Madden NFL 11: Ian Cummings Interview
Submitted on: 08/19/2010 by
Steven Bartlett
OS recently had the chance to speak with Madden NFL 11’s creative director Ian Cummings during a conference call. Check out the interview below.
Operation Sports: How does the "shoulders squared locomotion" feature function? Can you comment on the philosophy behind it? It would appear that players naturally want to turn it up field -- when was this idea brought to the table?
Ian Cummings: The locomotion system for us was about really getting back to the core of the game, you know? We just had so many problems that we couldn’t really solve with the old system, and so one of the big facets of locomotion is actually layered animation. And, typically a run cycle is a small clip of animation, but what we have been able to do with layers (we implemented a little bit of it in Madden NFL 10 with quarterbacks being able to throw out of sacks early) is really the ability to separate the parts of upper body from the lower body.
So what you see with locomotion is that [ball carriers] have the ability to still stay in control –- still be able to run left and right. You know you’re always in control. You’re always in control of the same animation set, but his upper body can be kind of split off and turn to up field -- the illusion of cutting left and right to hit holes without turning your entire body. Along with that was the kind of dual-stick control of that with the right stick where you can lean your guy forward or twist his torso left or right. Those types of things were all done with layers. So the lower body is still fully in your control. It’s all on the left stick but the upper body is now totally kind of separate, and you can turn and twist and do all kind of cool things there that we just really didn’t have the technology to do that before.
OS: I did the review for Skate 3, and I don’t know if you’ve played that, but the controls are amazing in that game. It’s very similar where you are controlling your board left and right with the left stick and you are controlling your weight and balance on the right stick. And you have the right bumper and left bumper as right arm and left arm. Have you guys looked into that type of control for future types of gameplay features and animations? Last week I was saying on our radio show maybe as a defensive back when you go to swat a ball use the left bumper with left hand and right bumper to swat with the right hand. Are these things that come to mind or have you looked into other controls of other games like this?
Ian: Yeah we definitely… I play a ton of games, you know? I try to play everything. I am just a huge gameplay purist, too. I love kind of digging into the details of the way [developers] do stuff. We definitely talked about using triggers and bumpers, but this year we felt like we couldn’t do anything new in that respect because we think we had to take a year to train -- a year to get rid of the sprint button. And so we knew if we added like, say as a ball carrier, say if we added right and left arms on the triggers. Every single person would be doing stiff arms all game because they are so used to holding the sprint button. So we wanted to take a year and basically keep all those buttons kind of free, at least the triggers -- the ones that people are used to -- and we will do some more separate arm stuff.
On defense we’ve actually prototyped some things with the right stick for your different arms doing different things. It’s really tough because of the direction your player is facing and how the screen is tilted. It’s really tough in that split second to decide if I need to use my left arm or right arm or things of that nature. And so it’s a really hardcore control that most people wouldn’t be able to use. I mean what we’re looking at right now [with] the dual stick -- the torso twisting part not many people are using at all. People are using the truck stick and the one-to-one juking but it’s so tough. The game is so fast that people don’t get the ability turn their body away from contact in that fraction of a second. So you always just try to keep it simpler with a good layer of depth underneath it.
OS: I want to know how the auto turbo kicks in for the prioritized running lanes? Is the game programmed to know what lane you are supposed to be going to and does it kick in when you find that lane? How does that function exactly?
Ian: No, basically the way the locomotion works now is that [the ball carrier] just accelerates to top speed as long as you are running straight ahead. Any time you veer off of that path, [you] have to re-accelerate. We definitely have talked about that concept,of like, you know, if you hit the holes you get a burst of speed or things like that. When you take a pitch, you're always at full speed. But we just felt that once we got that core locomotion in there we didn’t need any of that because it’s up to you. If you hit the hole straight ahead, you hit the hole faster because you haven’t had to turn your body. If you cut it back, you got to slow down and now there’s a whole three or four [defensive backs] running at full speed and are able to track you down. It all kind of evened out when we just sort of started obeying the real laws of momentum -- everything kind of worked itself out.
OS: The new player interest meter and interest list for top free agents in Franchise mode would appear to follow the path of NCAA Football 11’s recruiting interests. Do you plan to implement pitches, phone calls and a point system to recruit free agents in the future?
Ian: ...I don’t know. The current franchise system we definitely are looking to revamp. I don’t know if college’s approach is the right approach to take but, I think we all know that the current free-agent system is lacking and we want to do something cool there. I mean NFL Head Coach’s was pretty cool and the bidding war you would get into on a player -- we’ve got a lot of options there. We know that the current way is not good and we are looking to improve it.
OS: NCAA Football 11 offers slider adjustments for online dynasties. Is this something you plan on making available for Madden NFL 12 online franchises?
Ian: I can never comment on when anything goes into a given year because I never know until the game ships [laughs] if it’s going to make it or not. That’s something [sliders] that we like a lot. I think sliders at this juncture have gained so much discussion and momentum -- so many people are so obsessed with tuning them to their liking that we need to find a way for people to share them across all modes. We need to have official ones. I think it is something you see a lot of in communities like Operation Sports or other places that will tune and tune and tune and tune and get these kind of officially approved sliders only for offline games.
It would be great if we could pull those up and we could make lobbies where people could play online games with those or drop them into online franchises or anything like that. I don’t know when that will happen. I cannot comment on that. We are definitely seeing that sliders are a major deal. At this point, they have gained so much popularity I think we want to do something so people have an easier time sharing them and, you know, discussing them. That’s part of the fun -- everyone debating which ones are the best ones.
OS: I don’t know if you noticed, but personally every time I run a play-action pass the fullback is running around in circles blocking nobody [laughs]. Have you used the different play-action plays and is this something your team is looking into?
Ian: [Laughs] I’ve played our game, yeah. I use the play-action plays. I mean it’s something we’re looking at. You know a lot of people are complaining about it. I think it’s always kind of a balancing act in blocking, especially in locomotion -- we are trying to get everything solid. You know it’s something we’ll look at. Typically when I run play action, I run just a couple play-action plays that I like a lot and most of them have the fullback running out to the flat. I get rid of it really quickly. But yeah, play action is dangerous right now. I mean there’s no doubt about it -- you got to keep an extra guy in if you want to have a little extra time. We’re definitely looking at it. It’s something that people are complaining about. Same with the kick return blocking.
OS: Yeah, a lot of people are complaining there are no wedges set up. So those are things you are looking at also?
Ian: There’s no wedges in real life, too [laughs]. It’s funny, a lot of us on the team were actually complaining in the final weeks of the game that kick returns were too hard. So we all sat down and did 100 in a row -- each of us. And our average was about three yards above the NFL average on kick returns. So I think what’s happening is obviously people [are] not liking it -- having the same reaction that we did. But to be honest, the actual numbers are pretty close to realistic stats. It’s just that you are used to playing Madden and getting to the 25-yard line when you start five yards deep in the end zone. Everyone is used to doing that so now it feels like it’s broken when it’s actually a little more accurate. Regardless, I don’t ever want to use that as kind of a cop-out. If people don’t like it, then we want to try and fix it.
OS: Is anything being done to combat online quitters? People aren’t being penalized as much.
Ian: That’s one of our top issues we are looking at right now. Just so people know -- kind of like a back story. We had to switch our entire server architecture on the back end this year to get aligned. All the major EA Sports games had to incur some pretty major costs. So we had to re-implement a lot of our existing features. And so that’s why the whole "continue vs. CPU" was actually removed because we felt like this was the point where we could get rid of it. People typically just hated playing against the computer. But apparently it’s some kind of weird bug going on in the server where people are quitting and they are not getting penalized, so we are going to make sure we get that addressed as soon as we can.
OS: Okay, in terms of the defensive AI I noticed that if defenders are in a zone, typically in a yellow zone, they are slower to react to the ball -- they are kind of at a standstill. This happens on All-Madden. But when you play man-to-man coverage, defenders are very quick to react to the ball, but in the yellow zones they are reacting slower. Is this something that is involved with the locomotion system? Do you have any comments on this?
Ian: It’s definitely the locomotion. I mean, defenders right now typically have lower acceleration ratings, especially linebackers. So if they drop back into zone and they happen to get to a standstill, then it’s going to take a little bit longer to get them going again. Again, this is something that we are looking at. All-Madden they’ve got a little bit of a juice there to kind of help them speed up and get going faster. They have more awareness, they have better play recognition. Those get boosted. So we are looking to see if we can maybe fix that with code, or whether we can maybe just change ratings in a roster update or something along those lines. We want to get a balance.
A lot of feedback I am hearing for the most part is that the game is pretty offensive oriented, and I am seeing that, too. Especially we are looking at the stats that are coming in from the games and most of them are pretty high scoring. It’s something we want to address. Obviously you’ve got to balance that. You want guys to have fun when they play the game and offense is typically more fun, but you don’t want to balance it where you cannot stop anyone. Obviously, that’s another big problem. A lot of people look back to Madden 04 as like their favorite version of Madden. In that game, typically every game was about 75-70 in the final score. But we don’t want to get to that again. We want it to be really fun to run the ball and have a successful running game and passing game, but be able to stop someone if you know how to stop them -- if you know how to use the strategy.
OS: Yeah, I noticed in the open field that guys are breaking tackles and wide receivers are breaking tackles more often than not. And not only that, they are breaking them to the house after they wiggle free.
Ian: Yeah, a lot of that comes from the ratings differentiation that we have. We make our guys spread out a lot more so that defensive backs tackling ratings are pretty low. They are not good tacklers for the most part so you’ve got to kind of try and swarm around the ball. Again, that is something we are trying to tune and see if we can make it any better -- if it warrants it. We are just always listening to the community and the hot-button issues, and we go from there.
OS: Any chance something is done so that the AI doesn't snap the ball so quickly? Basically, some people want to have more time to make pre-play adjustments when playing against the computer.
Ian: Yeah, we are looking at that one, too. The one thing to do -- and I am not sure if a lot of people know this -- but as a workaround, if you turn off the accelerated clock, they will actually take a lot longer. So if people are extremely perturbed about that right now, there’s a workaround. Obviously, It’s not ideal, but it helps to not have that problem. A majority of the time, me personally, if I have to make five adjustments against the computer I’m asking do I really need to do that. Typically, I can figure out what the computer is doing and I don’t have to be a super, hardcore crazy guy against them. And I think what you see is if we boost the CPU time that they wait, that frustrates way more people. The majority of people don’t want to wait seven seconds and wait while the computer stands still. So that’s kind of a tough balance we have to figure out. We always talk about making a slider but that seems sort of like overkill [laughs].
OS: Thanks for the time, Ian.
Ian: Okay, thanks Steve
Operation Sports: How does the "shoulders squared locomotion" feature function? Can you comment on the philosophy behind it? It would appear that players naturally want to turn it up field -- when was this idea brought to the table?
Ian Cummings: The locomotion system for us was about really getting back to the core of the game, you know? We just had so many problems that we couldn’t really solve with the old system, and so one of the big facets of locomotion is actually layered animation. And, typically a run cycle is a small clip of animation, but what we have been able to do with layers (we implemented a little bit of it in Madden NFL 10 with quarterbacks being able to throw out of sacks early) is really the ability to separate the parts of upper body from the lower body.
So what you see with locomotion is that [ball carriers] have the ability to still stay in control –- still be able to run left and right. You know you’re always in control. You’re always in control of the same animation set, but his upper body can be kind of split off and turn to up field -- the illusion of cutting left and right to hit holes without turning your entire body. Along with that was the kind of dual-stick control of that with the right stick where you can lean your guy forward or twist his torso left or right. Those types of things were all done with layers. So the lower body is still fully in your control. It’s all on the left stick but the upper body is now totally kind of separate, and you can turn and twist and do all kind of cool things there that we just really didn’t have the technology to do that before.
OS: I did the review for Skate 3, and I don’t know if you’ve played that, but the controls are amazing in that game. It’s very similar where you are controlling your board left and right with the left stick and you are controlling your weight and balance on the right stick. And you have the right bumper and left bumper as right arm and left arm. Have you guys looked into that type of control for future types of gameplay features and animations? Last week I was saying on our radio show maybe as a defensive back when you go to swat a ball use the left bumper with left hand and right bumper to swat with the right hand. Are these things that come to mind or have you looked into other controls of other games like this?
Ian: Yeah we definitely… I play a ton of games, you know? I try to play everything. I am just a huge gameplay purist, too. I love kind of digging into the details of the way [developers] do stuff. We definitely talked about using triggers and bumpers, but this year we felt like we couldn’t do anything new in that respect because we think we had to take a year to train -- a year to get rid of the sprint button. And so we knew if we added like, say as a ball carrier, say if we added right and left arms on the triggers. Every single person would be doing stiff arms all game because they are so used to holding the sprint button. So we wanted to take a year and basically keep all those buttons kind of free, at least the triggers -- the ones that people are used to -- and we will do some more separate arm stuff.
On defense we’ve actually prototyped some things with the right stick for your different arms doing different things. It’s really tough because of the direction your player is facing and how the screen is tilted. It’s really tough in that split second to decide if I need to use my left arm or right arm or things of that nature. And so it’s a really hardcore control that most people wouldn’t be able to use. I mean what we’re looking at right now [with] the dual stick -- the torso twisting part not many people are using at all. People are using the truck stick and the one-to-one juking but it’s so tough. The game is so fast that people don’t get the ability turn their body away from contact in that fraction of a second. So you always just try to keep it simpler with a good layer of depth underneath it.
OS: I want to know how the auto turbo kicks in for the prioritized running lanes? Is the game programmed to know what lane you are supposed to be going to and does it kick in when you find that lane? How does that function exactly?
Ian: No, basically the way the locomotion works now is that [the ball carrier] just accelerates to top speed as long as you are running straight ahead. Any time you veer off of that path, [you] have to re-accelerate. We definitely have talked about that concept,of like, you know, if you hit the holes you get a burst of speed or things like that. When you take a pitch, you're always at full speed. But we just felt that once we got that core locomotion in there we didn’t need any of that because it’s up to you. If you hit the hole straight ahead, you hit the hole faster because you haven’t had to turn your body. If you cut it back, you got to slow down and now there’s a whole three or four [defensive backs] running at full speed and are able to track you down. It all kind of evened out when we just sort of started obeying the real laws of momentum -- everything kind of worked itself out.
OS: The new player interest meter and interest list for top free agents in Franchise mode would appear to follow the path of NCAA Football 11’s recruiting interests. Do you plan to implement pitches, phone calls and a point system to recruit free agents in the future?
Ian: ...I don’t know. The current franchise system we definitely are looking to revamp. I don’t know if college’s approach is the right approach to take but, I think we all know that the current free-agent system is lacking and we want to do something cool there. I mean NFL Head Coach’s was pretty cool and the bidding war you would get into on a player -- we’ve got a lot of options there. We know that the current way is not good and we are looking to improve it.
OS: NCAA Football 11 offers slider adjustments for online dynasties. Is this something you plan on making available for Madden NFL 12 online franchises?
Ian: I can never comment on when anything goes into a given year because I never know until the game ships [laughs] if it’s going to make it or not. That’s something [sliders] that we like a lot. I think sliders at this juncture have gained so much discussion and momentum -- so many people are so obsessed with tuning them to their liking that we need to find a way for people to share them across all modes. We need to have official ones. I think it is something you see a lot of in communities like Operation Sports or other places that will tune and tune and tune and tune and get these kind of officially approved sliders only for offline games.
It would be great if we could pull those up and we could make lobbies where people could play online games with those or drop them into online franchises or anything like that. I don’t know when that will happen. I cannot comment on that. We are definitely seeing that sliders are a major deal. At this point, they have gained so much popularity I think we want to do something so people have an easier time sharing them and, you know, discussing them. That’s part of the fun -- everyone debating which ones are the best ones.
OS: I don’t know if you noticed, but personally every time I run a play-action pass the fullback is running around in circles blocking nobody [laughs]. Have you used the different play-action plays and is this something your team is looking into?
Ian: [Laughs] I’ve played our game, yeah. I use the play-action plays. I mean it’s something we’re looking at. You know a lot of people are complaining about it. I think it’s always kind of a balancing act in blocking, especially in locomotion -- we are trying to get everything solid. You know it’s something we’ll look at. Typically when I run play action, I run just a couple play-action plays that I like a lot and most of them have the fullback running out to the flat. I get rid of it really quickly. But yeah, play action is dangerous right now. I mean there’s no doubt about it -- you got to keep an extra guy in if you want to have a little extra time. We’re definitely looking at it. It’s something that people are complaining about. Same with the kick return blocking.
OS: Yeah, a lot of people are complaining there are no wedges set up. So those are things you are looking at also?
Ian: There’s no wedges in real life, too [laughs]. It’s funny, a lot of us on the team were actually complaining in the final weeks of the game that kick returns were too hard. So we all sat down and did 100 in a row -- each of us. And our average was about three yards above the NFL average on kick returns. So I think what’s happening is obviously people [are] not liking it -- having the same reaction that we did. But to be honest, the actual numbers are pretty close to realistic stats. It’s just that you are used to playing Madden and getting to the 25-yard line when you start five yards deep in the end zone. Everyone is used to doing that so now it feels like it’s broken when it’s actually a little more accurate. Regardless, I don’t ever want to use that as kind of a cop-out. If people don’t like it, then we want to try and fix it.
OS: Is anything being done to combat online quitters? People aren’t being penalized as much.
Ian: That’s one of our top issues we are looking at right now. Just so people know -- kind of like a back story. We had to switch our entire server architecture on the back end this year to get aligned. All the major EA Sports games had to incur some pretty major costs. So we had to re-implement a lot of our existing features. And so that’s why the whole "continue vs. CPU" was actually removed because we felt like this was the point where we could get rid of it. People typically just hated playing against the computer. But apparently it’s some kind of weird bug going on in the server where people are quitting and they are not getting penalized, so we are going to make sure we get that addressed as soon as we can.
OS: Okay, in terms of the defensive AI I noticed that if defenders are in a zone, typically in a yellow zone, they are slower to react to the ball -- they are kind of at a standstill. This happens on All-Madden. But when you play man-to-man coverage, defenders are very quick to react to the ball, but in the yellow zones they are reacting slower. Is this something that is involved with the locomotion system? Do you have any comments on this?
Ian: It’s definitely the locomotion. I mean, defenders right now typically have lower acceleration ratings, especially linebackers. So if they drop back into zone and they happen to get to a standstill, then it’s going to take a little bit longer to get them going again. Again, this is something that we are looking at. All-Madden they’ve got a little bit of a juice there to kind of help them speed up and get going faster. They have more awareness, they have better play recognition. Those get boosted. So we are looking to see if we can maybe fix that with code, or whether we can maybe just change ratings in a roster update or something along those lines. We want to get a balance.
A lot of feedback I am hearing for the most part is that the game is pretty offensive oriented, and I am seeing that, too. Especially we are looking at the stats that are coming in from the games and most of them are pretty high scoring. It’s something we want to address. Obviously you’ve got to balance that. You want guys to have fun when they play the game and offense is typically more fun, but you don’t want to balance it where you cannot stop anyone. Obviously, that’s another big problem. A lot of people look back to Madden 04 as like their favorite version of Madden. In that game, typically every game was about 75-70 in the final score. But we don’t want to get to that again. We want it to be really fun to run the ball and have a successful running game and passing game, but be able to stop someone if you know how to stop them -- if you know how to use the strategy.
OS: Yeah, I noticed in the open field that guys are breaking tackles and wide receivers are breaking tackles more often than not. And not only that, they are breaking them to the house after they wiggle free.
Ian: Yeah, a lot of that comes from the ratings differentiation that we have. We make our guys spread out a lot more so that defensive backs tackling ratings are pretty low. They are not good tacklers for the most part so you’ve got to kind of try and swarm around the ball. Again, that is something we are trying to tune and see if we can make it any better -- if it warrants it. We are just always listening to the community and the hot-button issues, and we go from there.
OS: Any chance something is done so that the AI doesn't snap the ball so quickly? Basically, some people want to have more time to make pre-play adjustments when playing against the computer.
Ian: Yeah, we are looking at that one, too. The one thing to do -- and I am not sure if a lot of people know this -- but as a workaround, if you turn off the accelerated clock, they will actually take a lot longer. So if people are extremely perturbed about that right now, there’s a workaround. Obviously, It’s not ideal, but it helps to not have that problem. A majority of the time, me personally, if I have to make five adjustments against the computer I’m asking do I really need to do that. Typically, I can figure out what the computer is doing and I don’t have to be a super, hardcore crazy guy against them. And I think what you see is if we boost the CPU time that they wait, that frustrates way more people. The majority of people don’t want to wait seven seconds and wait while the computer stands still. So that’s kind of a tough balance we have to figure out. We always talk about making a slider but that seems sort of like overkill [laughs].
OS: Thanks for the time, Ian.
Ian: Okay, thanks Steve
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