Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

[maddenps2]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Hmm surprising news. I appreciate Ian's efforts, though I never bought a next gen Madden. It will be interesting if this affects madden at all, and if it's in a good or bad way.

[cgalligan]

Whats up with all the LOVE for Ian? Before he left everyone was bitching about him and his staff, now that he's gone people are wishing him "best of luck buddy"???

I'm honestly happy he and his staff is gone. Maybe we will FINALLY get some substance with this damn game. Bring back the crew from Madden 04 on PS2!!!

[Cre8]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Whats up with all the LOVE for Ian? Before he left everyone was bitching about him and his staff, now that he's gone people are wishing him "best of luck buddy"???

I'm honestly happy he and his staff is gone. Maybe we will FINALLY get some substance with this damn game. Bring back the crew from Madden 04 on PS2!!!

Looman is out too? Didn't know that was confirmed...

That is terrible news for Offline Franchise Mode fans.

[spankdatazz22]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

I'm honestly happy he and his staff is gone. Maybe we will FINALLY get some substance with this damn game. Bring back the crew from Madden 04 on PS2!!!

Substance in M04 when they tailored the gameplay around Michael Vick? When people regularly scored 70+pts a game in 5min quarters? Even John Madden himself commented about his concerns of what the game had become then. Or M05, when Tiburon over-compensated and had linebackers and dbs jumping out of shoes and socks to intercept and knock passes down to keep the scores down? Fun games, but they were way out of whack in terms of balance. Madden has had issues for a while now.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Looman is out too? Didn't know that was confirmed...

That is terrible news for Offline Franchise Mode fans.

That's never been said anywhere.

Whats up with all the LOVE for Ian? Before he left everyone was bitching about him and his staff, now that he's gone people are wishing him "best of luck buddy"???

I'm honestly happy he and his staff is gone. Maybe we will FINALLY get some substance with this damn game. Bring back the crew from Madden 04 on PS2!!!

General decency be damned.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

The intricacies of the sport have not been tapped into yet. It's not so much the actual game of football where the issue lies. It's that the offline modes offer minimal replay value.

This much I agree with, as we've been over before, and I think that it's important that future Madden games improve in this department. The assertion that Madden has not changed in three years, which I was responding to, is wholly false, however. Even Franchise mode has been touched and improved over the past three years, albeit minimally.

[STLRams]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Been reading through this thread, I guess I will chime in. Im kind of not surprised he is leaving, it does seem like something odd has been going on at EA sports. He seemed excited about Madden10 but not so much for Madden 11 and even so far with Madden12 things had been kind of quite from Ian. We don't know the true reason he left so all we can do is speculate. I don't think Madden12 will be that great but it is premature of me to say that because its still early and the game isn't out yet. As for the future of Madden, im afraid. Im afraid the things we have been begging for from the past 6 years will still not be implemented in the game. The whole MikeWang/EA NBA Live thing is a example of sometimes is not the devs fault when the game isn't SIM and the devs hands are tied. Could be the same thing here happening with Madden12. But this is why it really really bothers me there isn't atleast one or two other NFL games us as consumers can purchase and have the option of playing. Fellas all we can do is hope that EA tries to take Madden in a new and better direction, but I will say that if Madden 12 doesn't seem upto par I cannot purchase it, same for Madden 13 and so on. I really hope the game is good, but with us seeing news like this about one of the main devs leaving and possibly others, it begs to ask the question, what is going on with EA Sports/Madden?

[ABR173rd]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

WOW.......I figured by the wording of pasta's original message it would be bad but wow........

[ch46647]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Been reading through this thread, I guess I will chime in. Im kind of not surprised he is leaving, it does seem like something odd has been going on at EA sports. He seemed excited about Madden10 but not so much for Madden 11 and even so far with Madden12 things had been kind of quite from Ian. We don't know the true reason he left so all we can do is speculate. I don't think Madden12 will be that great but it is premature of me to say that because its still early and the game isn't out yet. As for the future of Madden, im afraid. Im afraid the things we have been begging for from the past 6 years will still not be implemented in the game. The whole MikeWang/EA NBA Live thing is a example of sometimes is not the devs fault when the game isn't SIM and the devs hands are tied. Could be the same thing here happening with Madden12. But this is why it really really bothers me there isn't atleast one or two other NFL games us as consumers can purchase and have the option of playing. Fellas all we can do is hope that EA tries to take Madden in a new and better direction, but I will say that if Madden 12 doesn't seem upto par I cannot purchase it, same for Madden 13 and so on. I really hope the game is good, but with us seeing news like this about one of the main devs leaving and possibly others, it begs to ask the question, what is going on with EA Sports/Madden?

Co-Sign. Great post!

[Cre8]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

That's never been said anywhere.

I was referring to the comment I was quoting when he said "...and his staff..."

[SteelerSpartan]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Well it kind of makes sense....those early dev team vids last year where most of the staff looked like they were being tortured were an indicator it seems....

Im curious to see how much more a dominant presence all that "Online Milk-It"..."Lets take advantage of the consumer" approach gets now within the game

Im getting sick of seeing Madden devs tweet/pimp about MUT stuff all the time

[Cre8]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

Im getting sick of seeing Madden devs tweet/pimp about MUT stuff all the time

AMEN! I think a lot of people feel that way.

[Hooe]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

I was referring to the comment I was quoting when he said "...and his staff..."

Understood, however there has been nothing mentioned of any specific person other than Ian Cummings leaving EA Tiburon so I wanted to nip that in the bud before it gained any traction.

[CRMosier_LM]

Re: Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

One more time guys.... The devs have a direction or idea for the game, they take it to EA Management. Management says no, that's not important, you need to put this in the game instead (example: a content item that's download purchase only). Everyone can blame the devs til they are blue in the face, but those that do obviously haven't actually worked in a professional setting.

I'm sure money had something to do with Ian leaving, but I guarantee a huge part was him and his staff being handcuffed by management and the amount of idiot junk that spews out of peoples mouths on sites like this. His response was always "we are trying", a lot of people realize when he says that it doesn't mean we are trying to figure out how to do it, but most likely "we are trying to get this put into the game but the people at the top don't feel its important".

His job EA also to spit the company line, did you really think he would come out every year and say "can't do it, management doesn't care what you want"? Cmon thats breach of contract and opens him up to a lawsuit... That is after they throw him out the door. Believe it or not, but developers don't have free reign over what the produce, every action is strictly monitored by their bosses to maximize the profit. They are making an absolute killing on MUT, much more than the sales would have netted if the 10% of you who didn't purchase the game would have went out and bought a copy.

As far as everyone who says this lawsuit will change things... The lawsuit will fail miserably, probably won't make it last preliminary hearings. Anyone can file a lawsuit, that doesn't mean it will go anywhere.

[chrisphil1724]

I'm very happy to hear this. I feel this job was more then Ian Cummings could handle. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy but the series has been going sideway at best since he took over.