Breaking Down Madden: Core Experience and Audience

[Joobieo]

Interesting read .

[comen]

Quote: Originally Posted by elementz09

I enjoyed reading this article. I start to wonder though how much of these changes that EA has put into Madden or NCAA relates to sales vs. ratings? I know sales are important in any business, but I look at another sports game in MLB: The Show and they're pretty much top notch in MLB realism. Even the franchise mode allows you to schedule promotions, transportation, and all other kinds of things that comes very close to really putting you in the position of a GM of a MLB franchise. And if you don't want that much responsibility, just play season mode. I say that to ask how difficult can it be to get to the point in a game where you have a "fork in the road" option for casual gamers vs. hardcore gamers? Is it too complicated to implement out of fear of a sales decline and/or a not so good rating?

Thats Maddens biggest problem right now!! Not having choices or customization!! It cant be that hard for them to implement options for casual all the way through to the hardcore! Customization is a must and caters to all users! The game has surely took a huge turn towards people that cant play football games(casual) or dont really care about true football sim! Maybe they should make 2 games: one called casual football and one called NFL football! (Great article tho!)

[Tweeg]

Quote: Originally Posted by jpdavis82

LOL, I'm surprised you didn't say it was a win for the casual. The only thing M13 did for the casual was probably piss them off, no fantasy drafts, no option to control all the teams in Connected Careers, trying to remove nanos.

I don't see anything casual about 32 team control in connected careers. The removal of 32 team control is actually a negative for Hardcore, not casual.

[Sausage]

Madden 10, my favorite Xbox 360/PS3 version of the series. Probably my favorite football game of all time next to Madden 05 and NCAA 06 on the PS2.

[djordan]

You know what? Tiburon can add all the sim features they want. As long as the running animations are unrealistic, this game will never be the Sim game we always wish of.

[balljonesjr]

I can't say this was a good read :/ my reason for this is how true it is. I consider myself a hardcore fan and it upsets me to actually see how sports games in general not just madden is made. I now know that I can't anticipate 100% realism based on the fact that I'm not the only person playing the game. EA has to appease to all fans of football and at this point with games being so complicated they have to (not insulting anyone) dumb OT down for the casual fans. Thanks for opening my eyes. To the next part of this series … in my best Bart Scott impression "can't wait!"

[CT Pitbull]

in order for them to survive they must cater to their hardcore fan base ...if someone wants to play madden bad enough ...they will learn ..one time getting spanked by a friend or the cpu should be their motivation to get better...if they give up after a bad loss and say "its too hard for me" ...then they in all likelyhood would not be a madden gamer for very long anyway and would move on to another game that they are more interested in...if you love football you WILL learn how to play madden...its NOT rocket science

[kingsofthevalley]

That was an interesting article. If we're going by trends it would probably mean they going for the casual this year. Key word "IF". I think they're breaking the trend this year with infinity, connected careers, commentary, etc. Definitely hardcore fan additions in my opinion.