Is it harder to make a football video game?

[Segagendude]

Quote: Originally Posted by KBLover

Football is a more complex sport than it looks on the surface, imo, combined with 22 players making individual decisions, seeing individual things, and placed a many ambiguous situations, it gets complicated.

Just ask TheWatcher....granted, he had nowhere NEAR the team EA does, but he was off to a good start......then,well...........

[PGaither84]

Is it difficult? I'm sure it is. Can it be done? It has already been done. "That other game" isn't perfect, but from the snap of the ball to the blow of the whistle I find it to be a far better representation of the game we all love. I enjoy both games for different reasons. Before the snap or after the whistle and off the field, I prefer Madden hands down... but that stuff in between on the field matters A LOT.

[Broncos86]

A game like football isn't THAT hard to develop... unless you start with a terrible foundation. That has been the problem with Madden. If you look at last gen Madden, the basis was solid from the get-go, and Madden stretched the limits of the PS2/Xbox.

Hockey is a sport that is easy to get the basics, yet difficult to master. A game like NHL 94 got the basics and made it fun. But you couldn't get different game plans going. NHL 2012 certainly makes this possible. In hockey, play strategy is constantly changing, and the AI has to make adjustments on the fly, in real time, to the changes being made by the player. And yet, EA is pulling it off pretty well.

Madden, in 2009, was like a jacked up house. Stairs that weren't level, pipes that were leaking, windows with cracked seals, etc. Now, imagine that you're the contractor who has to fix all of this stuff, but you're only allowed to come in every Monday for 1 hour to get stuff done. After that, you have to wait until next week to get back at it. That's Madden. Had the house been designed and built right from the start, this stuff wouldn't be an issue and you could spend your time padding out the ultimate mancave.

[Big FN Deal]

H-E-double hockey sticks NO, it is not any "harder" to make football games than it has always been. This red herring has been echoed and repeated consistently ever sense this ding dang exclusive NFL license, as if the programming challenges for making football games suddenly came into existence when the inked dried.

That said, if the question is "is it harder for EA/Tiburon to make a football video game?" then the answer may very well be yes but that's their own fault.

[turducken34]

To the question posed? I'm not sure as I'm not a developer. What frustrates me is that I thought that Madden 10 was finally a large step in the right direction, which gave me much hope for the future. And while 11 and 12 have been decent, I've been left wanting more. The extra point was a good start, but was totally unchanged from 10 to 11 then cut out for 12 as it wasn't what they wanted it to be.
I don't think they need to re-invent the wheel for 13, but give us some kind of presentation that makes us feel we're watching an authentic broadcast, and please....please fix the weather in off-line franchise or at least give us the option to pick it ourselves.

[BezO]

I agree with PG. 2K football wasn't perfect but it had more of what I'm looking for regarding gameplay. Had they been making games every year since 2K5, I think they'd have something spectacular.

As for the original question, I'm not sure. Maybe accounting for all the collisions and complexities is more difficult, but I don't believe they've been THE priority for Madden. I think EA makes it harder by not attacking the differences.

With all the types of collisions necessary, engagement animations should be EA's #1 priority. IMO, Madden's engaged animations don't look that much different than they did on PS2. Madden is still working with Tecmo style engagement animations... engage, fight, win/lose. The lack of engaged player mobility effects everything from defending outside runs to edge rushing. But graphics, for example, have taken great leaps forward. Are these engagement animations that difficult or is EA not focusing on them as much as they should?

I also don't think Madden has been programming AI with football in mind. NFL run defense, for example, is built on gap/contain assignments. From what I can tell, EA has made no attempt to represent this. There are a handful of defenses that have "contain" assignments in the play art, but EVERY NFL defense has someone with contain responsibility. Every front 7 defender has a gap assignment. Is this any harder to program than zone responsibilities in basketball?

Basics, like how plays are called, especially on defense, are just wrong. 2K tiered the defensive play calling similar to how an NFL coach would construct a scheme. Madden is still working with preconceived defensive "plays". It's been done, so it's not that difficult. It's difficult for Madden probably because they are knee deep in the direction they took.

All that to say Madden hasn't set a foundation for football. Sure, it may be harder, but IMO, EA hasn't really TRIED to make a Football game yet.

[kjcheezhead]

Football is no doubt harder than some other sports, but Madden fails in a lot of aspects and not just simulating the sport.

There is no reason commentary, crowd noise and on the field sounds are so bad for example. They simply went the cheap route and used out of date equipment, so this area suffers in Madden compared to other games.

Ps2 Madden had training camp drills and challenges that gave players points towards Madden cards. It had on and offline tournament modes as well. 2k5 had the Crib and celebrities that would call you and challenge you to a game. It had a VIP feature where the AI would imitate your playcalling and presnap adjustments. Meanwhile, the minigames on current madden are awful. 40 yrd dash and bench press that are hard as hell and as boring as doing them in real life. There just isn't any "fun factor" for me in any mode or apect of ps3/360 madden.

Football may be difficult to program, but there is no reason gamers should be going back to older games for a football "fix". How can they possibly hold up alongside the Show and NBA2k when this is the case?

[TNT713]

Quote: Originally Posted by Big FN Deal

H-E-double hockey sticks NO, it is not any "harder" to make football games than it has always been.

Can't disagree more... Football has always been the most difficult sport to replicate in a video game. When you consider the level of sophistication and diversity of the audience - it's IMPOSSIBLE to program a great game that will satisfy us all.

Consider that every year something happens in an NFL game that has never happened before, something that used to only happen on Madden happens in a game, or a host of other odd variables that make the sport so sensational - it's CRAZY that Madden could have ever built up the following it has...

Following the history of football games, most development companies simply opt to not publish a title. Part of that was that Madden had such a large market share, the other was that football games simply aren't worth the hassle. They are inherently a PR nightmare.

When Sierra games opted not to ship FBPro99 - it wasn't because the game wasn't decent. It was because although the game was decent there weren't enough players to justify spending the money to develop the game only to see the game ripped apart in message boards for nothing more than what WASN'T in the game. Later, some of the console game producers followed suit when GameDay and the Microsoft offering were axed (didn't visit their forums, so I'm not sure about the forum topics)...

To date, only 1 game has ever been killed by the exclusive license... Practically other game was killed by suits that didn't want the hassle because of the difficulty.

Later