Madden NFL 12 to Kick Off Another 3-Year Plan

[Carlboy82]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

I think this is a misprint. They forgot the zero. 30 yr plan. In 30 years Madden will be the type of football game where gamers wont have to spend 9 months tweaking sliders for a great game of football. Of course for me it wont matter because in 30 years i'll either be dead or decrepit to the point where someone will be wiping the drool off my chin, and feeding me out my depends diaper, so it wont matter for me. I know one thing, I have cob webs forming on me while i wait for this next generation BS to kick in. Thank God im almost done with my years of spending 500 to a 1000 dollars a year on video games. Im a gaming sucker extraordinaire.

[RGiles36]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

I think it's always a rolling 3 year plan, as in ...we're planning 3 years ahead. Not "we're starting over and it'll take 3 years to get good"

Exactly...that's what I was trying to imply. I'm not sure how people equate this to franchise being ignored in M12. I'm confident that's not the case.

[roadman]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Here's a "point" the GamePro article makes:

"Among other things, Tiburon plans to focus on "investing heavily in the core gameplay." That includes making sure that player behavior is flawless from "whistle to whistle," Weber said. In other words, players may finally stop running through walls after scoring touchdowns."

I quote this to show how pointless the shallow article is. First off, if you quote him as saying from whistle to whistle the intention is to have flawless behavior, don't bring up something that would happen after the whistle. Hold their feet to the fire and say something like, "Players may finally be able to execute consecutive hit tackles."

That may be nit picking, but it just goes to show how shallow all of this is. That article is very poorly written, and just proves Gamepro is not digging deeper.

Don't blame Gamepro. The GM is just talking in generalities, not specifics. If xyz magazine dug deeper, they would just hear, "no comment."

[Senator Palmer]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

This scares me from the gamepro article..



So we should expect Madden to be sub par this year...

This bothers me even more

Weber is doubling the size of the core football development team, and also plans to invest heavily in the franchise's web infrastructure over the next few years.

Ordinarily, I would say that just because there is an emphasis on web development doesn't mean that offline is going to be slighted, especially with a larger development team, but we've seen what we've seen.

[Segagendude]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

As a Browns fan, I shudder when I hear "3 year plan"....

They've had one since their return in 1999.....

Oh joy. Oh bliss.

[spankdatazz22]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Madden needs a visionary, someone to step in with realistic goals and then move toward achieving them. They need to stop meandering around message boards and lay off these silly teaser scenarios. There's a guy on Twitter claiming that if he gets so many followers he'll release another photo of Madden 12. We don't need that. The Madden team doesn't need that. It's chasing the wind on both ends.

Agree wholeheartedly. If they're going for substantive change they can't have it both ways, continuing with the hype things they do and coddling the communities telling them what they want to hear.

I think the 3yr plan news won't mean anything to the general public, but think it's pretty big for those of us that like discussing every little detail and how the game is perceived. It does sort of undercut M12's release by having an open admission the game isn't where it needs to be and will take 3yrs to fix. I wonder if this'll be the year reviewers use that as reasoning to tee off and judge it as they should've been the past 5-6yrs. Also I don't see how Madden gets singled out and NCAA isn't included. I didn't play NCAA, and perhaps it's that much different than Madden. But it seems to me they're fundamentally the same game, and would seem to share some of the same core problems. But I don't doubt it's the more refined game, as it was last gen.

It'll be interesting to see what the vision is for the game. At this point the game needs to be where it should be - getting it back technically to where it was last gen shouldn't be viewed as an accomplishment.

[Garrett67]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Its great to have goals but they don't really have meaning unless they're completed.

I'm almost 44, I might not have 3 years LOL

[illwill10]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

As long as Franchise is the main priority and improved drastically first, I am okay with their direction.

[RGiles36]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Also I don't see how Madden gets singled out and NCAA isn't included. I didn't play NCAA, and perhaps it's that much different than Madden. But it seems to me they're fundamentally the same game, and would seem to share some of the same core problems. But I don't doubt it's the more refined game, as it was last gen.

I don't think that it's all that different. At all. I always have a scratch-my-head moment when people praise NCAA and belittle Madden. There are marked differences, but not enough to say one game is lightyears ahead of the other.

[Hooe]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

I think it's always a rolling 3 year plan, as in ...we're planning 3 years ahead. Not "we're starting over and it'll take 3 years to get good"

Given that licensed sports video games operate different from every other kind of game in the industry where there MUST be a release every twelve months (otherwise they are not economically viable), I feel like that's the only feasible way to do it.

Other games get plenty more time behind the idea table and under-the-hood work before they are expected to be released. They're afforded that luxury by not having to deal with a real-world counterpart league which is beginning a new season.

[Senator Palmer]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Also I don't see how Madden gets singled out and NCAA isn't included. I didn't play NCAA, and perhaps it's that much different than Madden. But it seems to me they're fundamentally the same game, and would seem to share some of the same core problems. But I don't doubt it's the more refined game, as it was last gen.

After NCAA 10, the NCAA team made an announcement about about going back to the drawing board and delivered a great game out of the box with '11. NCAA is on the uptick and on solid ground as far as direction in my opinion. Not perfect by any means, but when compared out of the box, NCAA played a game of football that was lightyears ahead of the unbalanced game that Madden dropped last August. The tackling, line interactions (run blocking and d-line play) weren't even close.

It's very telling about where NCAA is when it was stated that the final patch for Madden would try to mimic the tuning of NCAA 11 in order to balance the gameplay out.

[brza37]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Also I don't see how Madden gets singled out and NCAA isn't included. I didn't play NCAA, and perhaps it's that much different than Madden. But it seems to me they're fundamentally the same game, and would seem to share some of the same core problems. But I don't doubt it's the more refined game, as it was last gen.

I don't think that it's all that different. At all. I always have a scratch-my-head moment when people praise NCAA and belittle Madden. There are marked differences, but not enough to say one game is lightyears ahead of the other.

Gameplay and graphic-wise the games are pretty similar. But NCAA gets praised for its replayability because NCAA's Dynasty mode does blow away Madden's Franchise mode both offline and online. Dynasty mode isn't perfect though and could use a lot of improvement (like a CH2k type Coaching Carousel) but it does keep people involved alot longer than Franchise mode.
Custom Stadium Sounds is another feature that helps with immersion that has been in NCAA for years but not in Madden. Even Road to Glory which really pales in comparison to 2ks My Player or The Show's RTTS is still much better than Superstar mode. But that stuff is just extra. I think the main reason for the NCAA love is the difference between Dynasty and Franchise modes.

[WakeUp]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

*SIGH*

So let me get this straight. People believe that adding MORE devs to the already LARGEST DEV TEAM in video games, is going to make a difference? You mean like the same difference it made when their team was LARGER THAN IT IS NOW during the Madden 06 and 07 cycles, yet both games were garbage? Remember that they fired a large amount of the staff that worked on 06 and 07, and with the smaller staff the game was better in 09 though still trash. Think about that and realize that manpower has nothing to do with this problem, and this "news" is just preying on gamers gullibility of not understanding how this works, because they know you believe that fallacy so its no surprise that they'd mention it as a part of their "3-year plan". I get that gamers don't make games and aren't inclined to understand how it works, but this is a matter of common sense and paying attention to what's been happening there, to the point that you wouldn't have to have ever made a game to understand.

They can increase the team to 10,000 members, it won't make a difference. 2K's team was always much MUCH smaller than any team EA has, yet they've produced fantastic sports games at different points in each generation they've been in. We haven't gotten a single great Madden this generation yet. But you still think it's because they don't have enough people? Yeah that's the problem. Smh. Okay.

The only change needed is them getting better talent, because when it's all said and done smaller teams with more talent can turn out a better product than a larger team with lesser talent and that's been proven too many times to count now across all genres including the one we're talking about. That right there is the real problem, and when they keep hiring guys with no background in making games as a way to avoid paying a good starting salary instead of something an entry level Fedex customer service agent might make (because that's why they really have no reservations about hiring this way) this problem will never end. While they're at it, they could bother to pay their beta testers better too. But who cares about beta testers right? They don't matter. I mean, they only find bugs that kill the games and surely gamers don't care about having a game that isn't full of game crushing bugs, right?

Wake up people.

[Armor and Sword]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

Gameplay and graphic-wise the games are pretty similar. But NCAA gets praised for its replayability because NCAA's Dynasty mode does blow away Madden's Franchise mode both offline and online. Dynasty mode isn't perfect though and could use a lot of improvement (like a CH2k type Coaching Carousel) but it does keep people involved alot longer than Franchise mode.
Custom Stadium Sounds is another feature that helps with immersion that has been in NCAA for years but not in Madden. Even Road to Glory which really pales in comparison to 2ks My Player or The Show's RTTS is still much better than Superstar mode. But that stuff is just extra. I think the main reason for the NCAA love is the difference between Dynasty and Franchise modes.

Nailed it right there. NCAA 2011 will be in my sports rotation for at least another 2 years. Deep replay value. I also think overall a better looking game, and tighter gameplay. Plus I love the unpredictability of the college game.

[Hooe]

Re: Another 3-Year Plan

words

Of course there's the law of diminishing returns; adding more coders to a project isn't a silver bullet, as the new coders have to get up to speed with the codebase before they can even begin to be functional with it. That could take a month by itself for each coder.

And I'm curious as to how you came to your conclusions about EA Tiburon's hiring policies; how much interaction have you ever had with the company to ever get a bead on this?