Madden NFL 17 Interview with Rex Dickson (SimFBallCritic)

[DeuceDouglas]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

Last year the CFM Deep Dive came out on May 28th. I expect to see it on the 27th this year,hoping for before though. Nothing new there.Not sure why everyone keeps saying not until Eplay.

Yeah, they've always trickled out info prior to E3 or in this case EA Play. I think the one year they were really tight lipped on everything was with the Infinity Engine or maybe it was CFM when it was introduced. But either way the typical approach has been info before and then the events is when we finally get gameplay so I'd expect that to follow the same pattern. I really hope they get into detail with the things that are added too. I don't know if they underestimate the interest in reading a long worded article or if they just want to let us see for ourselves. The latter is obviously fine but I would love if they picked four or five things and went in depth on them and then just listed off other improvements. It's hard to gain much when you just get a blurb or two about each feature.

[jpdavis82]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

Yeah, they've always trickled out info prior to E3 or in this case EA Play. I think the one year they were really tight lipped on everything was with the Infinity Engine or maybe it was CFM when it was introduced. But either way the typical approach has been info before and then the events is when we finally get gameplay so I'd expect that to follow the same pattern. I really hope they get into detail with the things that are added too. I don't know if they underestimate the interest in reading a long worded article or if they just want to let us see for ourselves. The latter is obviously fine but I would love if they picked four or five things and went in depth on them and then just listed off other improvements. It's hard to gain much when you just get a blurb or two about each feature.

Clint's 8 page blog on the ground game sounds fantastic.

[cthurt]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

Rex completely won me over in this interview.

[RyanLaFalce]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

That was a great interview. I'm now even more hype than yesterday.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SolidSquid]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

I find it weird that there's such a disconnect between the devs and marketing. Red gives me hope, that being said Ian gave me hope too, so I'll wait to actually see and feel how the new mechanics are and if they are balanced.

The fact that they are finally adding REAL football mechanics to the game is such a relief. I also like hearing Rex compare madden with 2k and Battlefield, it shows me that he's not living in a bubble where madden is the only game on the market.

[Cowboy008]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

John White just tweeted Franchise info is coming soon. I'm starting to think they might be giving us the blogs and info before EA Play instead of in June-July. I think they will be streaming the game some at EA Play and therefore will give us more info before E3 than normal.

They said more info will be coming out next week so hopefully it's about Franchise.

[roadman]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

I am glad some people are starting to get on board with Rex, it was starting to get lonely.

Engineers and Accountants do not get along in companies in the manufacturing world, so, it doesn't surprise me when marketing and developers don't see eye to eye.

Marketing wants to try to capture a wide audience and cast the net as far as it can go.

[cthurt]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

I am glad some people are starting to get on board with Rex, it was starting to get lonely.

Engineers and Accountants do not get along in companies in the manufacturing world, so, it doesn't surprise me when marketing and developers don't see eye to eye.

Marketing wants to try to capture a wide audience and cast the net as far as it can go.

Yea Roadman you been riding for Rex for a while now, I just have problems trusting anyone under EA but after this interview and him showing his displeasure with the marketing team I see Rex is really just one of us.

[Junior Moe]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

I find it weird that there's such a disconnect between the devs and marketing. Red gives me hope, that being said Ian gave me hope too, so I'll wait to actually see and feel how the new mechanics are and if they are balanced.

The fact that they are finally adding REAL football mechanics to the game is such a relief. I also like hearing Rex compare madden with 2k and Battlefield, it shows me that he's not living in a bubble where madden is the only game on the market.

That caught my attention as well. Not just being complacent knowing they have the console football controlled. Looking broader, and looking to do that with genuine football concepts. The NFL liscence, as big as it is, does have a cap in the video game world.

[bloobloouk]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

I find it weird that there's such a disconnect between the devs and marketing.

It's always been like this, and it isn't limited to EA, or even the video games industry, it's a battle that takes place regardless of the product being promoted.

Instinctively you'd think there would be overlap in objectives (and to a degree there is), but you need to remember that each department's performance is being assessed by very different measurements; the devs are being assessed by the quality of the finished product, which needs to be good enough to sell a baseline number of units, meanwhile marketing are expected to get a lot of exposure for a product, and generate new business, regardless of product quality.

I work in PR and it can be a nightmare when a product team wants to tweak a press release to make it slightly more relevant to their core sector. The tinniest change that makes a press release 1% more interesting for a core set of consumers, could potentially make it 90% less interesting for other groups.

As an example, last week I was working on a release to celebrate a client attaining a top standards rating in their sector. Our draft copy was exciting, but we still ensured that it was factual throughout. The client decided that the word "award" and others similar, couldn't be used in the context of industry standards rating, and we had to reword the release. The final copy is no longer an exciting story of achievement, it is a boiler plate statement about standards compliance. One small change has meant that story will probably only appear in certain niche titles, and the client will be demanding why they didn't get more media coverage!

This is why the areasof Madden that interest us the most are not the things that appear in trailers, get announced on stage at E3 or EA Play, or form a core part of the marketing strategy. It's because the guys in marketing have to appeal to the widest audience possible, and get a big fat stack of media coverage, rather than a thread on OS praising EA.

Wait for the deep dives. Like Rex said in the interview, realistic gap play and zone coverage pattern matching is not sexy, and marketing are not going to make it their centrepiece, even if they were the only two additions made to the game (which they're obviously not!)

[DeuceDouglas]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

Rex is a great dude and I really hope he sticks around for a while. The transparency is amazing when it comes to gameplay and you can see just by looking at the feature list for this year that they're set on a good direction and it just comes down to implementation which I feel like they were successful with on WR/DB so gameplay continues to have me looking up. I hope we can get a guy like him, whether that's John White or someone else, for CFM so that we can have this same kind of output and dialogue when it comes to the mode and not just gameplay.

[Gridiron]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

How can you not love Rex Dickson? That guy just has so much natural integrity and charisma. I hope you all will ask him about some of the little features that are very popular requests amongst the SI'm community. Stuff like 32-team control, formation subs, etc etc. I trust Rex to give us a fun football game.


I can't WAIT to see what they're doing with franchise mode.

He said they couldn't do a trailer showing off football stuff, but here is one from Madden 25 where they did exactly that, and he was in the trailer, too:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0P72pnMUL5M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

It's such a shame that marketing views the way to grow every game as the same, and that is to make it simpler.

Not every game is a simple f2p phone app or military-themed shooter. It almost makes me think of a movie like Deadpool. Marketing actually got what was going on there and didn't shy away from an advertising campaign that made clear it was an R rated film with content that might offend some portion of potential customers. Obviously it was a huge success partly due to or in spite of a marketing campaign that didn't concern itself with dragging in everyone that might like superhero movies, or movies in general.

[SolidSquid]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

He said they couldn't do a trailer showing off football stuff, but here is one from Madden 25 where they did exactly that, and he was in the trailer, too:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0P72pnMUL5M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Was this the first video they released for 25? I ask bc usually we get a "sizzle" highlife trailer first.

Listening to how they described things though leaves a lot to be desired. Locomotion/ True Step is still not that good, the line interactions dont really feel physical bc the players lack a sense of weight, the pocket still doesn't form like a true natural pocket.

Madden has always been good at marketing, I hope 17 really delivers,'can't wait for more info to roll out

[AzureEffect]

Re: Madden 17 First Look Interview with Rex Dickson

He said they couldn't do a trailer showing off football stuff, but here is one from Madden 25 where they did exactly that, and he was in the trailer, too:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0P72pnMUL5M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Thank you! THIS IS EXACTLY what I was referring to when I said how they should do their trailers.