Operation Sports: There's a lot of people that are unhappy about not having any updates to Online Franchise mode this year, so was it a choice between Communities and Online Franchise this year, or was it nothing like that?

Anthony DiMento: I know everybody's excuse for Online Franchise is that they look at the numbers, and nobody plays it, and it's a vocal minority of guys. But at the beginning of the year, Ian's mandate (Ed. note: Ian Cummings is the former Madden creative director) was that we had to do something for Online Team Play (OTP). So if we're going to do something for OTP, it's got to be the Clubs feature -- that's in FIFA and NHL, basically what this whole foundation is built on. So there wasn't going to be time for Clubs and a full upgrade to Online Franchise, so rather than making a few minor tweaks to Online Franchise, we were able to manipulate the Clubs feature to create Communities -- you know create that head-to-head experience that goes along with all the ranked team play stuff that Clubs brings.

I mean I think what Online Franchise is all about from what I hear, and from my experience, is about playing together -- playing with your friends and playing against a group of guys you like playing with. And the biggest complaint we hear, other than it not being updated, is that it's really hard to schedule your time; that's been the problem here at the office, too. I have a Week 6 game, and I have one guy I have to play against. I'm just like, 'Hey, John, meet me online at 8:30. We're going to play our Week 6 game because the commissioner is going to advance the week tomorrow so we have to get this done.' And then either I have to work late and I don't it make in time, or he has to go pick up his wife at the airport or something like that. Guys just aren't able to coordinate.

It's frustrating already, so we felt like Communities is still giving people that experience they want playing together without having to worry about thinking about figuring out that I have to wait for that one guy. Now you can be in a situation where you can have 2,000, or if you're in five communities, 10,000 other guys potentially that you can get a game against, and people you want to play against. So it was a matter of priorities, too. Everybody plays ranked head to head, and we had more guys play OTP last year than we had play Online Franchise mode. Basically that is what it comes down to.

I’ve been waiting for this day for months now, and it’s finally here, the debut of Madden NFL 12’s newest online feature: Communities. Around this time each year, the design team starts getting together, kicking around ideas and looking at priorities for what we want to add to next year’s game. We started Madden NFL 12 by looking at the core online experience and Ranked Head-to-Head, in particular. For years now, we have been hearing complaints about how hard it is to find a good matchup online. Opponents quitting games, cheesing or running the same play again and again, and gamers looking for creative ways to cheat their way up the leaderboard have really been plaguing the online space. We listened to our fans and found a very large group of gamers who only play against their friends and use our Ranked Invites and Leaderboards to track their progress against each other. We talked to our hardcore fans and found a lot of sim-football players who only want to play against guys who play sim-football and we talked to even more who just wanted to find an opponent who would finish a game. Finally, we asked ourselves, what is the correct solution to these problems? How can we let our gamers play ranked games against their friends, play the way they want to play it, and create a safe environment where you don’t have to worry about cheaters, quitters, or grievers? The answer became Communities.