I like Madden, not as much as I
used to, but I still enjoy playing the game because I like football. So, what
better topic to spend this Pro Bowl preview on than talking about the
4-episode Amazon docuseries It's in the Game: Madden NFL? Each episode
intermixes the retelling of the game's history by key members of the
original staff with updates from the current staff working on
Madden 25. It was neat finding out it was Michael Brook who created the first Madden
ratings (players were bitching about their ratings even back then) while
Donny Moore did Michael Vick's broken ratings and they tasked rookie
developer John Robinson to add the new kickoff rules in the game. This was
also the first time I seen Clint Oldenburg who was a journeyman offensive tackle
before joining EA to eventually become Madden's production director.
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| I don't think they got paid for representing the critics of Madden in the trailer but at least AngryJoeShow got in the credits. |
The 1st episode started with the origin story of Electronic Arts where
founder Trip Hawkins
marketed his new company by asking the question Can A Computer Make You Cry?
He gathered people from different industries including arcade guy Don
Traeger who he told he predicts there will be a computer in every home. The
1st batch of action games were meh and sold so little, they did layoffs 3
months after releasing them. Trip always wanted to make a football game even
making a tabletop dice game when he was younger, but the biggest name in
football Joe Montana was signed with Atari at the time. So they went with
the next best option who was a rising star in sports broadcasting, former
Raiders coach John Madden.
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| What kept the lights on at Electronic Arts before striking gold with Madden was One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird. It was their best seller and foreshadowed their commitment to sports games. |
Trip pitched a 7 on 7 game, but John Madden wasn't having that because he
wanted it to be a authentic 11 on 11 simulation of football. The game was
supposed to come out in 1987 but the PCs at the time didn't have the power
to accurately represent football. When John Madden Football
finally did come out in 1988, it bombed because it looked and played like
crap.
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| This shit hurts my eyes just looking at it. How THE FUCK they figure people would ENJOY playing this crap? |
Needing more processing power to accurately present football, they reverse
engineered a Sega Genesis and tasked Jim Simmons to code the game, who based the players bouncing off each other
to billiards. Expecting a lawsuit from Sega, EA went public to have some
extra cash on hand. Sega was having problems making their
Joe Montana Football
so they made a deal to not sue them if EA slap Montana's name on their game.
Trip agreed, but he had his team dumb down the game taking out plays and
whatnot so it wouldn't be as good as
John Madden Football. When their game finally came out in 1990, it was an instant hit, and a
legend was born.
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| Don't feel too bad for Joe Montana and his 13 plays, it helped sell the Sega Genesis. |
Episode 2 picks up after multiple years of successful games including
getting the NFL license, for Madden NFL 94, the NFLPA got mad at them for using their player's likeness without
actually paying their licensing fee. While EA was in negotiations with the
union to get the players in the Madden NFL 95, Gordon Bellamy, who cold called his way to getting a job, went ahead and
put the names in the game himself along with the brown skin tones for Black
players. Despite Madden becoming a cultural hit bonding the sports world
with the entertainment world, Trip was hellbent on building his own
hardware, so he left EA and went to Japan to create a new gaming console
with Sony. They passed on the idea, but it inspired them to create the
PlayStation. With Sony's NFL GameDay plus scraping Madden 96
on PS, EA had their 1st legitimate threat.
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| Ole William here didn't want to talk about his failed The 3DO Company project LOL. |
In Episode 3, Madden crushed GameDay because they were able to get the
game out before their competitor, but it was clear their 2.5D graphics were
outdated compared to Sony's 3D game. The introduction of Sega's NFL 2K series
on their Dreamcast forced EA to get with the times by using realistic
looking 3D models and putting a player on the cover in order to appeal to
the youth demographic. It also forced EA to overhaul the presentation to
look like a NFL broadcast and commentary to sound more natural instead of
stitched together. They even had active NFL players do motion capturing
since the stunt men they had before weren't moving like football players.
They knew they had to pull out all the stops to win this football game
war.
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| I'm by no means a football expert and even I can tell these aint real football players. |
The final episode started off talking about how Madden 2004
took EA to new heights, but Michael Vicks game breaking ability combined
with online gaming created a new problem of Money Plays where gamers exploit
the limitations of the AI to score with unstoppable plays. To combat that,
they focused on defense in Madden 2005
adding QB Spy, defensive adjustments and the Hit Stick with Ray Lewis as the
newest cover athlete. NFL 2K's final shot at beating Madden was selling
their game at a discounted price of $20. NFL 2K5
outsold Madden 2005, but it pissed off the NFL so they got in a exclusive
deal with EA to protect their image as a premier brand. Now EA is the
villain as they release game after game that riles up people online due to
how inferior it is to games 20 years ago. But they keep chugging along and
with John Madden haven died in 2021, it's imperative that they create a game
that honors his legacy.
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| You could tell John Madden wanted to curse him out but he just didn't have the energy to do so at this point. |
I enjoyed the 4 parter even though there where some things I wished they
touched on. For instance, I wanted to know who came up with MUT and adding
microtransactions to their online modes in general. I wished they
interviewed Peyton Hillis to get his reaction to winning the
Madden 12
cover vote. They also could've gone more into detail on why All Pro Football
2K8 failed and how much harder it is to create a successful unlicensed
football game compared to racing and soccer games. But the most important
question is why the fuck I can't play the Pro Bowl in exhibition? I have to simulate it giving the NFC a 23-7 win over the AFC!
LAST WEEK: 0-2
PLAYOFFS: 5-7
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