[WaitTilNextYear]

Not a fan of Chris Sanner's position here as imo this thinking is pretty much everything that's wrong with franchise modes right now. Pitch it to the lowest common denominator. Make everything so easy and basic that it's not even interesting anymore. Divert tons of resources away from innovation and into hand-holding, marketing, and making the package 15% shinier. Only focus on the things that amp up microtransaction revenue...

And why? To get someone's attention span on a new game or mode for 5 solid minutes before they drop out of it and do something else anyway? Never mind the guy who's been buying the title for 10 years and plays it year round--let's not worry about what that guy is looking for. Why are we always so concerned with new users at the expense of existing customers?

Alienating your "loyalists" should be a major concern for development studios. Maybe not this year or next year--imo people are really ingrained in their purchase habits and slow to change--but at some point these people will just jump ship like I did with The Show this year and Madden 5 years before that.

The 30-year-old male sports fan that hates video games is the exception, not the rule. You both basically have unicorns for brothers. And certainly "my brother won't play this game" is not really a sturdy argument for basing an entire "franchise mode is too hostile to newbs" position on. There is already automation out the yang in these games and frankly it's not even hard to learn how to use; it's just that most people who are unwilling to grasp the nuances of a sport/game are also unwilling to read a manual or participate in a tutorial or do anything really...and why should they? This is not the target demographic and no amount of coddling will change that.