Madden Sizzle Trailers, Feedback Is Love - franchiseplay's Blog

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Madden Sizzle Trailers, Feedback Is Love

Posted on May 1, 2011 at 02:55 AM.

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Let me start by saying this, I am not one of those instant Madden haters. You know, the folks that generally, hate the Yankees, hated the Cowboys and the Bulls in the 90′s, hate Duke, hate Jimmie Johnson. See the common theme here, they just hate the institutions that are consistent winners. Thats not me, so when evaluating a game that is a perennial front runner like Madden, I don�t start off with my mouth twisted up about it.

That said, while Madden 11 was a decently fun football experience, I completely acknowledge it could�ve been much better. This is evidenced under EA�s own umbrella, by the vastly superior NCAA Football 11.

So as the marketing campaign for NCAA and Madden has been unveiled, I�m paying close attention to how much substance we�re getting as release dates approach. The whole vote for the cover thing was cute, but it activated my spidey sense. It made me wary that this was a promotional strategy to mask the fact that, there weren�t going to be many substantial improvements in either game. Then to compound my concern, the first teasers had you staring through letter created windows, trying to catch a glimpse of something worth talking about.

Well, the schedule of trailers, the released videos shown below, the screen shots and blog entries throughout the net, have done a lot to ease my concern. Here is why, we are in April and there are already some fairly solid glimpses of gameplay, as far as sizzle trailers go. The presentation additions are welcomed, as I am consistently a champion of the impact real life broadcast presentation has on a simulation sports title. The EA event that showed off gameplay and also took critique from those that were present to view, was also impressive. It said to me, that they felt confident enough to show the game at this time, but are still open to critiques.

I like what I see from Madden and NCAA so far. Its just too bad that this exciting build up to this year�s release is a bit muddied by the NFL�s labor issues, oh and a farce of a cover athlete selection process. Here is some feedback for EA, after all, we all know, feedback is love. Next year, continue with the cover athlete vote, put a spin on it, maybe offer regional covers, similar to the way that the College Football preview magazines do (Athlon, etc), also block the same ip addresses from voting more than once. Don�t make this the American Idol of video game voting. Somehow, Mike Vick should feel like Pia Toscano right now. Secondly, please continue the level of dedication and openness when constructing every sports simulation title in the future. I feel like I�m making an informed decision to purchase Madden this year, based on the amount of information available for the game. Lastly, this is an out of left field request. Can the possibility of different announcer teams be explored? For example, for the game of the week, or week�s biggest game, however you describe it. You have your Gus Johnson & Cris Collinsworth, then for the other games, you have an entirely different announce team available for those games. Now I know, if you�re trying to contract all of these guys and girls to do voice over work, that could be expensive, but it doesn�t have to be Ron Pitts, Matt Millen, etc. It could literally be college students, EA employees, others you audition with a good broadcasting voice. You could even hold a contest for that, the amateur status of the voice talent would surely keep the price tag down for this feature. Not to mention the advertising revenue that could be generated from whatever site you have host the become a commentator for the �Madden 13 contest�.

Gamers could allow the CPU took select the broadcast team for every game in your franchise mode based on the importance of the game, or the player manually override and choose the team of guys he likes the best. Online commentators would be randomly selected and offline games would be manually selected. It would a bit of freshness to te overall presentation of the game, it would make gamers less likely to turn the sound down because of repeated sayings.

The audio of a game is huge in data size. So to store all of this would require one or a combination of these things: an extra disc, a large hard drive install (ie Gran Turismo) and DLC. I for one, would spring for any combination of the three, this is what I call, game experience impacting content. Its revolutionary and it would be cool as hell.