The pocket is one of the most pressured areas of a playing field in all sports. The pocket requires a near uncanny ability to maintain both rushed patience and concentrated hastiness, both skill sets which separate the able from the unable. It only takes a matter of seconds, but within that time quarterbacks are expected to make decisions quickly and immediately react to their surroundings. Yet, despite the pocket's pressing nature, passing has somewhat become an afterthought in football video gaming. A requirement of the sport that has received fewer updates and improvements than running, catching, or defensive skill sets. It has become the dribbling of football video games.

I believe that gamers want to feel the pressure of the pocket, of being a real quarterback, but they do not want passing to be so difficult that reaching a 50% completion rate would be deemed extremely successful.

While passing is not as simple as moving your character forward in a basketball game and watching him dribble effortlessly, the passing game has still been ignored for quite awhile by developers of football video games. Most attempts to improve passing have included failed features (see: vision cone) and quick, patch-em-up fixes (see: zoomed out cameras), but what has resulted is a passing system that does little to mimic the real world. Instead, passing has mostly become three steps: hike, step back, and pass to the intended receiver. At times, performing the latter two is never as intuitive as they should be.

I believe that gamers want to feel the pressure of the pocket, of being a real quarterback, but they do not want passing to be so difficult that reaching a 50% completion rate would be deemed extremely successful. We are handling professional quarterbacks in our copies of Madden 2009. We should be able to pass at a 60% clip with near ease, so long as we do the simple things right.

"The difficulty...is that developers have fallen into the trap of giving gamers too much power "

The complaint with passing touches on how simple those simple things are for the gamer. We realize that a second string quarterback is not as inept in passing to the whole field as a veteran first stringer. Is it as drastic as a vision cone? Hardly. There is no way anyone can tell me that Peyton Manning can see more of the field than another human being. That is simply not the case. However, what separates Manning from a second string quarterback is his ability to read a defense and react to a play before it develops. Other skills such as throwing accuracy and throwing power have been implemented well enough in video games and the results are clear: you either throw harder and with great precision or you throw lobs in poor directions. That being said, not all quarterbacks with great throwing power and accuracy perform the same on the playing field. There is a separation and most of the time that separation is adapting to the defense.

The difficulty in video game passing is that developers have fallen into the trap of giving gamers too much power and, as a result, this power has handicapped us from playing the game comfortably. It seems confusing, but consider the following: we are given more than a quarterback should be given and less than they have all in the same hand. Imagine yourself on a football field, behind the offensive line, looking to your left, yelling a series of bluff calls, then quickly turning to your right, eyeing number 88 swiftly moving to the left side of the field, and as his feet settle into a non-moving position, hiking the football, glancing to your right, pump-fake, eyes moving to the left, there he is, an open number 88 crossing over the middle, his left hand calling for the ball just as a middle linebacker catches your glance and immediately turns his body to stop the pass.

By pulling the camera back and giving the gamer a wider scope of the playing field, developers have ignored that the wider angle makes it difficult to hone in on a specific side of the field - to see a play unfold just as you should.

Now take that same experience and translate it to the camera view of a football video game. The attention to these minute details waver. No longer are you analyzing the moves of your primary target, but instead attempting to analyze an entire field. And that entire field is at your finger tips. Yet, because the camera is pulled back so far, what you don't realize is that the middle linebacker has noticed number 88 crossing the middle and that pass into the open field is no longer a completion, but an interception right into the hands of the defense. The power of seeing the entire field has failed you when it came to concentrating on your specific target. It is the downside to making passing for the casual gamer, but implementing a defense for the more advanced.

By pulling the camera back and giving the gamer a wider scope of the playing field, developers have ignored that the wider angle makes it difficult to hone in on a specific side of the field - to see a play unfold just as you should. This solution to open up the field of view does not do much to improve passing. All it really does is make it easier to see a bunch of players running around the field. Sure, you can pick out your colored jerseys amongst the bunch and might now see that back creeping near the line of scrimmage for a screen pass, but what you have lost is an ability to see how the defense is reacting to that play. Your focus is not on the play, but the field.

"We have become accustomed to seeing the entire field and any changes...would seem ridiculous"

My idea for improving the passing in football games would not bold well for most gamers. I get it, we have become accustomed to seeing the entire field and any changes to that would seem ridiculous for most. I would argue that passing would seem more realistic and more intuitive if the camera pushed in closer and lower so that it looked similar to a third-person shooter, with the QB being your shooter. Then, immediately after snapping the ball, your QB will turn his attention to the primary target (unless you specify otherwise before the snap) to see that play unfold. Since right analog control has become the wave of the future, you can then flick the stick left or right to turn your attention to your next targets, if you deem your primary to be in a difficult position to catch the football. None of this will prevent you from passing to any target you choose, but similar to the vision cone, you'd be passing to a blind target and it may not go so well. Before the snap, you can flick the stick left and right to view the defense and setup a new primary target to focus on when snapping the ball. I would even suggest that the camera stay the same if you hand-off to a running back or catch the ball on the field with your receiver.

Would it work? That remains to be seen and I would wager that we would never get the chance to find out.

Obviously, that is a rough sketch of what I think would make passing more realistic and more intuitive for seeing the play unfold and getting a closer look at your specific target and what is going on around him. It also makes having a strong offensive line a bigger priority and enhances the pressure of being a quarterback. Would it work? That remains to be seen and I would wager that we would never get the chance to find out.

The point is that passing needs to improve. We need to feel the pressure of being a quarterback and we also need to have a chance to see what is happening in a play. Giving the gamer more field to cover with his eyes is not a solution. It is only a short fix that does not do a great job of highlighting the important aspects of being a professional football quarterback. Hopefully, in time, we will see developers put more effort on improving the passing game just as much as they have improved the other skill sets of football.