Only NFL Game This Year Gets Lukewarm Response

aendeuryu writes "The first reviews are in for Madden '06, and the reception is underwhelming -- it's scoring an average rating of 79% on gamerankings.com (at the time of this submission). The reviewers on Gamespot (7.8) and 1up.com (9.0) have different takes on the game, but the readership of both sites doesn't (7.4 and 7.8 respectively). Gamespot's criticisms put the game in a less-than-exciting light: the new QB-vision feature adds realism but takes away from basic fun, and (perhaps most damning) the graphics rate a 7 out of 10 on what was supposed to be a next-generation title. Normally, a mediocre game release isn't a big deal, except that, because of EA's negotiated exclusivity deal with the NFL, this is the only NFL title you'll get to play this year. So, what are the players to do?"

Madden

[mfh]

I happen to love football, the actual game, not really most of the video games (for a number of reasons). Before we get a slew of comments making fun of Madden's often repetitive commentary, I wanted to add my 2 cents. NFL football is a game that does not change every year... the rules are pretty much the same from one year to the next, and the real life games themselves were far more interesting in the seventies and mid-eighties than they are today, barring of course some of the big plays (and big win streaks) you see from time to time. New players and annual player turnover only makes the competition slightly more interesting, but the actual systemic variance between each year is minimal.

Systemic differences and improvements are what drive the typical gamer's series purchases. Video games, for the most part, try to deliver a REVOLUTION on each upgrade. About the only revolution you could get with a series like Madden is having the guy come up with something original to say (hasn't happened yet), improving the UI, and making the players look more realistic. But there is a time when this effort stalls, because the game of football itself doesn't change enough to keep fans as interested in purchasing an upgrade to a game that they already own.

Any football fan here would agree that there is very little difference between each new Madden release, except for possibly the player names, stats and some minor UI changes, and Madden saying something slightly different from time to time. But most of his old bricks stay in the game.

Someone could easily reskin and redevelop the game using Madden's engine to make it far more interesting. Like how about a game of medieval football where you have to slit the guy's tendons with your sock-knife, like they used to do back in the day? Seriously... there are a lot of different avenues game developers could be taking to add some spice to these types of games.

If you break it down and see Madden 04 and Madden 05 sitting in either the week rental or the 2 night rental, you'll pick 04 so you can have it a few more days... or at least I would.

My point is that they have to really do something different if they want to improve their ratings and this has to be one of the hardest challenges facing any game designer in the world right now. How do you take a regular sport and make a game out of it that will release a new title each year, without boring the hell out of your fans? It's hard.

Monopoly and Inovation

[ilyaaohell]

I'm sure there'll be a lot of comments here about the whole monopoly not causing innovation thing, except for one thing. EA is currently in the same position as Microsoft is regarding their Office suite. They may be a monopoly, but if they don't offer significant upgrades on a regular basis (once a year for EA, maybe some extra time for Microsoft), nobody will buy their product.

Nobody will buy these games just to upgrade the rosters now, since you can download this information online. If EA wants to keep selling titles (monopoly or no monopoly, they still cost millions to produce each year) they better offer something good with each new upgrade.

Hot from the press!

[Xoknit]

This is just in.. a game got a bad user review. What will happen next? Will hollywood produce mediocre movies? Will someone write a book that is only mildly entertaining? The world is coming to an end!!!

I'm actually pretty happy about the poor reviews

[angst7]

Maybe this will mean less people buy the game. I was thrilled with ESPN NFL2k5 last year. It was arguably as much fun as Madden '05, and only cost $20. When I heard about the EA exclusivity with the NFL I decided not to buy another Madden title until there was competition again. This flop serves two purposes. It will hopefully diminish the number of people who buy the title, ultimately leading to a lower revenue to both EA and the NFL, and secondly it shows that a lack of competition leads to a lack in quality.

That said, EA has been turning out some great titles lately. Burnout 3 for Xbox, and Battlefield 2 for the PC are just great.

Re:Madden

[Seumas]

I personally find pro sports to be completely retarded. I say this as a former jock.

However, I find sitting on a couch playing a videogame about sports and bitching about how it isn't very "realistic" is more retarded.

The last Madden I played was probably 2002. It just seemed like yet another lame football game to me, though.

Cyberball...

[eunos94]

If the NFL titles suck, then support other titles that don't need NFL endorsement. Cyberball [klov.com] rocked in the day. No NFL needed. Support great games, don't support big name trademarks and monopolistic organizations.

So, what are the players to do?

[frovingslosh]

"... this is the only NFL title you'll get to play this year. "So, what are the players to do?"

Oh My God! The tragedy! How awful to only be able to play other football titles that don't have the sacred NFL trademark, but may be much better games. Such games might even cost less besause a few bucks didn't have to flow to the NFL, or play better because dollars that would have gone to the NFL can be spent on coders or testing, how can players accept that??? How horriable it would be to play completely different games and have to stretch one's mind beyond the limits of NFL football! And lets not even think of actually putting the console down and actually going outside and throwing around a football or playing other sports. What in the world are players to do when they have been deprived of the sacred NFL logo by the evil forces of EA????

Doing anything except just playing the official NFL labeled game is completely unthinkable. Players must accept what they are given. It will be good.

What *are* players to do?

[slavemowgli]

What are players to do, you ask? Isn't it obvious? If someone comes to the conclusion that the game isn't worth the purchase, be it based on reviews, word of mouth, test-playing it or whatever, then simply don't buy it. There's lots of other games that you can choose from - or you could even go outside for a change instead of just playing computer games all the time.

If you're an absolute die-hard fan that wants a great new NFL game every year (and who thinks that this isn't it), then write to them and tell them what you think about their "exclusive license" deal. Send a snail mail letter, too - these are taken far more seriously than angry emails, who're probably just deleted without anyone really reading them.

That's what I would do - if I cared about football or football games.

Re:might be big next year

[damiangerous]

Why can you buy a 2006 car right now? Why does the 2006 fiscal year start in October 2005? Because years/seasons/whatever that extend across calendar years need to be called something and it's easier to pick (arbitrarily or not) one of the two years and get everyone used to it. The football season runs from Sep 2005 to Jan 2006. Since the Superbowl is in 2006 and the winner will be referred to as the "2006 Champions" it makes sense to refer to the season as the 2006 season. You would logically refer to the game modeling the 2006 season as the "Madden 2006". Not doing so would be misleading.

Arcade Football Game

[richman555]

I think it would be cool to avoid this whole mess and create a better arcade style football game. A game like this could take some cues from Sega Soccer Slam as an example. Or someone could develop a great football game for the Nintendo DS. Drawing up you own plays would be fun to do with a stylus. I think the possibilities are out there, its just no developers want to take the risk.

A non-NFL endorsed game

[NNland]

As was suggested by some friends last night during a random gaming discussion: Sega should put out a good "Mutant League Football" game.

Make it as good or better than Madden (which doesn't look to be a challenge according to the reviews), and they can print their own money.

Re:Madden

[kfg]

Serious footbacll fans who dig their video games upgrade each year primarily because of the one item you didn't list - the evolving team roster.

I understand that this is, in fact, the driving force behind sports game sales. I can't say I've ever really understood it.

I play sports games for the game, so when I find one I like I'm perfectly happy sticking with that edition until a truely superior simulation comes along.

. . .the developers always seem coy enough to always add some new, 'This sucks, can't wait til next year's release' "feature."

And I'm alergic to being treated like a hamster who is expected to keep dropping fifty dollar bills into the slot just to be allowed to run on a wheel that goes nowhere.

KFG

Inflated

[Psionicist]

79% is considered bad? Game reviews have always been inflated, why not do anything about it? 79% is practically the same as 8/10 or 4/5, and that's considered really good in, say, book or movie reviews. Look at IMDB, the best movie there, The Godfather, has a score of 9/10.

Really, a score of 40-60% should be an avarage game, but it appears the game reviewers give this score to games that suck completely.

Oh well.

I'm shocked!

[Cyberllama]

The quality of a product dropped after it became a monopoly? Surely this must be some sort of oversight . . .

Re:Which "other football titles" are those?

[frovingslosh]

It's not a real problem! Nothing stops a game company from coming out with titles football or pigskin or any other generic football term in the title. There is only a restriction on using property like NFL (and, I expect actual NFL team names and likenesses). Who cares? This doesn't affect game play, it only makes the games more expensive as a cut has to go to the NFL. If the complaint is that there are no good football games, then that should have been what was stated, but it wasn't, the complaint is that the only game with the NFL logo all over it isn't very good. Boo Hoo!

And if there are no good football titles than that only says that it's not a market that others want to try to tap. Maybe it's something that programming geeks just don't relate to. Maybe it just been done to death and cranking out a new group of titles every single year really isn't needed. I hardly care.

Quite frankly I think that the NFL should only be allowed to sell rights to one game company. Otherwise it would be like being told that Budwiser was the Official Beer of the NFL, then the next day after you had stocked up on BUD being told that Coors was the Official Beer of the NFL and, after resolving that conflict, you learn that Molson is the Offical Beer of the NFL. Life is too hard already without conflicts like that!

Meanwhile lemmings flock to buy

[gorbachev]

http://investor.ea.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=88189&p=iro l-newsArticle&ID=744892&highlight= [ea.com]

Madden 2006 sells a record breaking 1.7M copies in its first week.

So it doesn't seem to matter to the lemmings that the game has very little to offer in terms of innovation.

$49.99 for a new roster either means people have more than enough disposable income to waste, the reviews are wrong or mass consumtion is good. Or something else.

Re:Hot from the press!

[TheRaven64]

I find it somewhat depressing that a rating of 79% is considered poor. There are 100 percentage points (obviously), and rating all games between 70 and 100 seems something of a waste of numbers. Last time I bought a game magazine (about 10 years ago) one of the games was given 27% - a score which really shows you that it's not worth buying (Lemmings 3D, as I recall).

Re:So, what are the players to do?

[kreyg]

While perhaps a reasonable suggestion, sales figures don't lie: people prefer to play make-believe with real players than just "play a game."

Is this a trick question?

[Shamashmuddamiq]

this is the only NFL title you'll get to play this year. So, what are the players to do?

Uh... why can't they play Madden '05 or Madden '04 or even ... I don't know... Madden '03?

Someone who enjoys video football enough to buy a new version every year probably isn't very difficult to entertain. He'll buy Madden '06 even if it's just a feature-creep of '05.

Re:Madden

[BackInIraq]

I agree. I don't really have much desire to spend $40/$50 on a game that really only updates the stats that it draws upon. However, I may be interested in buying a game that had updates that cost say around $10 per year. That way, I cut down on my expenses, get to play a game that has up to date stats and not have to re-learn a new game.

Here is an idea that might make me interested in sports games again. I can see it now...all the team/player information is kept in a consistant database across versions (perhaps even uniform textures, if storage space allows). That data can be downloaded via a service such as Xbox Live (or the publisher's own service), allowing updates of data across versions...so 2005, 2006, 2007, and so on could all draw from the same standardized database. Then players could actually stick with the version they enjoy (which for many is NOT the current one), and just update the rosters.

Granted, this will never happen. They LIKE making you pay 50 dollars every year. At least, EA does. But imagine you are a small/independant publisher...you could put all the development time in just once (maybe twice) over the course of a console generation, and still bring in small yearly update revenues in addition to actual title sales. Every year you could press a new copy with the updated database, to keep the rental market fresh. And if your graphics/controls were good, you might find yourself selling a lot more copies than you'd expect. I think a majority of people want off the EA treadmill.

Of course, the rosters and team data are property of the league, so you'd have to find a way to woo them away from EA (or at least get them to cheat on EA)...and I imagine most leagues are an expensive mistress.

Anyway, I imagine there are a lot of people like me who don't buy sports games anymore. And it isn't really even the price...usually I find I don't like the newest version as much as some of the older versions, but I want updated rosters. Since that simply isn't available to me at any price, I choose to keep my money. Haven't bought/rented a sports game for about two years now.

Re:Learn a real sport

[KingPrad]

Naw, you pretty much confirmed the widely-shared opinion that golf isn't a sport, just another game of skill, ranking around the same spectator excitement as solitaire.

when did

[Turn-X Alphonse]

When did 70% become bad? Surely anything below 50% if bad. Anything above is above average no?

When did a rating system become 70 = bad 80 = okay 90 = good?

Rugby?

[adremeaux]

As for international sports, you missed rugby, which is without a doubt one of the most exciting sports out there. Talk about non-stop action...

And how about Basketball? Not enough action for you? A couple points every 30 seconds seems pretty good to me.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Learn a real sport

[wasted time]

Having participated extensively in both, I can confirm that neither golf nor pool should ever be considered a sport. Although both games require skill to be played at a high level, they are simply social activities which give men something to do while drinking a lot of beer and telling lies. The main difference between the two is that in pool your object is to pick up women and in golf it is to avoid the women you previously picked up. You may notice a few similarities with yet another ball game in which one drinks a lot of beer and tells lies - bowling. Bowling is generally practiced by men and women who are hopelessly trapped in a relationship with each other. The fact that bowlers have the bigger balls is a sad conundrum.

On the other hand, skydiving falls under my personal definition of sport:
Sport - an individual or group competitive activity involving physical exertion and skill, sometimes practiced while wearing a helmet which provides little or no protection from massive trauma if one fucks up.

Having also participated in the sport of skydiving, I can confirm that beer and lies are universal. Hell, skydiving has Beer Rules. http://www.skydiving.org.vt.edu/Beer.htm [vt.edu] Skydiving is certainly more fun than either golf or pool and the sport is full of attractive, fit women, unlike bowling or video games. It's also not uncommon for three female skydivers to approach a male skydiver when looking for someone to fill out a four-way formation called a horny gorilla!

Duh

[timothykaine]

So, what are the players to do?

That's simple. Don't buy the game. All a company that would seek out a monopoly cares about is money. If you arent giving them money, they dont have any money. If they dont have any money, theyll do anything it takes to get money. In this case, make a decent game.

Re:Madden

[leshert]

It would, if the game company made it possible to import a full roster with artwork, and if it didn't take an army of very football-savvy statisticians and artists to come up with a full roster to download.

Even more to the point, that feature just won't happen. That would be asking the game company to expend effort on a feature that would kill their revenue.

Re:79% is a C

[1u3hr]

At my school, and also university, A was 80-100, B 70-79, C 60-69, D 50-59. It's all relative, of course, but pushing the curve up so that almost everyone gets over 90 gets silly and defeats the point of having a percentage scale. Reminiscent of those arcade games where points are awarded in multiples of 1,000 or 10,000 because it's more cool to say you got "one million" rather than "one hundred".

And yet it is selling in record numbers

[twelveinchbrain]

Despite its lukewarm reviews, it appears that EA is selling Madden NFL 06 in record numbers [dailygame.net], selling 1.6 million copies in its first week. If consumers will eagerly buy a warmed-over rehash of last year's game, what incentive does EA have to innovate?

Re:Don't Buy It

[iainl]

Why should the NFL care if EA fail to sell lots of copies? They get their millions of dollars either way.