With Madden Approaching -- You Have a Choice on How Much You Enjoy It - RaychelSnr's Blog

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With Madden Approaching -- You Have a Choice on How Much You Enjoy It Stuck

Posted on July 31, 2011 at 04:19 PM.

(28)

I always dreamed I'd start social movements that had people pumped up to tackle tough but important issues in the world today.

But I guess I'll settle for the problem of first-day sports game buyers for now.

Owen Good of Kotaku took up my cause in an article this weekend, writing a pretty darned good piece pretty much agreeing with the notion that buying sports games on launch day is a frivolous effort and sure to frustrate you.

In fact, many of you who responded to my post last week had a lot of the same thoughts.

For instance, chi_hawks felt that his new routine might be to wait until September before buying NCAA. He's a smart one -- that's about the time you can get a patch or two out. If one would have taken this approach this year, they'd be sitting back and seeing a bunch of really annoying bugs be worked out. Then, when they purchased in September, they'd be instantly playing one of the finest NCAA Football games ever.

Of course, most people tend to get swept up into advertising fervor and can't help but not purchase a new game at launch.

How can you convince people to give up their Madden holiday anyways?

The Guarantee of Sports Gaming

There are a few things which you can count on in sports gaming -- the bigger the changes from year to year the bigger (and more numerous) the bugs.

Add in a multiplier if the changes are in a dynasty or career mode, since QA has a distinct ability to not notice these bugs (see: NCAA Football 11, MLB '11: The Show for starters).

Sports games are going to be buggy at launch nowadays, and accepting that fact is the first step towards coming up with an acceptable solution. I'm here to offer a few, and you can choose what you want to do based off of the choices laid out (and not laid out). So here goes�.

You can choose to give up sports gaming

Being a sports gaming website, I can't openly advocate this approach for a variety of reasons. However, I will say that the best way to fix a problem is to get rid of the reasons there's a problem in the first place.

But let's get real, you are here at Operation Sports, you aren't giving up sports gaming.

You can take the every other year approach.

This is my personal approach towards playing games. Year to year, it doesn't feel like games are progressing much -- but take a year off and come back and you'll see that sports games really are moving forward.

A smart plan could have you playing Madden one year, NCAA the next, Madden again the third year. Taking a year off saves you money (!!!) and let's you focus on getting the most out of each title. However, this does nothing to fix the bugs at launch problem we are really worried about. But from a prudence and enjoyment standpoint, this method works and works well. Even more importantly, you will probably be more willing to forgive a patchable bug if you are impressed with a games progress.

You can choose to wait

This is the method which requires only one important change, waiting 2-3 weeks after launch before you even consider buying a game. Many are adamant about not being able to do this for a variety of reasons.

First there are publisher incentives for buying a game early, some games get $20 off at launch. And if money is tight (and it likely is or will be sooner or later for you) then you need to take the possibility of saving $20 seriously. Of course, if $20 is a real huge deal the every other year method will save you $60 per year per title you buy. Hard to beat those economics.

Second, many will say the extra 2-3 weeks you'll waste waiting will result in you falling behind if you are wanting to be a part of competitions. Guys work hard, really hard, to break sports games so that they can sport better records both online and in tournaments. This extra time is simply money for them they cannot afford to lose. I'd argue in retort that the time you spend learning a game in the first few weeks might be wasted if a title update completely changes the rules after a month or so.

You can choose to do nothing

That's right, even though you are upset about the state of sports gaming and you cannot stand the fact that games are released broken every year -- you can choose to go stand in line on launch night and buy the game anyways.

Granted, I think you forfeit a lot of your right to complain -- especially if you read sites like Operation Sports and this blog -- but this is your prerogative. It's also my duty to tell you that these problems will only get worse and not better.

And if you think this generation is bad, just wait until the next one when detail gets even greater. The amount of things that could go wrong will grow exponentially again. That might be quite a frustrating ordeal.

But really, there's not much else to do now is there?

Simply put, this is an issue which isn't going away.

So your time to choose what you want to do in the future is coming up, for many, on August 30. You can buy into the hype and hoopla and you can go have a Madden Holiday with millions of other gamers.

And most likely, you will experience a bunch of frustrating bugs that should've never made it into the game. Some of those bugs will likely make Franchise mode a hair pulling experience, perhaps even unplayable. History tells us this will be the case in some form.

History also tells us that after a couple of patches, Madden will play a lot better and it will be a game which is worthy of your time and attention. But the time in between going from pretty solid to pretty good might just be enough to make you want to scream�.or ask for a refund.

So when August 31st comes around, and the typical hysteria hits message boards near you: don't say I didn't warn you.

Comments

# 1 seriousluboy83 @ Jul 31

My choice...wait

# 2 knighthawksfan @ Jul 31

I am not buying because you didn't change online frachise madden can go **** itself GO hawkeyes!!!!!

# 3 jjsmitty34 @ Jul 31

Honestly after the NCAA bugs, I'm going to wait on madden until acouple patches have been released.

# 4 ggophills @ Jul 31

I just got a PS3, and I only have one game. So I'm going to buy madden at the launch date. But I wouldn't do this if I had more games to play.

# 5 josef @ Jul 31

i'll be getting Madden at launch.. but ONLY with a $20 rebate. it makes me feel better. I refuse to pay $60 for most new games these days. Battlefield 3 or Uncharted 3 will be worth the 60.. but not most one sports titles that update so little every year.. and usually have a few month sof bugs to still be worked out..

# 6 therockstar2005 @ Jul 31

I will say, at least as it relates to Madden, since the release date is much closer to the NFL's season this year, I probably will not be as willing to wait as I otherwise would. The NFL season is a lot of the motivation for me to play Madden. But with that said, I wish I would have waited on NCAA, as I probably wouldn't have gotten it in the end. The gameplay is fantastic, but the roster and franchise issues, especially the teambuilder trouble, just killed the fun of the game for me. I'm more of an NFL guy than NCAA guy anyways, and I'm 90% sure I'm going to trade NCAA in for Madden now, because the bugs just killed it for me...though perhaps it might just be worth it to try to update rosters for another football game.

# 7 DJ @ Jul 31

I'm doing the every-other-year thing, and this year it's NCAA for me.

# 8 teebee @ Jul 31

Just play the games and stop whining; it's a videogame!

# 9 RUFFNREADY @ Aug 1

I will get the game with a discount; play it and find a bunch of bugs; post it on Youtube; call EA out and ask them WTF? Play NCAA football 12, until NHL12 comes out, and buy that with my other discount voucher; play NHL12 with all their bugs, and post them on YouTube, and complain again to EA, WTF? Hopefully get the patches for Madden12 and then play it until NBA2K12 comes out, and then trade Madden12 in for BF3 or MW3.
That's been my MO for the last 3 years; And it works!
cheers
As i see it; If a game isn't fully customizable from top to bottom, or aleast majority of the game; it wont last me more than 3 months tops.
YouTube channel = TheLLSMUVG

# 10 cbrock24 @ Aug 1

teebee has the best post ever. Seriously......you people need a life.

# 11 khaliib @ Aug 1

Rent and test-before-buy.

An added suggestion to the waiting method.

Limit the Marketing by no longer doing "Impressions" threads that have become pretty much useless due to year-in, year-out release day problems with Sports Games.

History shows that Sports Games (Football in particular) issues seemed to have gotten worse over the years, and those Impressions quickly turn into angry notations about such gauranteed problems.

Again, I'll wait.
My world will not crumble if I don't buy within the 1st 6 weeks.

# 12 STARKILLERCODY @ Aug 1

Actually it's Aug. 30 not 31. I will probably do what you said and wait 2-3 weeks since I have done this with pretty much every sports game I have after MLB 2k10.

# 13 STARKILLERCODY @ Aug 1

@RUFFNREADY That's exactly what I did last year with Madden 11. I played it for 2 months and couldn't stand how offline franchise and superstar mode were the same as Madden 10. Now I would say the online franchise was improved but I don't play online so I could care less. And I never can understand why you can't play 11 vs. 11 games. On second thought, playing as a o lineman would put me to sleep. HAHA.

# 14 N51_rob @ Aug 1

I want to wait, but that Amazon deal may push me over the edge, still have time to decide. But I heard that it took 5 patches to get Madden 11 playing really good. That is discouraging.

# 15 rudyjuly2 @ Aug 1

I'm thinking the every other year approach may be best. I don't think NCAA 12 was a full $60 upgrade over NCAA 11. You are just trading one set of issues for another sometimes.

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