Madden NFL has been undeniably stuck in a rut this generation. Since the release of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5, EA’s long-running NFL sim has consistently hovered around 65 on Metacritic. The complaints have been the same:
unpolished, drab presentation, and modes that have failed to keep pace with the competition.
Many fans trace Madden's decline back to Madden 13, which formed the basic template for the current version of the series. Others go back even further. Wherever it started, it's hard to ignore the sense of malaise that has taken root in reviews, social media, and elsewhere. EA has protested in previous years that it's
just a vocal minority, and that the series is actually doing quite well with the average player who isn't extremely online. This year they're embracing it.
"As a game developer, especially on a yearly sports title, it's not as much having thick skin as much as [needing] to have a great filter, because there's a reason that these players are going to say whatever they're going to say about the game, and you've got to figure out why," senior producer Clint Oldenburg tells IGN. "And even if there's a hundred words in there that don't tell you why, there might be one or two that will tell you why, and that's what you got to focus on so that you make sure you're delivering the experience at its core, what those players are asking for."
'A little too animation-based'
Oldenburg and fellow producer Mike Mahar say they've gone through reviews and social media posts "line by line," grouping together bugs and other issues and trying to sort legitimate criticism from the usual noise around annual sports games. What EA Tiburon has come up with in response to all of this criticism is to basically go back to basics. It's not an exciting approach on the face of it, but strip away all of the usual marketing hype words like the
confusingly capitalized "FieldSENSE" and you'll find what seems like a pretty fundamental — and much-needed — rebalancing of the action on the field.
In other words, EA may finally be moving away from what has made Madden "Madden" for so long and toward something that more closely resembles actual football. At its core is a desire to move away from gameplay that's a "little too animation-based" — that sense that you're constantly gaming Madden's mechanics every time you pick a play or make a throw.
"Our players have told us very strongly, their words, not ours, Madden has gotten
a little bit too animation-based, meaning that they feel like they lose control at critical moments and are watching quick-time events, for lack of a better word," Oldenburg says.
In Madden NFL parlance, that means getting away from the so-called money plays and formations that dominate YouTube every season with a system that's "emergent, organic, and natural." Defense has received the bulk of the improvements, with a greater focus on gang tackles, pass coverage, and quarterback containment.
"I think, from a high level, just the changes we did in deep zone and pass rush this year helps combat the problem of money plays, specifically those deep crossing routes that I already talked about. We added zone drift logic that gives our deep zoners the awareness to not continue drifting up the field if they don't have a vertical threat so they can leverage that deep crossing route," Oldenburg says, referring to a pattern that has been devastatingly effective for several years now due to Madden's various defensive AI quirks.
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