[pietasterp]

It's an interesting question, but unfortunately, there's really no way to objectively evaluate how far the genre has come (or, conversely, how badly it's been hurt) since Madden became the only game in town. One can let their imagination run wild and wonder how great the games might be at this point, extrapolating prior advances and assuming we should be playing an exact replica of Sunday afternoons by this point, but (as they say in the investment world) past performance is not an indicator of future results.

I think it is reasonable, however, to look at the astounding leap football gaming took in the years there was competition, and ask if what we've seen in the past 5 years matches what I will (somewhat arbitrarily) call the "golden era" of football gaming (2000-2005). First, however, my recollection of modern football gaming to give some context (feel free to correct what needs correcting or point out errors - this is non-Googled, just recalling off the top of my head): Prior to the original "John Madden Football", videogame football was pretty blah - "10-yard Fight", "John Elway Football", etc. I credit Madden with being the first "modern" football game when it was released, and it set the standard for many years, never really being challenged until 989 released NFL Gameday and pretty much embarrassed Madden with the first 3D football engine (way back in the day on the original Playstation). Gameday was obviously superior to Madden that EA took the unprecedented year-off to regroup (notably, after proclaiming that a 3D football games was not do-able on Playstation hardware....). Of course, in the following years Madden regained its mojo while Gameday stagnated, and once again was the game to beat. Fast-forward (skipping over a lot of stuff) to 1999....

That year, the Sega Dreamcast was released, and EA (in a decision that would lead to a chain of events that ultimately led to the exclusivity deal in 2004) decided against supporting the Sega system for reasons that are unclear to me to this day. Knowing that you can't launch a game system in the U.S.A. and have any chance at survival without an NFL football game, a small collection of ex-Madden programmers (among others) formed Visual Concepts and released NFL 2K. I still to this day remember where I was when I first saw that game in action - I was ambling into a Gamestop (I think to buy Links LS for the PC or something - golf games, another pet peeve of mine, I'll leave to the appropriate forum...) and the game was playing on one of the TV's, and I literally stopped in my tracks and stared for a solid 10 minutes while that game played in demo mode. For those of us old enough to remember, prior to that we had never seen anything like it in videogames; it really honestly looked like a live NFL broadcast, and I remember thinking at that time that it was not possible for football videogames to look that real. For the first (and only) time in my life I asked the clerk "What game is that????", and upon being told, forgot all about what I went in there for and bought a Dreamcast and NFL2K on the spot. Only time in my life I ever made a game system decision on a snap decision...

Of course, over the next 5 years, Madden would snap out of its "roster update" mode and start to improve by leaps and bounds on the PS2, but the damage was done: there was officially another game in town by 2004. I won't re-hash what happened that year (the year of ESPN NFL2K5 and Madden 2005), but suffice to say that was the year I joined Operation Sports forums and I don't think I've ever seen the forums that lively and populated in the years since. From 1999 through 2004, however, football videogaming was improving by what can only be described as astounding increments; look at NFL2k5 and the original NFL2k, or Madden 2005 and Madden 2000 - the games look like they were made in different centuries (okay, smart-alecs, I guess they technically WERE made in different centuries, so don't bother pointing that out...).

Fast-forward again to today; has there been that light-year of advancement since Madden 2005 and NFL2k5? I think most people would agree that the answer is "no". I further think many people, myself included, might even suggest that in many ways football gaming has regressed a little. Of course Madden 10 is much better than 2005 in terms of graphics, but functionally, in terms of on-the-field gameplay, franchise mode, etc., how far have we really come? Now, it's quite possible that the advances were so great from 1999-2004 that it was not possible for the games to keep evolving at that rate, but if we look at other sports - say, basketball, hockey, or baseball, I think most would agree that those sports have seen their videogame representations improve significantly in that same timespan. NBA2k9 is in another dimension from 2k5, NHL gaming has seen NHL2009 and 2k9 make huge strides over their 2005 counterparts, and MLB The Show is similarly above-and-beyond any 2005 offering in the baseball game genre. Only football, in its college and pro forms, has remained stagnated over the past 5 years.

I think we all know (or can take an educated guess) as to why that is, and it goes without saying that most on this forum agree that having only one developer make football games has hurt the genre. I'd be interested to hear any dissenting opinions, but it seems to me that it's a pretty open-and-shut discussion, if the question is really "is videogame football better off since the exclusivity deal?". Obviously, the answer is a resounding "no". You can let your imagination run wild with how unbelievable the games would be by now had 2k kept continuing to move their game forward into the next generation (and how good Madden would be right now if they had 2k nipping at their heels), but it's all ultimately for naught. I said back in 2004 (in this very forum) that we would never see a non-EA NFL videogame ever again, and at this point it does not appear I will be proven wrong. EA basically IS the football videogame market at this point, and has as much leverage as the NFL as of today, meaning there's absolutely no reason to believe the exclusivity deal won't continue into perpetuity. It's presumably been profitable for both parties, which in the end is the only thing that matters (although we delude ourselves into thinking they care, EA - like any corporation - serves one master: their shareholders).

I guess the only real question we can ask is, are you happy with Madden right now? That is ultimately the only assessment we can make of football games in the past 5 years, since it's been the only game the past 5 years. Any other question is, sadly, irrelevant. No non-EA football game will ever be released in the forseeable future.