Biggest Missing Piece to Online Franchise/Leagues - Renegade44's Blog

Renegade44's Blog

Biggest Missing Piece to Online Franchise/Leagues

Posted on June 14, 2009 at 09:53 PM.

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With Madden 10 about to come out this summer sporting new Online Franchise and a web interface, I thought it necessary to explain what main element is missing from this feature and others like it.

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.

Comments

# 1 Crazy K 419 @ Jun 14

i only have one did 2 say iz, will u guys think about leting else create are own playbooks. that is one thing that everybody wants. and if u guys put that in i'm sure that ur sales will be even greater than gear of war 2

# 2 CreatineKasey @ Jun 15

It is possible to run some of these things through OS. I've been involved in multiple online leagues run through threads on this and other websites. OS is great because of the forums AND arenas.

Here's what you do:

Summaries of games linked from your blog into the official league thread. Within the official league thread you will discuss all league matters, post power rankings, vote on players of the week...etc.

It isn't as nice as an individual website, of course, but it isn't bad!

For anyone looking alternatives... try using OS as your headquarters.