Inside story on creation of "Madden"

I'm glad all of you enjoyed the piece. It was much more difficult than I anticipated to fashion a semi-coherent narrative out of 20-plus years of history not involving a single, central character or an obvious dramatic arc.

A lot of stuff was left on the cutting room floor. To wit: the entire middle of the piece. I've actually thought about turning it into a book. Some pretty big challenges with that as well, largely in terms of finding an arc that could carry a book length narrative and juggling dozens of characters.

The early years of EA -- heck, the story of EA in general -- are pretty fascinating. Trip Hawkins is especially interesting.

In terms of EA and ESPN having a business partnership, that's true. On the other hand, that partnership in no way affected the content of what I wrote. One of the challenges inherent to producing any journalism under the ESPN name is that the company has rights deals and/or advertising arrangements with many of the entertainment entities it covers, so the appearance of conflict of interest is often there.

Regarding the EA/NFL exclusive rights deal, my reporting produced conflicting accounts of how and why that went down ... but I never felt I had a definitive account. As such, I didn't feel comfortable spending a lot of time, space and words on the topic, especially in a piece that needed extensive pruning all over. It's an important event, though, and probably worth an article all its own, with more focused and thorough reporting, a piece that ties into DirecTV and American Needle and sports rights deals in general.

I think that the game benefitted from Madden's name, popularity and football credibility in its early years. No question. Had it been "Joe Kapp Football" -- which actually was a possibility -- it might not have been as successful. That said, it's one of those funny things where I think the game now enhances John Madden's personal brand.

Any questions about the piece or about Madden football history, shoot. I'll do my best to answer.

 

Halfway through I wondered if this wouldn't make a good book. You should consider it, and maybe toss in some details on the other successful EA games such as Tiger Woods Golf.

Some of the most fun I've had reading an article in some time. I loved the part when Madden expressed his frustration about gamers always going for it on fourth down, regardless of distance or field position. My kid always, ALWAYS went for it, and had about a 60 percent success rate. He also eschewed field goals.

 

Interesting tidbit on that: for years, Madden asked the game designers to simply not allow gamers to go for it on fourth down. Failing that, he asked them to program the game so that going for it on fourth down would be punished (i.e., very low success rate regardless of play call or personnel).

Probably wisely, the designers only paid this lip service.

 

I always preferred the Sega NFL series to Madden on the Genesis. Never knew that EA was behind that series and intentionally made the game inferior to Madden.

Very good read. I'd buy the book.

 

Have thought for a few years the Madden story would be a good book. This superb story's the next best thing. I still think it could be expanded. My book? Tecmo Super Bowl.

 

I for one am waiting impatiently for the inside story on the creation of 10-Yard Fight.

 

Thanks for clarifying that.

I don't think the game would've been nearly as successful with any of those other guys for one simple reason: Would any of them have been as hands-on with the product?

Madden was pretty demanding about the realism of the game (abhorring going for it on 4th down in ridiculous situations, requiring 11-on-11) before lending his name to the game. With another athlete/coach endorsing it, I doubt they set the bar that high, and it probably would've set development back years. Who knows how long we'd have been playing 7-on-7 had Madden not said "That's not real football"?

 

Good, fun read. Tho, I just feel Madden was getting stale in terms of gameplay and having the 2K series finally pushed EA to make a better game. I know I wasn't the only one to buy 2K5 and love it. The trades the CPU would do were somewhat hilarious, but in terms of gameplay and graphics, it was IMO better than Madden those years. Then again that's just my opinion.

I've enjoyed the series from around '07 and up.

 

Speaking of this year's game, I downloaded the demo for the PS3 and the Gameflow thing is an awesome feature ... Really takes a lot of the guesswork out of playcalling and allows you to cater specific gameplans for specific opponents. You can still go the traditional route, but I love the idea of having a coordinator just make the playcall.

 

Very interesting story. Enjoyed it a lot.

Regarding the game's evolution, I actually was hoping for some kind of insight (or mention) regarding the game's pioneering of the use of classic teams and players. If I'm not mistaken, various legal actions have virtually eliminated such teams from newer versions of most sports video games.

But as has been said, a lot ended up on the cutting-room floor.

 

Reading about the early incarnations of Madden brought back a lot of memories. We used to bring TV sets and consoles over to a kids house in high school and would have all-night tournaments. I was on board since the earlier Genesis version (remember the ambulances that would come out on the field and run over the players in the way?).

Also thought it was interesting that it was the same design team behind the Joe Montana game (and it was made relatively inferior by comparison).

Did enjoy the slide show that showed the evolution of the graphics. From year-to-year not that much of a difference, but look at 95 and 05 and there is a world of difference.

I liked Tecmo Super Bowl, and the 7-7 game where you could blitz and have a fight (name escapes me for the moment), but Madden always reigned supreme.

 

NFL Blitz (i.e., The football equivalent of NBA Jam)?