being the only football game in town is, you have EVERONES undivided attention. That includes the pessimist fan base that if I remember correctly...bashed the crap out of 2K5 when it first came out for negativity. I am def not saying that the videos posted have no basis for truth or that some of them don’t need to be watched because some bring up very good points. (The ones where weight and strength should play a bigger role, and some of the interactions animations with ol/dl and wr/db are ones that could be watched) Back to the answer, the video making is popular because people want to have the same NFL experience that 2K and EA delivered in 05 but now want to triple that on the next gen consoles. You guys (Ian, donny ect...) are caught in a hard place because essentially; and correct me if I am wrong, had to recreate an entire new madden identity for the next gen. A whole new vision had to be established, and the game itself had to be stripped down entirely from the 3 years of work ortiz's crew did and a whole new game had to be built from the ground up. 2 years into this dev cycle and here we are, except...people want 5 years of progress without realizing that the game changed leadership and dev 2 years ago now. Its not as simple as changing hands and continuing on, the whole game had to be stripped and built in a new direction. So fans with 1. and unrealistic time frame and 2. no knowledge of what I stated above rip into madden now and make videos that bash madden to the ground with you dev crew going along with it. Its why I told you a long time ago Ian, if you want credible suggestions of what people really want in a NFL game you cant ask the masses because the mob is angry so to speak. People like me, and tons of others who are openly honest and have knowledge of the industry are the ones you should be asking input from. Dont believe me...go to the mlb show thread and look how impactful the community day outings are. HOW IT AFFECTS Yall...I will be honest, I was a little late buying madden this year because of my job, and because of the offline franchise lack of additions. I still bought the game early, but I will say when people log into OS or randomly search youtube videos (which is an addiction for the masses for some reason) they come across these videos which highlight the negative things right up front before they get a chance to play the game first. You guys as a whole know that society always looks for the negative in everything before the positive is seen and that holds true for electronics more so than anything else. I am guilty of this to a point. I went through several TV's before I bought the one I wanted solely because the negatives were less. I didnt even see the positive until the end. So when people see these videos they do have a negative impact on sales and the community because before they even get a chance to play it, they have this feeling of, "oh boy here we go again" ordeal and therefore either join the blog nation bashing you guys or they simply dont buy it. So there you go, hopefully that explains a ton, I do have my wishlist for where would like madden 12 to go which I would gladly give you, but this should at least give you a good idea of why it is you guys catch so much crap and where you can go from here.

[BlackBetty15]

Sales impacted by reviews, impressions, and videos


In a sense, we as a society are a very pessimistic by nature when dealing with what we put our money into, who we put our trust into, and pretty much anything we see that has the ability for us to form an opinion into. I could go into a psychological thesis into why this is but for the sake of just giving an answer I will say that due to the above, whether you make an amazing game or not, there will be (note that I didn’t say might be) negative reviews and consumer dissatisfaction with games. Until the day we all don 3D football helmets like JLO in the movie, The Cell, we want too much from a football game. Now, I will say that there are flaws that generally tick me off about the game. Things like the offline franchise coaching hiring and firing AI, the draft (importing ncaa classes and having weird ratings, equipment, and numbers) penalties (lack thereof) and some animation and weight logic. But I also understand what kind of things go into a dev cycle and what had priority to go along with the vision you painted 2 years ago, Here is a good example of how reviews, impressions, and videos can make or break you. When I got back from ranger school, I wanted to buy a military shooter game. Now I liked MW2, so you would think my natural course of action would be to buy COD black Ops right. Well before I did I researched VIA reviews, impressions, and videos and based off of those I came to the conclusion that black ops was garbage online with immature people and cheats. So right away without even so much as a rental thought, I dismissed black ops. Well, I still needed a shooter so I looked further and saw Bad company2. I did the same thing and saw tons of impressions here at OS and eventually got sold on the game and have loved it ever since even though I and never ever played a battlefield game. So because of bad youtube videos and impressions, black ops lost a sale and because of good vids and impressions BC2 got a sale plus a ton of DLC I purchased. You take that AND I also got my buddy to play with me so HE bought BC2 with all the DLC I had. I would have to say you multiply that a couple hundred thousand times and that’s a pretty nice payoff.

[Rules]

Quote: Originally Posted by 31

I'm not trying to be smart, or read anything into it. I was just curious why he asked about it, and what the context was. It just seemed odd to me that he would specifically ask about madden 14. That's all.

Madden 14 was brought up because it will most likely be directed towards the next gaming systems.

Just a guess when we might see something new with the Madden series

[mestevo]

14 was pulled out of the air as an arbitrary number of years in the future to guess how the game will have changed, nothing more.

[fringeelement]

I'm a strict offline 'chise guy. Have been since the feature was implemented. I avoid online like the plague because of all th horror stories about cheesers and glitchers. with that said, the dream of an online franchise is probably what most enticed me about this new generation of systems. I think what's important is that they get one type of franchise perfected, whether it be on-line or off. If they concentrate on off-line, they have to perfect the A.I. They have to make it feel as if we are competing with other thinking and feelinf human beings, both on and off the field. If they concentrate on on-line they need to to perfect gameplay and completely eliminate cheese and glitches. If they do either of these things, they'll have the ultimate franchise mode and it wont matter if it's on-line or off-line. And I know that asking for perfection in any of these areas in a video game is probably impossible, but that should at leasst be the goal. If tht's what they shoot for they'll end up with something we all can be happy with.

[blood9585]

"Customization is king to sports gamers…." I totally agree with that comment Ian Cummings. This is a major reason why I would say custom playbooks has been a will continue to be my biggest wish list item for every new madden game.

[RAMSFAN21]

im not impressed..the podcast is just the devs making excuses again, where not asking for u to reinvent the wheel just give us back what we already had

[Segagendude]

Quote: Originally Posted by WinstonWolf

of the billion things i would add to the game, making it "more social" is not something i EVER would have mentioned. Are you kidding?

Great. A Madden Facebook app that'll rival Farmville.......