You’re all suckers. You’ve been waiting around for, what, seven months now, awaiting the next Madden -- or maybe you’re an NCAA guy. Regardless. And you’ll soon celebrate or condemn the tweaks, changes, fixes and faux pas in Madden 09, but you’ll still miss the big picture: American football is a terrible video game sport. And no one seems to notice.
The great video games of our time -- I’ll cite Winning Eleven as a prime example -- feature optimal control.Don’t get me wrong, football video games are great if you view them through the America’s pastime lens (which the press and the masses do), but they’re one-sided affairs if you don’t, and the reason is simple: The defense is seriously flawed in terms of fun factor. We tolerate it, but don’t we deserve better? Now, before you all sprain your wrists trying to scroll down and post a “You’re a jackass” comment (which I invite you to do once you’ve finished reading), hear me out.
The great video games of our time -- I’ll cite Winning Eleven as a prime example -- feature optimal control. In football, your control is immediately whittled down to 9 percent when you’re playing D. You control one player when you need to control 11. Even if you take the linemen out of the picture, and you’re in a 4-3, you still only have 14 percent control at any given time. That’s absurd. Yes, yes, I know: You can change players (duh), but even so, you’re trying to make snap changes that turn into snap tackles. There’s no flow, just twitch.
The real issue isn’t that defense is bad -- though I believe, maybe wrongly, that only hardcorites can play snap-to-whistle shutdown corner with consistency -- it's that defense goes virtually untouched every season. If you want to argue that defense is fine, be my guest; but that’s what it is at best: fine. It’s not fun; it’s not rewarding; and we’ve been handed one measly innovation in recent history: the Hit Stick. That’s farcical. But before I get deeper into that, first let’s take a quick jaunt down Avenue D to consider the other big four of video game sports from a defensive perspective.
Baseball, B: While outfield play is a perfect example of defense that makes sense -- ball is struck, go to ball, catch ball -- infield play is often hurried and inauthentic. Still, it features the key for defensive success: You control one person who is in charge of completing an action (get ball, throw ball).
Hockey, B+: In its prime (NHL '95) and in its all-new prime (NHL 08), hockey ruled/rules because of the fast action risk/reward. Every rush against you offers up a choice: back up and poke check, or try to drop the hammer. Ahh, the joy of decisions. (Also of note: hockey’s so breakneck that back-and-forth defense won’t suck the life out of you, like when you’re giving up a 14-play drive).
Basketball, C+: Here’s an example of a video game sport that was in defensive crisis, and came up with a solution. The Lockdown Stick/Lock On D isn’t perfect, maybe even a suspect technique altogether, but after years of watching zig-zags unwind Artest-like defenders, there’s finally a way to slow the O. Not perfect, far from it, but at least the developers took the least fun part of the sport, and made it work.
Soccer, A: I’ve saved the best for last. The only football worth defending defensively is European, and it's near-perfect, even with 11 players to switch between. The game moves at a reasonable pace, so while you’re controlling 9 percent of the players at once, you’re able to actively make risk/reward decisions all the way down the pitch. The result: complete control. Plus, do you bring a second defender to help, and leave an opening at the back? Do you press for a turnover and get a quick strike? Do you try to pass forward once you’ve taken the ball, or do you clear it out of bounds to keep it from danger? A thinking man’s game, for certain.
I blame them for not innovating -- though Super Sim is heaven sent -- but the bigger chunk of blame goes to Walter Camp So, what would video game football score on my scale? A big, fat, flopping D. You’re constantly hammering into blockers, player switching sometimes leads to a different player than intended, letting go of the controller leads to the same result, and the intricacy of football playbooks isn’t common knowledge (it took years and years of Madden to educate me). The reward of a pick-six is a delight, but the rest is lifting bags of concrete.
I should say that it’s not all the developers' fault. Not completely. I blame them for not innovating -- though Super Sim is heaven sent -- but the bigger chunk of blame goes to Walter Camp (considered the “father of American football”) for not having the foresight, in 1892, to make the game more “video game friendly.” At its core, controlling 11 different players with 11 different assignments is just flawed.
I know Americans are all starry-eyed over football: reviewers, gamers, moms, Texans. And the magic of this made-for-TV sport? Not many know what the heck’s going on. They watch for the occasional Reggie Bush versus the Eagles destructo-shots, and 60-yard Brady-to-Moss TD bombs, which are both great things that emphasize our Americanness, indeed. But let’s not let the glitz and glitter of NBC’s Sunday Night Football detract from the fact that we’re all being significantly duped by thinking that playing football video game defense is fun. It’s not. And no argument that claims that I suck, or I have no skill, or I don’t get football (or the trifecta of those) will do anything to alter the facts.
Come November we’ll be voting for a new president, and even if NCAA and Madden’s makers vote McCain, hopefully they’ll adopt Obama’s slogan as they go forward with their defensive philosophy. A new way of playing defense is certainly a change I can believe in.
Todd Zuniga, a ten-year sports video game veteran, is the host of 1UP’s
The Sports Anomaly podcast, a freelance writer for
1UP.com, and a Chicago Cubs fan. He lives in Brooklyn.
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