Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

[Cre8]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

I hope Ian's tongue is freed up during this move, because I'm sure deep down he wants to respond to lots of the Madden 11 criticism and defend himself. Lets hope he isn't tied down by some agreement with EA to not talk about them for x years in exchange for some parting benefit. I'd love to hear SOMEONE freed up to discuss the process.

That would be very interesting. I think it depends on the terms of his departure though. If there is some sort of non-disclosure, I wouldn't be surprised.

However, what is to stop someone that leaves under bad terms to create an anonymous blog that exposes a company?

[GGEden]

Quote: Originally Posted by marshallfever

I don't see Madden changing very much until the next generation of games. EA put too much effort and money into this engine to just scratch if off and start a new, especially when theres no exact time frame for the next consoles. What if Sony comes out of the blue and announces the PS4 for a release date of November 12-2012. There would be no purpose in creating a new current engine when the next generation console is out. Yes this is a far fetched idea, but theres no telling when the next big machines will be out and for them to start anew and use two years to create a new engine that can fit better in the parameters of real physics would take tooo long.

Not having a dig at you, but that's what the PS3 and X360 supposedly are....next-gen. Indeed they are. Look at Backbreaker's physics. That's this gen, EA could easily push the envelope but doesn't.

[mva5580]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

I hope Ian's tongue is freed up during this move, because I'm sure deep down he wants to respond to lots of the Madden 11 criticism and defend himself. Lets hope he isn't tied down by some agreement with EA to not talk about them for x years in exchange for some parting benefit. I'd love to hear SOMEONE freed up to discuss the process.

He'll be able to speak in generalities, and that's pretty much it. He won't get into specifics, nor should he if he wants to continue working in the industry. We all have to "play the game" to some degree if we want gainful employment for ourselves, and he won't be any different. Your current/future employers won't look too kindly on you speaking overly negative of a past employer publicly.

[Smoke6]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

Madden 10's feature set was laid out on the product "road map" by EA before Ian took over. That's no slight on Ian's work or abilities, I'm just merely pointing out that the feature set was not "his", so to speak. I also think it would be unfair to say Madden 11's feature set was "his" either. You guys simply have to understand how little "power" the devs have versus the long-term product roadmap laid out by the people above the devs. (Most of whom pay WAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION to the narrow minded surveys EA pushes out there regularly). The devs have to jump to the product road-map marching orders, whatever those feature sets are being pushed and agreed to by committee. ONLY if they have the time or man hours AFTER the implementation of the pre-determined road-map features do they have the slightest bit of leeway into adding a "pet idea", and only then if they can justify the spare man hours (if any remain, that is.) Honestly, Ian gets both too much credit for Madden 10, and too much blame for Madden 11. My view of the process from talking to the devs at Tiburon is that they are the captains of a ship that is on autopilot in terms of the "destination". They are only allowed the slightest "course corrections", and even then they have to plead for the leeway to do so. Their creative freedom is INCREDIBLY limited with EA's structure. I hope Ian's tongue is freed up during this move, because I'm sure deep down he wants to respond to lots of the Madden 11 criticism and defend himself. Lets hope he isn't tied down by some agreement with EA to not talk about them for x years in exchange for some parting benefit. I'd love to hear SOMEONE freed up to discuss the process.

So what you're saying is, is that a group of guys who may have never developed a game in there life, tells the devs how to make there game! They give them a budget and a time frame for release of there game along with this, and regardless what the devs say or do, they have to follow this script?

Then we shouldnt have really any features at all besides tackle, run, throw, catch, spin and maybe a juke or jump button. Besides picking plays, this is very hard to believe given that the devs are introducing things that are apart of football and have been missing from the game, either completely or recently along with the other gimmicks like Spec catch, and weapons.

I too am hoping someone comes forward of all this and spills the beans, it would put alot of speculation and talk to rest and may ease the frustration of some of us gamers.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Smoke6

Your last paragraph, is BS, for the sole reason that each version madden is missing at least 5 features from its previous version.

It's common knowledge in game development circles that the XBOX360 and the XDK is a much more developer-friendly environment than the PS3 and its equivalent. The XBOX operating system is a derivative of Windows, and the graphics library is DirectX which is more-or-less standard on any Windows-based gaming PC. The PS3 is all proprietary stuff which is much harder to work with, and the system architecture of the XBOX360 is also much more similar to a PC than the PS3 is.

Your assertion that EA is using the XBOX as a user-side "excuse" is flat-out wrong. Further, the things you claim are "missing" are either in the game or were intentionally scrapped. For example, practice mode, gang tackling, and offensive pass interference are all in the game. The vision cone was scrapped because it was a poor feature that was clunky to use. The change in the control scheme from last-gen to this was intentional.

[marshallfever]

Quote: Originally Posted by Smoke6

Bolded, Now you get and dont even know it! Your last paragraph, is BS, for the sole reason that each version madden is missing at least 5 features from its previous version. Run to daylight, vision cone, gang tackling, Offensive PI, the controls, practice mode etc etc. We dont even have a pre season schedule for online franchise games so we can weed out our draft picks and fully customize our teams correctly. How about some true intergration with their NCAA counterpart for online dynasties importing there classes to Madden online franchises from the same group of guys involved in the leagues. Now that we have more time with NCAA this year, that should work out swell if it happend. These 2 games should always be interconnected in some way besides importing draft classes. There should be a way during the systems can link your franchise/dynasties together with draft prospect news feeds and all. In know this sounds like a wish list but this is where I thought this gen would have taken us already and it hasnt. Madden is just behind this gen, im running out of hope!

I agree with what your saying, i just don't think you can fault the systems when its down to the developers. You can't blame the 360 or ps3 or even Wii for the games that are on them, its the developers who have to learn the console and squeeze as much as possible from each console. Everything that you named missing isn't the fault of the console running them but the development team deciding to remove them for reasons unknown to us the public.

[marshallfever]

Quote: Originally Posted by GGEden

Not having a dig at you, but that's what the PS3 and X360 supposedly are....next-gen. Indeed they are. Look at Backbreaker's physics. That's this gen, EA could easily push the envelope but doesn't.

Yes i know what you mean, but a usual console cycle last about 5 years or so, this is the first time that we haven't heard anything at all about a "next generation" console beyond at least 4 years of the current consoles.

I just don't seem EA tossing away their engine for a new one. I completely agree that they can develop a much better engine truly based on physics like Backbreaker this current generation, but doing that means they have to take their loss on this current engine which i don't see them doing. They've invested too much time and money in this current engine (06-11) which is 5 years. They poured millions and millions of money and time these last five years into their current engine. I just don't see them discarding it until the next batch of consoles come out.

Like they've done these past 5 years, they're going to continue to built on this engine until the time comes when they HAVE to get rid of it. And the way this current engine it built, it just don't have the capability to do what we the fans what it to do.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by marshallfever

Yes i know what you mean, but a usual console cycle last about 5 years or so, this is the first time that we haven't heard anything at all about a "next generation" console beyond at least 4 years of the current consoles. I just don't seem EA tossing away their engine for a new one. I completely agree that they can develop a much better engine truly based on physics like Backbreaker this current generation, but doing that means they have to take their loss on this current engine which i don't see them doing. They've invested too much time and money in this current engine (06-11) which is 5 years. They poured millions and millions of money and time these last five years into their current engine. I just don't see them discarding it until the next batch of consoles come out. Like they've done these past 5 years, they're going to continue to built on this engine until the time comes when they HAVE to get rid of it. And the way this current engine it built, it just don't have the capability to do what we the fans what it to do.

I doubt EA Sports scraps their tech upon the jump to next-gen either, at least not initially, given that much of their baseline tech is shared amongst their different games.