The overlooked aspect of customization - adembroski's Blog

adembroski's Blog

The overlooked aspect of customization

Posted on February 25, 2009 at 07:27 PM.

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I see post after post about being able to customize ones game experience. From sliders to the ability to turn on and off the salary cap. One aspect of customization that took the hardest hit in Madden 09- Create-a-League.

Sure, Create-a-League, technically, never existed. It's always the NFL, it's always a 17 week grind before a 4 round, single elimination playoff, but it's amazing how a league entirely of ones own making can completely renew the experience.

I went through the effort to created the fictional AFFA from the film, Any Given Sunday. I had to fill in a few holes, as a full 32 teams were never portrayed in the film, but the feel remained. The Chicago Rhinos, the Minnesota Americans, the Los Angeles Crusaders, and the Dallas Knights, and every other team I could get an ounce of info on, were all carefully detailed to match as close to the movie uniforms and rosters as the Madden team creation engine could manage.

But alas, it was all for naught. I loaded up the franchise mode and found I could not load all of those teams. It wasn't that the functionality wasn't there... it was. Madden is perfectly capable of playing out a franchise with 32 created teams. But you can't scroll down past the first ten on the load screen!

Such a tiny detail... the ability to scroll through your saved files... destroyed my single favorite aspect of Madden. And it is this lack of attention to detail that has plagued the series more than any other issue for the past 4 years or so.

Here's to Ian and Phil, who really seem to be making those changes this time around. I only pray it extends not just to the field, but to the technical side of things.

Please, give me back my AFFA!

Comments

# 1 thudias @ Feb 25

Interesting note..not sure I would use that but seems like a legitimate request.

# 2 BlyGilmore @ Feb 26

Honestly this is an area I think APF missed the boat on. The game was incredibly customizable in one aspect (your team, uniforms, etc.) and yet too rigid in others (no franchise mode, generic players besides your stars).

I still think if APF had released with a franchise mode and the ability to customize generic players it would be doing very well today.

Just for the reason you mentioned Adem - you could create a completely fictious league and then play several seasons with the teams.