Madden Football and the State of the Videogaming Industry: Innovation or Stagnation?

Not even the out-of-this-world awesomeness of Jairus Byrd could psyche me up for the upcoming Madden NFL 11.

Madden season is almost here, and you know what that means...the real NFL season can't be too far away, either. Around this time of year, virtual pigskin fanatics eagerly await the opportunity to play with their favorite NFL (or NCAA) squads, creating their dream Franchise Mode roster to the last detail and attempting to attain some online bragging rights (hint: "cheesing") in the process. It's an exciting time of year in the sports video gaming subgenre, especially in the forum culture. Operation Sports, a sports gaming community I have participated in since 2002 (yes, since age 12), is often times the center of all Madden and NCAA buzz, a forum where game developers often meet face-to-face with their fans and customers.

Well, the OS forums haven't been quite chipper this Madden season. All this because this year's title won't be as groundbreaking or as revolutionary as promised. In an eye-opening, retrospective article on ESPN's website (click here), Madden creative director Ian Cummings describes his job as an arduous one:

 "I've been out to dinner with my wife, and I check my phone [for online fan feedback]. It's all, 'You suck; you're terrible; give up the NFL license."

While I certainly sympathize with Cummings's perspective as a developer, as well as the long hours he's put into improving the game, I can't say that most of the Internet shares the same amount of empathy. Here was a man praised as a hero for his visionary initiative in last year's impressive Madden NFL 10 and quickly belittled after release day. Ian's vision was to turn Madden into the new standard in football gaming, dethroning ESPN NFL 2K5 (my personal all-time favorite football title), the sports gaming community's so-called "benchmark of excellence" in the football subgenre. 2K5 did the impossible in one yearly development cycle: it was the culmination of Sega and (former Madden developer) Visual Concepts' licensing agreement with ESPN, and it showed. 2K5 is still groundbreaking in its broadcast aesthetic, even six years after its release.



A few examples of some of the unrivaled presentation elements of ESPN NFL 2K5 (Sega/Visual Concepts, 2004)

2K5 came around at the right time, had the right features and was priced impeccably ($19.99), aiming to cut into the huge market share of the Madden franchise and attract many new fans along the way. It succeeded. Unfortunately, in all of 2K5's successes, it lead Electronic Arts, publishers of Madden, to eventually claim sole ownership of the NFL license, ending all licensed competition in football gaming. Electronic Arts was instantly labeled "the bad guy" by disgruntled 2K5 supporters, but what these fans didn't understand was that this "exclusive licensing" arrangement was originally brought to the table by the National Football League itself, a league notorious for their "one-brand-only" method of merchandise licensing (Reebok, Wilson, Verizon, DirecTV, the list goes on).

Without the NFL 2K series breathing down its neck, EA Sports and the Madden series became stagnant as the only game in town. Madden 06, the first game under the exclusive licensing arrangement, was infamous for introducing the "vision cone", one of the most-hated features in series history and...not much else. Subsequent years and the move to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 brought further frustration to those searching for innovation in the wake of 2K5's demise. For the first time in years, it was hard to be a football gamer.

My own customer relationship with the Madden series is certainly the prototypical embodiment of "love and hate". For example, the PlayStation 2 edition of Madden NFL 2001 is still my favorite game of the series. If anything, it was an outstanding debut on a then-young console, equally innovative and fun. Of course, this edition of the franchise was produced a year after the equally innovative debut of NFL 2K on Sega's ill-fated Dreamcast. If Capitalist idealism taught us anything, it was that competition breeds betterness and can be responsible for higher-quality products across the board. While EA and developer Tiburon rested on its laurels and relied on minor tweaks to its formula after the success of 2001, Sega and Visual Concepts were beginning to take notice. After the Dreamcast's demise, the NFL 2K series ditched its "niche" appeal and moved on to the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube. Direct competition ensued, leading us right up to 2004 and the eventual licensing agreement debacle once more.

Are gamers like these (competitors on ESPN's "Madden Nation") to blame for the recent lack of innovation in the series?

I appreciate the history of the Madden series and all it contributed to video gaming in its unrivaled twenty-two years of existence. However, the latter half of my "love-hate" relationship can't believe how stagnant it often gets. Furthermore, I can't stand the ultracompetitive "tournament gamers" whose exploitative nature hinders the evolution of the series, the National Football League and its insistence to keep its image squeaky-clean and the fact that there isn't another competitive NFL title on the market to counteract Madden's yearly modus operandi. I don't necessarily place blame squarely on each of these factors, however. A one-year development cycle isn't going to turn Madden into the Mass Effect of sports gaming from one year to the next. Even Backbreaker, the innovative, unlicensed football title from NaturalMotion, wasn't a one-year operation. To think Madden NFL 11 will be a completely different experience than Madden NFL 10 after only a one-year cycle just may be a bit too demanding on Tiburon as a development team.

And maybe that's the reason why Madden 11 isn't going to be the gigantic step forward that Madden 10 was from Madden 09. Still, there seems to be a growing discontent in the sports gaming community over the fact that not much has changed in the correct areas. Presentation was a major focus of 10, and gamers (hint: Operation Sports community members) expected things to improve steadily in 11. The results? A mixed bag. Gus Johnson replaces Tom Hammond, and certainly brings a wealth of enthusiasm to the booth. I can't help but think, however, that the same lines are coming out of a new mouth. "The Extra Point", Madden's answer to ESPN NFL 2K5's groundbreaking weekly wrapup shows, remains relatively untouched. The reason? A greater attention to gameplay mechanics and polish, according to Madden developers. Fans, however, aren't buying it, despite Tiburon's insistance that 2012 will ship with an improved Franchise Mode, something the series has deserved for a long time. But what's in store for 2011? Is this only a stepping stone for bigger and better things? What about sales? Certainly GameFlow, EA's biggest feature this year in 11, should interest the mainstream gamer enough to pick up this year's title, correct? True, while non-football fans will appreciate the "simpler, quicker, deeper" adage, longtime fans of the series have dismissed the new playcalling system as another blunder in a long line of miscues. It's this uncontrollable cycle of buyer frustration that explains the pressing need for innovation year after year.

There's no denying that the sports genre is among the most disposable facets of the video gaming industry. Every season, sports gaming developers are pressured and encouraged to release a completely different game than the year before at the risk of lowered sales or bad press. The most recent failure in this department is THQ's UFC 2010 Undisputed, a stagnant chapter in the young series which failed to outsell its amazingly successful predecessor. Grasping for straws, the publisher decided to blame Undisputed's bad showing on a completely different game in a completely different genre: Red Dead Redemption. Needless to say, this excuse was met with some raised eyebrows by the sports gaming community (more info on that here).

The disposable nature of used game sales.
Sports games are often the most prevalent used games at stores like GameStop, pictured above.

Disposable, also, doesn't even begin to describe how many used and past-dated copies of Madden can be seen in an average GameStop or similar video game store. The effect is undeniable; it reveals an almost genius level of marketing on Electronic Arts's part. The Madden series almost singlehandedly turned Electronic Arts into a multi-million dollar publishing giant in the video game industry for this very reason: a yearly model, one that corresponds to each passing sports season, will keep gamers coming back if it means the previous year's title can be rendered obsolete. It's no surprise that higher-profile franchises like Pokémon, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty are beginning to follow the same business model (at the expense of total brand overexposure). It's because of this reason that the video game industry in its own right is becoming a franchise-driven entity; what started with innovative, character-driven sagas in the early days of Nintendo has transformed itself into a yearly money-making machine.

What's more, outsiders to the subgenre see sports gaming as inferior because of its disposability. After all, why be a slave to a yearly business model of so-called "roster updates" and "new jerseys" when you can wait two to three years for a new Mass Effect or nearly a decade for a new Starcraft? This stigma is equally untruthful and justified. Sports gaming can be as immersively captivating as a well-crafted RPG and as innovative as a graphically-intensive first-person shooter. EA's own NHL series is proof of that, an innovative example of what a sports developer can accomplish with enough determination. However, the justifiable element is the business model itself. If sports game franchises abolished a yearly model, tweaked, added and improved its games via expansion packs in odd or even years (with new rosters, minor gameplay improvements, game modes, uniforms, et cetera), innovation in the genre would flourish. However, the proof lies in the aforementioned reference to the pre-owned Madden titles; it's all about profit. And until fundamental changes arrive, sports gaming will sustain its bad reputation among fans of other gaming genres and long-standing franchises such as Madden will continue to be labeled "stagnant" by dissatisfied aficionados.

So, what's to say that change can't start with Madden itself? The Madden series has been one of the frontrunners of the industry for some time now, not to mention the single most prolific and recognizable sports gaming title on the market. If changes start at the top, there's no question that other sports game developers may eventually follow suit. It's all a question of when. Until then, the debate and dissatisfaction over franchises like Madden will continue to exacerbate.