Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

[cdub71323]

Quote:

My guess is Ian had ideas to make the game great but kept hitting the wall the suits put up.

HAHAHA, that's funny. Maybe he was going to next include the little kids who come out and pick up the tee on kickoffs or more fan cutscenes. Ideas to make the game great? Have yet to see that from him or any of the producers of this game

Quote:

Could it be that those games just have more funds for their developers to work with?

Or they just don't have good developers. Even NCAA is showing good signs of improvement so far, so it's obviously not the funds. While Ian is a nice guy with the community, he doesn't provide much development wise.

I'm glad he's leaving. Maybe they will get someone in there who actually cares about the game of football instead of all the other small off the field nuances.

If the people they bring in focus on the game inside the big white lines, I will be more than happy. Ian focused on things that I could careless about (i.e. the surprise onside kick this year) instead of focusing on the core gameplay.

I'm not trying to flame, but there is a reason a guy like Mike Wang is so regarded in the basketball video game genre and why EA's title went flat. The guy knows how to make a great basketball game. I've yet to see that from the Madden side

[JohnDoe8865]

Look for Josh Looman to be promoted to new Creative Lead. Just a hunch...

[b1rdman973]

I don't get it. This is a good thing. Madden blows and has blown since 2005. Madden 04 was the last good football game they made, everything since has been ****ty. And this guy was one of the reasons why the games are so bad. It's good he left, maybe they'll get somebody like the guys that make FIFA or NHL to take over Madden and actually make it a quality game. Madden's only around still because they're the only football game. If 2k was still in the game, things would be quite different. People would realize how terrible Madden is and how much it does not represent football. But people have been forced into accepting Madden because there's no other option.

[JohnDoe8865]

Quote: Originally Posted by b1rdman973

I don't get it. This is a good thing. Madden blows and has blown since 2005. Madden 04 was the last good football game they made, everything since has been ****ty. And this guy was one of the reasons why the games are so bad. It's good he left, maybe they'll get somebody like the guys that make FIFA or NHL to take over Madden and actually make it a quality game. Madden's only around still because they're the only football game. If 2k was still in the game, things would be quite different. People would realize how terrible Madden is and how much it does not represent football. But people have been forced into accepting Madden because there's no other option.

Yeah, because that made NBA ELITE 11 a great ga... wait ...

[cdub71323]

Quote: Originally Posted by b1rdman973

I don't get it. This is a good thing. Madden blows and has blown since 2005. Madden 04 was the last good football game they made, everything since has been ****ty. And this guy was one of the reasons why the games are so bad. It's good he left, maybe they'll get somebody like the guys that make FIFA or NHL to take over Madden and actually make it a quality game. Madden's only around still because they're the only football game. If 2k was still in the game, things would be quite different. People would realize how terrible Madden is and how much it does not represent football. But people have been forced into accepting Madden because there's no other option.

Glad someone else feels the same way, just see my post on the page before this. Ian was great with the community, so of course people aren't gonna like that he's gone. But, he never contributed that much to the actual game

[cdub71323]

Quote: Originally Posted by JohnDoe8865

Yeah, because that made NBA ELITE 11 a great ga... wait ...

Like I said in the poll thread:
Looman is good, but we need some new blood in here. Hell, make this an opportunity to reel in some of the guys from the Backbreaker game and try to get their tackling system into this game. Or go after some of the guys from the NFL/All Pro 2K games,

I know the Backbreaker tackling type implementation would take more than a year, but just a start of it would be better than what we've seen since the start of this franchise on the newest systems.

[b1rdman973]

That's exactly what I was getting at. Who cares if he was great at interacting with the community, him and the other guys in charge never did anything to make the game better. It was always adding bull**** like extra crowd animations, or making the helmets shinier, or a new "feature" like locomotion. How is running a feature? And even that was stupid, I mean I've never seen a person run full speed sideways.

This will either allow new people to maybe create a new engine or fix the current one, or Madden 12 will just be like ELITE 11 and not come out lol.

[FreAk47]

I don't really think Ian is totally to blame for anything about Madden, I'm sure there is stuff behind the scenes that may have kept certain ideas from being followed up on (budget, time frame, etc...), but I think this is still a good thing.

If the sales are slumping, the development team is falling apart, I can't think of a better reason for EA to finally really go after a good team and pump some money back into the franchise to get it back to the glory days. Anything to break the year in year out cycle of Madden being PAINFULLY stale.