How to Make Madden Appealing to Text-Simmers

[RaychelSnr]

Believe it or not, all text simmers are not complete snobs. Some of us enjoy taking a break from staring at statistics and doing a little button mashing. However, text simmers are a picky bunch. No matter how hard certain game designers try to woo us, we will probably never completely come over to the dark side. Simulation-style features may grab our attention for a while, and may even get us to acknowledge that games like Madden occasionally get a few things right.

But the only way text simmers will truly embrace an Madden-style game is if, well, it holds up against other text sims. We need realism, customization, challenges, meaningful evaluation methods and, yes, even graphics.

So I will use Madden 10 as our example. What would it take to turn Madden into a top-flight football text sim while at the same time maintaining its position as the king of football games?

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[Pared]

A lot of that falls within simming a franchise. Shouldn't an article in this vain also include a discussion for simming through a game, not just to finish it?

Give them an ESPN GameDay style setup and allow them to play the game without playing the game.

[teebee]

Gameday is mlb.com; ESPN is Gamecast FYI

[CreatineKasey]

I'm sure the franchise in Madden is unacceptable for text sim football gamers. Really, my biggest draw would be a simulation league against other users (no CPU). That isn't possible in Madden at the moment.

I'm more of the type who likes playing the games, though. It'd take some exceptional structure and features to get me playing a managerial-type mode... coach mode maybe.

[jyoung]

Head Coach was a great sim game.

Shame they haven't incorporated the sim engine from Head Coach into Madden.

Or the playbook creator, for that matter.

[Trooper]

Am I dumb for not knowing what a "text simmer" is?

[KBLover]

Quote: Originally Posted by Trooper

Am I dumb for not knowing what a "text simmer" is?

Players who play games that are light on graphics but have a lot of depth/stats/strategy in them. Typically, these games are also very light on direct user control of players, if not no control at all.

Games like OOTP, Front Office Football, Football Mogul would fall under the "text sim" umbrella.

Football Pro is pretty darn close, though you could also control the action if you wanted. I guess that would be closer to coach mode in Madden with a much better sim engine.

Head Coach is also close. You have no control over your players and has a lot of depth. I guess you could call HC a "graphical text sim" as it did have a lot of text, just more graphical being on a console and such.

[dfos81]

I don't know what kind of gamer I am but, I would've liked M10 even more if it gave us more randomness on the animations, cutscenes, etc. and also produced stats similar to what we see on NFL.com. and the l8r we get into the year the more the presentation should wow us. Pre-season, Reg-season, and playoffs(esp. the Superbowl) should all feel different both gameplay and presentation.

So these fixes
1. gameplay more animations/cutscene randomness
2. Simmed stats = to Nfl.com
3. Presentation, beginning, middle, and Superbowl.

I guess I'm the gamer that wants the gameplay and text/sim stuff to wow me equally. NBA Live 10 is a game that does that.