Renegades Mind
Monday, August 31, 2009
Moving forward, I have some interesting ideas that I feel might not be "too much" for this development team to handle. My idea here are relatively simple additions that can realistically innovate the way sports games interpret presentation.
The first addition needed is Custom stadium sounds. While this feature is in a lot of games, it needs to be implemented properly in madden. Not only will there need to be slots for after a TD or after a FG, But there needs to be presentation cuts, IE game intro, after 1 st quarter, 2nd quarter,etc.
The idea here is for users to be able to add the Monday Night football intro,etc.
Going with the custom theme, I think it would be a mistake for the madden team to completely devote time to a "team builder" type feature for Madden. I feel as though if they add a bunch more uniforms, and correct the mistakes that are currently there, there will be no real reason to include a "team builder".
With that ebing said, I have a way for EA to continue innovationg while using the Teambuilder model.
I present to you, Presentation builder or Network Builder. Create your own broadcast.
The idea is to allow users to upload their logos and use custom overlays.
The development team can take 2 or 3 different types of presentation elements such as "bottom score bar". "Top score bar" and classic netowrk style such as something from madden PC used to have.
The object would be to have standard overlays that show the player stats,etc. those would all be the same. However, they can make it so that the colors can be changed to match the logo.
on each presentation element, there is a "logo" area that is blank, when the user uploads the logos to the game, they are applied to the blank areas and boom! snot bubbles. errrrr more like the end to "when are you going to use espn,etc,etc,etc". The catch to this feature would be that you probably wouldnt be able to let people share or download for copyright reasons, BUT since noone is paying for anything, just like teamsbuilder, copyright stuff is subjective.
I feel as though even if you cant share files through the ea team builder, the community will have tutorials or logos,etc with a walk through very quickly.
If you match this feature,with custom soundtracks, the only other presentation element there is to work on would be commentary, thats ALL. Madden will never agin be compared to another game presentation wise.
The last part of this feature would be the commentary for these custom networks. All it would take is the ability for the announcers to say letters and the words Network or station or channel. C-B-S, E-S-P-N, N-F-L Network, AWZ-Channel,
Could you imagine loading up Madden 11 and having the CBS intro while there is a panoramic of your teams stadium and they say Welcome to Indianapolic, home of the Colts, today the Colts take on the Patriots in the game of the week. If that wont make you forget about run blocking then I dont know what will lol.
For all Madden does bad, stuff like this, things that suck you into an NFL experience, would make up for it and more, it would move the genre forward by innovation.
I look forward to what madden does to Madden 11. Presentation is still very much lacking and I have maintained all along, you can have all the cut scenes and dumb facts that you want, but if its not implemented properly than youve got nothing. Its the same reason why movies with awesome plots and great actors still fail. Its because they are done poorly and the user doesnt buy off on the experience. Thats where we are in Madden 10, will they move forward, will they take that step that says "we here at EA Demand perfection?"
Time will tell, and my man Ian Cummings will get the credit, or he will get the heartache.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Its not just you though. You are the face of the "franchise" over there at EA, a group of ragamuffin developers who seemingly have taken creativity, innovation, and art out of game design. I am almost ashamed that I am in a creative profession.
Let me start off by saying that I 100% believe that Ian Cummings and his team truthfully believe that their exclusive deal motivates them and doesnt hinder their game design.
With that being said, I think its time you guys got a clue.
I nearly fell out of my chair when Ian twitters that one of the guys "spent their own time making the broadcast camera work". Wow, seriously? We are giving people public accommodations for doing make up work on their off time? Fact: The Madden development teams priorities are jacked.
You get no credit for being a madden developer. You get no credit for trying to release a good game, and lastly you dont get credit for back of the box features unless they work like they say they do.
This year we get to talk about :
1) Pro Tak(its new, so we are working out kinks)
2) Online Franchise (its new so we are working out kinks, and its a base to improve upon)
3)Broadcast presentation( Its improved but a base for the future to build on)
4-- do I need to go on, basically your selling point for this game, the above 3 "features" are either broke, implemented wrong, or incomplete.
Not to mention you managed to screw up Feild goals, online ranked games, and incomplete passes seemingly by not touching them somehow. wow.
But you were in the forums man, saying how great it was going to be. We listened to you with your cool hand towels and custom field artwork. whatever man. Do us all a favor and get off the forums. Let us go back to where there is no relationship. You can get what you need from the community without announcing Ian Cummings is here.
You know why 2k5 is better than your game dude? seriously? Cause that development team wanted it more. They wanted a peice of that *** man. They came to work and did what needed to be done, they lowered the price tag. They wanted to take out Madden and they did it. They didnt get credit for staying a little late after work to fix a camera view. These dudes lived together for 12 months, sleeping on beds made from nails with pictures of John Madden in their lockers
Now all we got is some cowardly looking individuals lacking confidence lying about all of these great features.
Do us a favor, next year, just fix all this broke stuff and dont add anything. Maybe for once we can enjoy the game rather than spend hours and weeks creating sliders and salary caps and somehow trying to play the game through all of this garbage.
I would offer you luck, but you dont need it, your Ian cummings! Go on hustler.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
When a sports fan goes through his daily routine, it usually consists of: setting his fantasy lineup for the day, talk a little smack on his message board of choice, and then hit up espn.com, nfl.com, nhl.com,etc. A true sports fan isn't logging on to espn to find out who won yesterdays games. He already knows that. He is logging on just to be informed. He may check the latest news of his favorite team, check out the new blogs, and we all know on Tuesday at around noon, power rankings are posted.
The point that I am getting at is that these elements, such a ritual to a sportsfan, need to be incorporated into their sports gaming life. The only way to do this is via implementation into their online leagues and online franchises.
As a long running commissioner of an online Madden league, Revolution Football League, my biggest hurdle is to maintain interest of owners throughout the season. News stories, Power rankings, game of the week, player of the week,etc are all elements I incorporate into my league. At this current time, this is challenging because I have to use message boards and essentially create my own applications to do this. If I want to assign the task to another owner to do power rankings, if they dont know html, my hand are tied. There is similar resistance when doing news stories. How do you separate news stories from regular forum posts visually? The answer is by inserting html and images into the forum posts but then again average people dont want to go through this.
So we look at Madden 10 now implementing a web interface to go along with there online franchises. Their big draw is that you can "set your lineup from your cell phone, and view game stats at your office." Thats cool, but its really not. Just as much as its a feature, whats really the point, I mean do I really need to adjust my depth chart from Taco Bell? Before my game I can go on and do what I need to do and then play my game. What would be cool is if the owners of teams in my league can look at the power ranking I release very friday from Taco Bell. What would be cool is if the owners of teams in my league can read the recap to the Titans Steelers game of the week last night cause from the score, it looks like it was an epic game. When you package in this user generated content with the ease of depth charts, and stat uploads, you have something special on your hands. This is when you really stop workflow in companies world wide.
Just as last year they claimed "beyond broadcast presentation" and to be point blank, it was a lie, as presentation was horrible. This year they have IPhone app and "you will be glued to the website to update your depth chart and look at stats" Unfortunately, they havent mentioned the ability to add user content so I am forced to assume that we will be somewhat let down from a user generated content standpoint, which is OK, just dont sell me on this epic website content when in fact I am actually going to have to create my own site to really engender anything compelling.
Dont worry though, as I am here to help. Here are a few suggestions directed to anyone who holds the job of innovating their games online league of franchise web interface.
First of all there needs to be a solid aesthetic component to the web site. There should be a landing page with a league top story, and from there users should see league headlines, recent forum activity, recent game scores. and games of the week/players of the week.
Additional pages should include a game of the week page which can hold the game preview such as a breakdown of stats and maybe a percentage thing where a calculation of the stats highlights a projected winner of this game. There should be a power rankings page and the commissioner should be able to submit power rankings rather easily via a dropdown list and some input fields.
Users who wish to add news stories should be greeted with a simple form to fill out which when submitted makes their news story look like an article you would read on espn.com and other users should have the ability to comment on this.
The commissioner should be able to assign permissions to all of these areas via an admin panel. The commissioner should just be able to bring up an owner and check the features that owner is able to edit.
Not only will these features allow commissioners to keep everyone active, but it will also reduce the amount of time he needs to spend emailing owners saying "where have you been?" He can look and see well, Joe Smith posted a news article yesterday, hes good. These features will also add to the feeling of being part of something and it will help with commradere between owners.
In closing I must say that not all sports fans or in particular Madden online franchise players will really use all of these features all of the time, but when you look at a sports fan, you give them what they are used to. There is nothing foreign to them about power rankings and whatnot and the first time they log in and see their Tennessee Titans locked in at #5 with a write up about their defense, they will be hooked. The first time The Vikings owner rushes for 200 with AP, they will be refreshing their browser to see who got player of the week. This is the type of things that the trailer for online franchise implied but I am nervous that this is not what we are going to get. Hopefully someday, the development team will be on the same page with us sports fans and can deliver something which is truly special. Until then I will keep plugging away at my own power rankings and league content.
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