Madden NFL
Madden NFL is an American football sports video game series developed by EA Orlando for EA Sports. The franchise, named after Pro Football Hall of Fame coach and commentator John Madden, had sold over 150 million copies as of 2021. From 2004 until 2022, it was the only officially licensed National Football League video game series, and has influenced many players and coaches of the physical sport. Among the series' features are detailed playbooks and player statistics and voice commentary in the style of a real NFL television broadcast. the franchise had generated over $4 billion in sales, making it one of the most profitable video game franchises on the market.
Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins conceived the series and approached Madden in 1984 for his endorsement and expertise. Because of Madden's insistence that the game be as realistic as possible, the first version of John Madden Football did not appear until 1988. EA has released annual versions since 1990 with the number used in each release generally representing the year after the game's release date; for example, Madden NFL 2005 was released in 2004, ahead of the 2004 NFL season.
History
1980s – Creation
created a clone of the Strat-O-Matic paper and dice-based football simulation game as a teenager. The game was unsuccessful due to its complexity, and he hoped to one day delegate its rules to a computer. At Harvard College, where Hawkins played football for the Crimson, he wrote a football simulation for the PDP-11 minicomputer which, he later said, predicted that the Miami Dolphins would defeat the Minnesota Vikings 23–6 in the 1974 Super Bowl. After founding Electronic Arts in 1982—"The real reason that I founded was because I wanted to make computerized versions of games like Strat-O-Matic", Hawkins later said—the company began designing a microcomputer football game. Hawkins first approached his favorite player Joe Montana to endorse the proposed game but the quarterback already had an endorsement deal with Atari, Inc., and his second choice, Cal coach Joe Kapp, demanded up-front royalties far in excess of what Hawkins was willing to pay.In 1984, Hawkins approached former NFL coach and then-announcer John Madden. Hawkins and game producer Joe Ybarra arranged a follow-up meeting with Madden during an Amtrak train trip over two days because of Madden's fear of flying. The EA executives promised that the proposed game would be a sophisticated football simulation and they asked the retired Oakland Raiders coach for his endorsement and expertise. Madden knew nothing about computers beyond his telestrator but agreed; he had taught a class at the University of California, Berkeley, called "Football for Fans", and envisioned the program as a tool for teaching and testing plays. Hawkins and Ybarra during the train trip learned football plays and strategies from Madden from sunrise to midnight.
Early plans envisioned six or seven players per team because of technical limitations but Madden insisted on having 11 players, stating "I'm not putting my name on it if it's not real". Ybarra, who had played chess, not football, in high school, became an expert on the subject through his work, but found that 11 players overwhelmed contemporary home computers. Most projects that are as delayed as Madden are canceled; Ybarra and developer Robin Antonick needed three years, more than twice the length of the average development process. The project became known within the company as "Trip's Folly", and Madden—who had received $100,000 advance against royalties that EA's outside auditors advised to write-off because it would never be recouped—believed at times that EA had given up.
The company hired Bethesda Softworks to finish the game, but this only got them partway to their goal. While EA used many of its designs, including contributions to their physics engine, within a year Bethesda stopped working on Madden and sued EA over EA's failure to publish new versions of Bethesda's Gridiron! football game. This added to the delay. After a final development push, John Madden Football debuted in 1988 for the Apple II computers. Hawkins and an exhausted Ybarra could move on to other projects.
Contracted to provide plays, Madden gave EA the 1980 Raiders playbook, and EA hired San Francisco Examiner writer Frank Cooney, who had designed his own figurine football game with numerical skill ratings. Those skill ratings, also utilized in a spreadsheet based game called Grid Grade, were a precursor to player ratings in Madden Football. Although the company could not yet legally use NFL teams' or players' names, Cooney obtained real plays from NFL teams. The back of the box called the game "The First Real Football Simulation" and quoted Madden: "Hey, if there aren't 11 players, it isn't real football." Documentation included diagrams of dozens of offensive and defensive plays with Madden's commentary on coaching strategies and philosophy. In addition to submitting plays, Cooney worked with programmers and producers to create numerical ratings for every player so they would perform appropriately in the game, especially in man-to-man situations. In the beginning there were eight to 12 traits that were graded for each player. That number would grow to more than 200 as the game became more sophisticated. The game sold moderately well but given the sophisticated playbook its interface was complex, and Madden's insistence on 11 players caused the game to run slowly.
During this period, Madden turned down the opportunity to buy an "unlimited" number of options for EA stock in its initial public offering, a decision he later called "the dumbest thing I ever did in my life".
1990s
In early 1990, EA hired Park Place Productions to develop Madden for the Sega Genesis video game console. Park Place had developed ABC Monday Night Football with "arcade-style, action-heavy" game play, and its Madden also emphasized hyperreality compared to the computer version's focus on exact simulation. Impressed with Park Place's work, EA chose it for the Genesis Madden instead of completing an in-house version by Antonick.EA reverse engineered the console to sell the game without paying the standard $8 to $10 license fee per cartridge to Sega, then proposed a compromise of $2 per cartridge and a $2 million cap on the fee. The console maker agreed, afraid that EA would sell its reverse-engineered knowledge to other companies; the agreement saved EA $35 million over the next three years. As its own Joe Montana-endorsed football game would miss the 1990 Christmas shopping season, Sega asked EA to let it sell Madden with the Montana name. EA refused, but offered an inferior alternative that lacked Madden's 3D graphics and most of its 113 plays. Joe Montana Football sold well despite shipping after Christmas 1990, and it remained popular after BlueSky Software took over development. John Madden Football for the Genesis, however, became both the first hugely successful Madden game—selling 400,000 copies when the company expected 75,000—and the first killer app for EA and Sega, helping the console gain market share against the Super NES. From 1992 to 1994, Mega placed the game at #1 in their monthly Top 100 Mega Drive Games of All Time.
In 1990, EA producer Richard Hilleman brought in veteran sports game designer Scott Orr, who had founded the mid-1980s Commodore 64 game publisher GameStar and led the design of their best-selling sports games. The team of Orr and Hilleman designed and led the development of what is today still recognizable as the modern Madden. Early versions of Madden were created by external development studios such as Bethesda, Visual Concepts, and Stormfront Studios. John Madden Football '92 also featured the ambulance which would run over any players in its path.
After Visual Concepts failed to deliver Madden NFL '96 for the new PlayStation in 1995, EA hired Tiburon Entertainment for Madden NFL '97 and later acquired the company, centralizing development in-house. It planned to release John Madden Football as its first sports-based arcade game, but the game was cancelled due to unenthusiastic reactions from play testers. EA's refusal to release Madden and other sports titles for the Dreamcast in 1999 contributed to the console's lack of success and Sega's exit from the hardware market.
By 1996, Madden was the best-selling sports video game franchise, with more than eight million units sold up until then.
Franchise Mode
In 1998, Electronic Arts added "Franchise Mode" to Madden Football, giving players the ability to play multiple seasons, make off-season draft picks, and trade players.Within Franchise Mode, players take on the role of general manager and manage all personnel matters, including contracts, free agency, draft picks, and hiring and firing coaches. The player also acts as a head coach-like character, choosing which players to play, making substitutions, running practices, practicing gameplans, etc.
Players may play with any of the NFL's 32 franchises; they can choose whether or not to have trade deadlines and salary caps and if they want to start their franchise with a 49-round fantasy draft of all active NFL players. Players can also upload created teams for use in the game.
Once in game, players run training camp, play in preseason games and compete in a regular 16-game NFL season, including playoffs and the Super Bowl. The player has the option to play any game in the simulation, including those involving other teams if they so desire, or may simulate through the games as they choose. Most versions of Madden give a player 30 years with their franchise, sometimes with an opportunity to apply for the Hall of Fame at the end of the simulation.
Throughout the history of Franchise Mode, there have been many issues and glitches including data corruption, gameplay bugs, and developer mistakes. Franchise Mode is one of Madden's most consistently criticized game modes each year.