image3.examiner.com/images/blog/replicate/EXID54227/images/Madden11Cover.jpgI have played every single Madden NFL game that has come out. All of them.
In fact, I may be the very first person to ever purchase Madden off a store shelf in 1989. If not the first, I'm sure I'm in the top 10. I remember browsing the PC games section in a Waldenbooks store when one of the employees placed a game on the shelf in front of me. On the cover was John Madden busting through a chalkboard. I picked it up and began reading the info on the back cover. I was in awe. An NFL football game with 11 on 11 gameplay? Did St. Peter just open the Pearly Gates for me? Straight to the check out line - GAME ON!
Addicted ever since.
Madden NFL 11 is about to hit the shelves on August 10th. Many of us will be in line for midnight launches across the country on August 9th - of course I will be one of them. This year's release introduces some new, innovative features including Locomotion, GameFlow, improved animations and control options, enhanced online functionality, and new broadcast and audio presentations - this year, partnering veteran announcer Gus Johnson with Cris Collinsworth.
I was fortunate enough to steal a few minutes from Madden NFL 11 Creative Director Ian Cummings to have him answer some questions from the Madden community at MaddenTips.com. We originally planned to play "20 Questions" but the economy has been so bad that even this has now been cut to "10 Questions". Just kidding, due to a tight schedule with the launch only a few days away, this was all we could get time for via email.
1. How far removed is the Madden 11 demo from the final build in areas such as CPU adaption to user playcalling and gameplay?Ian: The demo is about 5 weeks removed from final gameplay code in the retail game, not counting any issues that we may be addressing in title updates.
2. The decision to implement the Strategy Pad became very controversial on Day 1 of the demo release. Some love it, others not so much. A few days later it was announced that the old pre-snap adjustment controls would be patched back in. Do you think people will be warmed up to the Strategy Pad by the time the patch is due that the decision to include the previous pre-snap adjustments could be reversed?Ian: I don’t see us removing old school controls anytime soon just because it is not worth the negative reaction. We don't want to make changes that are polarizing whenever possible, and I think with Strategy Pad we underestimated the amount of people that really weren't willing to try a change to the control scheme that they were used to.
3. GameFlow. The situational-based set doesn't allow the user to account for how much time is left in the game or lead/deficit in points. How does GameFlow account for that part of situational playcalling?Ian: There are sets of plays in situations we call “Waste Time” and “Conserve Time” that are triggered in those situations. Obviously in “Conserve Time” you’re going to see a lot more plays with primary receivers headed towards the sidelines, and in “Waste Time” you’re going to see a lot more run plays.
4. When we start applying the Star ratings to plays in a given situation, how does GameFlow break this down? Let's say, on offense, I have 8 plays for 1st and 10 situations. I've given two of those plays 5 stars, four of the plays 4 stars and the remaining two plays were given 3 1/2 stars. How do the stars and the playcall logic work this out?Ian: It’s what you would see out of a typical “random” statistical model. You’ve in essence tagged the 5 star plays as your most important, so those are weighted more when it’s trying to find a play out of that group, but the 4 and 3.5 star plays still do have a chance of being called. It’s just like iTunes.
5. GameFlow on the defensive side of the ball. Let's say I have an opponent who has decided to be tricky and put a WR in at HB/TE or a HB/TE in at WR to throw off how GameFlow reads the offensive huddle. Is there going to be any way to account for this or will this simply be a way for the offense to pull someone completely out of their GameFlow playcalling?Ian: Remember, GameFlow is built for quicker and simpler Madden experience. The situation you describe above is what I’d expect to see from an advanced Madden gamer that is possibly trying to cheese you or the game (i.e. a WR at HB is an attempt to create a major mismatch). If you are playing a very advanced Madden gamer that is trying to exploit you, I can’t imagine that you’d want to delegate all your playcalling duties away...you’re going to want to try and make more manual adjustments with formation subs and pre-play adjustments to combat him.
6. Everyone appears to be very pleased with Locomotion gameplay in the Madden 11 demo. It's like a little throwback to the feel of the old PS2 days and everyone loves that. But it also seems like gang tackling is different. Did Locomotion have an effect on the Pro-Tak logic or is Pro-Tak gone altogether?Ian: We are very happy with the feel of locomotion as well. The two actually aren’t related really…and Pro-Tak is still very much active.
7. What changes, if any, have been done to the Hit Stick mechanics - are we in Hit Stick 2.5?Ian: The hit stick mechanics were not changed. This is an area where we’ve received very little negative feedback and the telemetry proves that it is an oft-used mechanic for success, so we haven’t felt a need to do anything crazy here to make it more complicated.
8. What will be the default settings for Ranked online games this year?Ian: 7 minute quarters + accelerated clock, All-Pro, normal game speed.
9. The kick meter has been changed this year. I've always thought that swinging the stick back and forth realistically mimicked the kicker's foot/leg motion during a kick. Why the change?Ian: The R-stick mechanic did not allow us to portray a kicker’s accuracy or the skill level of the game well enough. Now we are able to do both.
10. Online Franchise - I know this is asked about all of the time. Recently it was mentioned that since it's not one of the more popular modes of the game, it didn't get much work for Madden 11. Many people have responded to that by saying it hasn't become popular because it has never met their expectations of what it could or should be. I'd like to get your response on that point of view and also tell us - has anything new been added to Online Franchise at all?Ian: [NOTE: Being that we received an identical question in a previous interview, this answer is taken from that interview]
Before Madden NFL 11, we primarily made design decisions based on our own gut feel, what we heard from reviewers, and what we heard from our community. Since online franchise was always the number one requested feature (from us internally as well as from everyone else), it was a real eye-opener to see such low usage and frankly, the possibility of how disconnected we possibly could have been from the majority of our audience.
As to what the actual data tells us, well it’s a few things. We did know that our more hardcore gamers would be upset with some of the depth that wasn’t there (i.e. a realistic free agency/salary cap structure), but we felt confident that the franchise experience was deep enough out of the box (15 years, custom draft classes, online support, injuries, trades, etc.) that we could add features in the future and work iteratively on the mode over time. All those plans changed though when we saw the usage. It was no longer an effective strategy to be spending a major amount of work on a feature that was barely getting used (FWIW online franchise development is also some of the most specialized and difficult engineering in our game). I’ve heard some people put out the theory that usage was low because of the missing features, but that’s not the case. The critical time for the cap and free agency is obviously in the offseason, and only a small fraction of our online franchise gamers even made it through year 1 to that phase.
Are players interested in playing Franchise modes online? Well, yes, some definitely are. I know I am, as are a lot of designers on the team. But how many are there of us? I am not totally sure. What I do know is that it’s similar to the old hardcore Madden PC folks -- it’s a relatively small sect of gamers (in comparison to the big picture of Madden sales), but they are definitely the loudest group.
There are many very difficult design challenges with an online franchise type of mode, number one being the scheduling. I had an online franchise last year with one of my best friends from high school that was on the west coast, and it was nearly impossible for us to sync up and play our games. Now imagine if I was in an online franchise with people I don’t really know all that well (or at all)...it’s a serious challenge to make you want to stay invested when you aren’t able to play your games. It’s a real drag when you have like an hour to play Madden, (say your wife is expecting you to take her out for dinner, or your kids want to hang out with you or something), and you just sit in a screen waiting and hoping your opponent shows up. I think there are definitely some improvements that could be made to ease this pain…things like removing commissioner dependency, or pre-determined/scheduled play times, but I don’t know if more improvements like those get us any major up-tick in usage of the mode.
One thing to be clear on—we haven’t given up on the mode. If we had given up, we’d cut it completely as it costs a substantial amount of money to maintain and support. We’re continuing to do extensive research on who is playing, why they are playing, and more importantly who is dropping out and why. I for one am really curious how NCAA’s Online Dynasty numbers stack up this year, because they have an extremely rich feature-set out there with Dynasty Wire, recruiting, web-support, and the like. If they end up with big-time numbers, then we’d obviously re-evaluate our current thinking.
ONLINE FRANCHISE UPDATE: Ryan Ferwerda, Line Producer for EA-Tiburon has announced on his Twitter account that "Scouting for Online Franchise is coming with the NFL Kickoff weekend patch!"
Special thanks to Ian Cummings for taking the time to answer these questions, it is much appreciated. Also a big thank you goes out to Julie Foster, Sr. Publicist for EA Sports. Props go out to the crew at MaddenTips.com forums. If you are looking for some people who can play this game on any level, discussions or online leagues to join, I highly recommend joining this forum. It's been around for years and the people there are great.
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