Madden and the future of sports gaming

A step in a direction, maybe

Gaming and sports don't sound like they should mix. In fact, they literally sound like water and oil slipping off each other and never crossing into the same gravitational pull as one another. And then I remember the existence of Esports and my analogy starts to unravel, but I'm going to put that segment of gaming to the side for a bit. (No offence to E-athletes and all the dedication they put into their craft, but I just don't know enough about them to give them a fair shake in this discussion right now.) There seems to be a actualisation of that feeling, that gaming and sports don't mix, in that most every single major sports themed video game is a godawful grift attempt made by soulless businessmen puppeteering a catatonic development team.  

Now first I need to belabour the point that I'm talking about 'major' sports video games; as there are plenty of smaller efforts by actual talented creators that are fun and silly to try out. Heck, I would never dream of besmirching the good name of the Blood Bowl series by including it in the same breath as one of EA's sports franchises, that's about the line in the sand I want to draw as my distinction. When you get to the actual 'simulation games', the licences for which are all jealously guarded by the industry elite, you find yourself in a whirlpool of mediocrity spinning downwards and put with enough flurry and activity that, should you not be paying attention, one might think there's some sort of forward progression in these franchises. Let's collectively dispel that shoddy illusion right now, shall we? There is none, there never will be progression, now whilst the sports game public remain complacent to being fed actual faeces.

But how can I say that? Haven't I see the shiny graphics? The updated models? The extensive in-depth videos of the new Madden's touch-sense, or play sense, or whatever vague marketing gimmick they want to try and wave in your face as a new feature. Like writing a single sentence and parading it around like you've made serious head-way; only doing that for years on a multimillion dollar franchise. These are just spinning wheels. Have you noticed how every year the big standout feature is always something to do with AI or controls? Something esoteric where the team can simply say that the AI is 'better' or the controls are 'tighter' and as long as they feel even the slightest bit different to the last game you have to concede that something was done behind the scenes. But is anything actually being done? Does Madden have an actual fully employed development staff?

Year after year we see evidence to the contrary; and this recent Madden release has been no different. With screenshots of posters for events that happened in the real world more than two years ago, the exact same rotation of selectable heads in the character creator that has been around for more than half a decade now, tons of visually identical assets as have been used for the past 8 or so years during the last generation of consoles; and so many logic bugs it's incredible to think this is a game that has been slightly touched up and tweaked by the staff for all of their professional lives in some cases. In fact, this year's Madden has been so bad that you've got the actual players tweeting about their feelings on the bugginess; and those are the guys that get paid to promote that crap!

So, surprised Pikachu face abounds; this year's Madden is a mess. Although that pill is an especially foul one given that this year's entry was dedicated to the founder of the franchise himself, John Madden, after he passed away. Which actually makes this the second sports game in recent memory to try and take advantage of the death of a celebrity in order to sell their sub-par product more. Seriously, how do people actually defend this with a straight face? Surely there has to come a point where you look around and realise that you are being screwed over; the company is treating you as their Guinea pigs to see what they can get away pulling off on the rest of the industry, and buying the next game without thinking is only ensuring the status quo will remain.

The only thing that surprises me is that Madden had no NFTs- and that... well that's actually something interesting, wouldn't you say? I do not idly claim that Sports games are the testing grounds for what games companies want to pull on the rest of their fans, we've seen that play out before us with season passes, lootboxes and online-only DRM. So isn't it fascinating that amidst all Madden got wrong; they didn't include any NFT functionality at all? Even after saying that the future of Fifa and Madden was in NFTs just about a year before the new Madden's release? What could have possibly happened in the interim to sour such a staunch and headstrong impression- oh right, the worldwide crypto market fell off by actual orders of magnitude...

So if we use the sports gaming industry and it's lack of integrity as a dowsing rod to judge how the waters of the industry are flowing (Is that how dowsing rods work? I've seriously got no clue.) we can ascertain that the NFT future has fallen off dramatically, and that this pull-out happened so abruptly that EA and it's like couldn't implement a replacement scheme; because currently this year's Madden doesn't look to do anything worse than it's predecessor aside from be buggy. And less there's some bubbling scheme from game's developers to make their games intentionally unplayable for... some reason... I supposed we'll just have to take this year as a win of convivence. The needle isn't getting pushed into our face once again. Or, we just won't see the next scheme coming because EA will use it's main industry as test-tube-animals in a dry trial run...

To call the future of Sports gaming a future at is to bury the lead. Many will point out that Sport Games are still going through the agonising process of slowly reading a bunch of the features they had before the great reset of the generation before last. Whereas what I want to tell you is much the opposite; they're adding a feature here and quietly phasing one out there so that they can go around in circles in this neverending game of incremental updates forever more. If any company were so inclined, and they are obviously currently not, they could create a single 'Warzone' style football game that is updates entirely within the provided software and players would enjoy the exact same level of innovation between console generations. If things are moving that slowly, you might want to stay confronting why exactly it is you need the newest sports game at all. Simple, you don't. But if you've read this far then I'm just preaching to the choir.