The Fall of EA Sports - What Happened?

trip you said when you founded electronic arts your initial vision for the company was for it to create simulation sports games that played as realistically as possible do you think modern-day ea sports lives up to that vision no not really yes ea sports has fallen off in quality 100 there's no doubting it the man games are so bad now it retroactively makes me like nostalgic for the madden games from like five years ago which i didn't enjoy at the time which were still very flawed they have regressed taking certain things out of the game that were in the game before it's all about money it's all about you know selling these dlcs and selling these packs you know i mean you see what happened with nba live they continue to get shelved and that whole market got taken over by 2k you look at madden you know they had so many features back in the day that still aren't in the game you know now this is like 12 year old just grabbing his parents credit card just swiping away and just put it on the console it's one click of a button it's all about money money money all people will look on for ea sports through the xbox one and playstation 4 era is how much of a fall they've had not financially but in goodwill and towards the community and how much worse it could get if they really don't start to turn things around in 1982 trip hawkins an employee of apple at the time started working on creating his own company one that produces and develops computer games for some time tripp had been working on creating an nfl simulation computer game i particularly liked simulations and by that i mean any kind of a game that was trying to recreate something [Music] plausibly from a real world adult situation and i'm using that term kind of generously because of course i found the first generation of current and board games themed around sports they they were pretty inadequate but uh you know some some of them were doing some you know decent jobs of simulating statistical outcomes and like i remember a little baseball game where it had these little uh you know spinners and you'd have a babe root uh circle of paper and you put on the spinner and he would have a big fat pie slice where if it landed there he'd hit a home run and then he'd have another big one for a strikeout and so i would i would notice these little details about how they were designing and making these games and i kind of realized that i could probably do it myself and that really got kicked off later because i became a football fan and a football player and there just simply was not a good simulation game about football and so i decided to make one so as a teenager i was making my first game and it was uh you know you know a game you played with cards and charts and dice and you know look up tables and stuff and it's still a pretty good game i don't i don't think a better tabletop paper uh football simulation game has existed here before since that game because i really understood football and that was just a feeling i had at that time was uh wow you know um i feel like i really understand stuff and i i have a a real interest in trying to do it in a way that's authentic and so that that just sort of propelled my career direction towards trying to make games like that that could run on computers originally called amazing software the company eventually settled with the name electronic arts trip and his employees chose the name because they felt that video games were an art form and the developers not the executives were the artists i i realized what the potential was and started to have a chance to work with computers in college you know of course one of the first things i did in my spare time on the time sharing mini computer was create a super bowl simulator and uh actually did a pretty good job with that uh and i i ran an official simulation before um it was an early 1970s super bowl where uh my game predicted that miami would be i think it was the vikings uh 23-6 and in the real game they beat them 24-7 sorry anyway i just love doing this kind of stuff and of course i realized that it was going to take a while before computers got into home so i started thinking about when that might be and when it might become possible to make it you know make make games like this or games that would later become games like madden football ea's first sports game was one on one dr j versus larry bird a basketball game that was the very first of its kind i knew a lawyer that knew another lawyer that knew the agent for julius irving dr j and this was the first ea sports game and i basically had designed this game to be something practical that we could do in an 8-bit machine and you know you only had to animate two players and that became dr jenny larry very go one-on-one but i i wanted to you know get uh celebrity players and thankfully through the through these connections we were able to reach uh julius's agent and get get him uh interested so we made a deal with him and and then of course once we had that then it was easy to have them introduce us to larry bird's edge you know i'm pretty sure julius's agent knew him and do a similar deal with larry bird and that was really the first time that celebrities had ever been on screen in a video game and of course it was the first time that happened with athletes and it was a success for tripp's simulation football game which would eventually become known as john madden football hawkins originally wanted joe capp to be the face of the game once that game was successful i thought okay now i'm going to plan something more ambitious and really focused on football because that that's the sport i cared about the most uh at that time and and uh i had a brief flirtation with joe capp the former quarterback of the minnesota vikings who at that time he's become the head football coach at the university of california in berkeley and i was in the bay area and i'm thinking you know um i don't know that there's any one football player that i'd really want to build a brand around and have the you know the cover a story of a football simulation game but i sure would like to have a coach help me fill in some of the design details in the game that go beyond my own football knowledge and but i thought that would do the other good things that come from a relationship like that so i approached joe cats and i was looking to just pay him a a consulting fee and then i'd go you know create the brand it would be an ea owned brand and we wouldn't have to pay anybody any royalties but uh even though joe was really interested he then followed up later and said you know i've decided i want my name on the front and i want to get a royalty you know but okay all right if uh if a good coach is gonna need to have that kind of reaction then i might as well go to the top of the food chain uh if i'm gonna have to pay royalties and to have a good coach i'm going to get i want to get john madden he was maddened at that time he was already you know obviously a super bowl winning coach great coach he was already a multiple andy award-winning broadcaster he was also the ace hardware man he was also in all the miller light beer commercials breaking through barriers and saying hey wait a minute so he was super high profile and very good at what he did and very successful and of course you know he had a lot of the uh knowledge and insight that i needed and uh by that time it got to be pretty easy to you know amongst the agents that we knew to figure out okay which agency is representing him and how do we contact them and uh basically i flew off to new york met with uh his agent and we worked at a deal and that led to uh the reasonably uh famous story about uh me with a couple of my production guys flying into denver and getting on a train because at that time he didn't have the madden cruiser yet he was still taking amtrak and then we just spent two days on a train uh cruising up through the rocky mountains and you know across the west to oakland and i just hung around all day for a couple of days just talking football and you're going through an agenda that i had you know asking tons of tons of questions so that's how it'll get started john madden football was a smashing success and became one of the most memorable and popular video game franchises in the world my first ea sports game i think was john madden football on the sega genesis and i remember it kind of vividly because it was back in around 1990 i believe and it was the first time i think i remember seeing a game especially a sports game that felt like it had 3d graphics even though it was really still a 2d game with just pixel art sprites that were on the screen but the way that they made that game was revolutionary at the time because the the field kind of felt like you had a more of a traditional modern camera angle because the field would narrow out as you would move towards the top of the end zone and the players were more like bulky and the way they moved around was a little bit more fluid and i just remember that it just felt like so advanced when it came to the graphics and the the even the ball in the air and the gameplay and it was just something that was was beyond anything i had played before thanks to the success of john madden football ea started growing exponentially with hawkins at the helm the company continued to refer to their developers as artists giving them photo credits in the games sharing lavish profits with them and aiming to represent their devs as rock stars ea delved into other sports games such as the nba series which would eventually be named nba live in 1994. the first ea sports game that i had experience with was when my parents got me lakers versus celtics in the nba playoffs that was back in christmas 1989 i want to say uh when they got that and yeah like my dad and i bonded all sports games so we played a lot of that lakers versus celtics but what stuck out to me playing that game though the most was the fact that you had signature animations in that game like the only other game i had played that had signature animations in that time was playing jordan versus bird ea ventured into nhl games as well which is still a series the company develops titles for today my first ea sports game was actually one of the first ea sports games period nhl hockey for the sega genesis and i absolutely love it making the leap from 8-bit to 16-bit the graphics looked incredible and the fact that when a puck hit a player in the face and he fell was oddly satisfying so when i think back to the first ea sports game i played i think automatically back to nhl 96 i was seven years old and i remember getting it for the sega genesis my dad came home with it i think i got it just around christmas not for christmas but just just around that time and i remember it was the actual first hockey game i remember playing i didn't play nhl 94 at the time because i was too young when it came out nhl96 was brand new and i just remember the thrill i had of something at the time so huge was putting myself in the game again i'm seven years old but i'm creating myself as a national hockey league player so i thought it was the coolest thing ea then became even more ambitious creating the first ever home video game to feature nascar racers with richard petty's talladega which would eventually spawn their successful nascar series the first experience i can really remember with an ea game i want to say was nascar racing 1998 uh the best experience i think i had with that game was they had at the time if you were co-op they kind of had a way they would level out the speed of each racer so even if you had somebody that was much slower than you it would naturally level the cars out and it allowed you to have a really fun racing experience even if you had somebody that wasn't traditionally good at racing games my first ever ea sports game was nascar thunder 2003 i thought that was the most perfect racing game when i was a kid and i still hold it in in high regards to this day nascar thunder 2003 is what really drew me in uh to nascar as a whole i began watching like that about a year later but i still continued to play the game kevin harvick's 29 blue looney tunes car i would always race all the time especially at richmond international raceway that track was so much fun to play in that game and still is to this day i remember winning my first ever race uh in that car and at that track doing the little burnout celebrations and then the victory lane sequences were so cool to watch and then just overall the career mode was cool it was really a very immersive motorsports game alongside these sports games ea continued to make games in many other genres and was exploding as a company in 1990 trip hawkins stepped down as ceo to work on his next project the 3do which was at the time the most powerful game console ever made he was still a member of ea's chair until july of 1994 and ea was partnered with 3do showcasing their latest games such as the first need for speed game on the console eventually however ea would drop its support for the 3do and develop for the playstation and trip hawkins was no longer associated with the company he created ea continued to thrive however although the focus started shifting away from the developers and more towards profit and marketing ea created a new division known as ea sports which was the label all sports games published or developed by ea would have into the 21st century ea sports had earned a reputation for creating high quality sports games most people would argue that the peak of ea sports was in the 6th generation era with the playstation 2 original xbox and nintendo gamecube being the consoles on the market during this generation ea sports released games in the following series fifa fifa street madden nba live nfl street nba street tiger woods pga tour ssx cricket arena football fight night nascar mvp baseball ncaa football ncaa basketball nfl head coach rugby formula one and nhl that's 19 different sports series all made by ea under the ea sports label during one console generation and at that point in time nearly all of those games were unanimously praised by critics and players alike the most commonly thought of franchise from this era is ea sports flagship series madden my first ea sports game was madden03 so i was 10 at the time it was the first console football game i'd ever played i played like backyard football on the computer as a kid but nothing to the extent that madden was i loved it so much when we first got it i would play with my dad i think the first game we ever played was a seven to seven tie because neither of us knew how to play the game uh and i think we just lucked into two touchdowns and then couldn't score in overtime but i started playing it all the time especially once i got into franchise mode it was such a deep mode at the time and it became a game that i begged my parents to buy for me every year pretty much on release date i think my favorite thing to do in the game was uh the mini camp mode i think that was in o3 but doing the rushing drills where it was just you and like two defenders and maybe you had like a fullback i could do those all day forever and the fact that such a simple feature hasn't been implemented into a recent madden game is just inexcusable that was so fun and simple and it made franchise so much better my first ea sports game it had to be like madden 2004. i remember my dad buying the gamecube what was that like 2003 obviously because you know madden 2004 and that was like one of the first games we got for it and obviously you had to go with michael vick because he was on the cover but back then i didn't really know much about any players at all i was a young tot i was like seven at the time so a young sputting drewski young budding drewski whatever the right term is but it was really fun i think i remember actually beating my dad i don't know if he was just being polite because i was seven years old but i mean if i was in his position i'd probably dominate me and go up by like 40 points yeah he's just being nice though it was fun running around with michael vick scoring some touchdowns good times the old days back before i even cared what a franchise was or whatever it was the simple things was like dad you want to play this football game let's do it and then we did and then i probably broke a controller or a 10 because i was a grumpy little seven-year-old no that was when i was playing with my brothers not my dad usually good times with my dad my first experience with ea sports games was probably somewhere around mad 98 to madden 2000. i used to rent them from blockbuster back in the day so that's kind of showing my age a little bit but the first ea sports game i ever owned was mad in 2002 i got it for christmas and that's when i fell in love with the series and i haven't missed a year since my favorite ea sports game has to be madden i've built my entire channel pretty much on the back of the madden nfl franchise series and i don't know if i could pick out a specific game madden 007 and madden 08 are probably right near the top they're the pinnacle of what madden and franchise should be in my opinion and i don't want to pick 07 because of nostalgia but i mean that was probably the most fun i've ever had playing madden and madden no 8 is uh definitely near there if not uh even above that i think mad noid had some more features and whatnot but maybe just for nostalgia's sake i would say that magno 7 is right there at the top one of ea's greatest games ever created was mvp baseball 2005 which happened to be ea's last licensed mlb game that is to this day one of the greatest sports games ever made one of the greatest baseball games ever made of course it's just a fantastic baseball game they have a feature in there that i've been trying to get mlb to show to put in their game uh which is to create a ballpark fantastic classic feature so much other things their home run derby and that was just great it was just just a great game all-around great game even in recent years ea has developed some fantastic games most people consider ncaa 14 to be one of the last great ea sports games obviously ncaa 14 is my favorite ea produced game ever not just because of the amount of teams and customization we did have available during the team builder era i guess but because the dynasty mode was very well thought out and you could tell at the time that they made that game that the aspects of dynasty mode were just as important as the ultimate team mode that was added in that game not to mention road to glory is just such a fun game mode sometimes i'll even play it in my own time just for fun you get to go to high school get to choose between colleges work your way up the ranks and also have side goals like becoming a team legend hometown hero which unlocks more routes for you to take when you're there so my favorite sports games from ea sports ah man it's tough it's tough it's real tough but i would have to pick the ncaa football series i think that that's a slam dunk it's a layup i can't just pick a specific game i have to pick the entire series because it was so good it was so good from team builder the addition of team builder to road to glory uh the the innovation that they were trying to implement with the game from year after year uh the pageantry that they captured college game day with corso herb street brad nestler like it just felt like saturday man it just felt like saturday when they had that presentation fifa 15 is often considered the final great game created by ea sports my first ea sports game was fifa 99 i remember playing fifa 98 around a friend's house and it was just so much more polished and impressive than any other sports game i'd ever played before so i asked my parents for fifa for christmas they bought me fifa 99 and i'm pretty sure i've owned every single fifa since there are a couple of games to instantly spring to mind but for me my favorite would probably have to be fifa 15. the gameplay was incredibly fast paced and frantic but it was just enjoyable i played pro clubs loads online with friends i played career mode a lot ultimate team a lot and i just never got tired of playing it even then when fifa 15 came out ea was deep into their fall in quality [Music] it is highly debatable when ea first started to fall off in quality what most people seem to agree on however is that they did fall off and ea is no longer the same company it once was the same company that used to refer to their own developers as rock stars changed now developers had no creative control the invention of ultimate team led to a new source of revenue and a new way to increase profits online play became a major focus and the competitive scene along with new ways to play these games led to nearly every ea sports franchise either getting cancelled or neglected a company once known for having everything in the game became known more for what was removed or no longer in the game many storied franchises were cancelled or left to die i think ea sports has completely fallen off in terms of quality over the years and it all started back when the xbox 360 generation consoles came out because they at that point it's almost like they turned off the the need to try to try to advance their product you know we all know what happened with the 2k series and how they fell off and got kind of banned from making any nfl games they lost that license and and we all know the history there but ever since that happened it seems like ea sports and the madden franchise just totally just just died in terms of their their uh their quality and their dedication to make a more advanced game and that goes across the entire spectrum i mean we used to have fight night we used to have mb mvp baseball um there were a lot of different types of games we had nfl blitz nba street a lot of those games just died on the vine for some reason and i think that ea being a company and obviously being a profit profit earning company they they were all about the dollars and when it comes to a business it doesn't always serve the customers the best especially when you've monopolized certain aspects of the industry and i think ever since we went to that that that generation of consoles we we just witnessed a total downturn when it came to the quality of the game and i don't think they've ever been able to catch up and i don't i don't think they really want to i think that they have re-prioritized their their focus on monetizing the games as much as possible and trying to get people to pay them as much as possible at any rate with any kind of gimmick and they've really lost the the core aspect of of what i thought was a quality game which is really on the field gameplay and uh it's a real shame that that's that that's where we are tripp created ea sports because he was passionate about sports he wanted to create realistic simulations that were fun to play and accessible to everyone he was passionate about the games he created and i find it incredibly unlikely that ea's current higher ups even care about sports at all given the recent products fans have been dealt with in 2005 ea signed an exclusive rights agreement with the nfl removing all competition which allowed madden to stagnate when i asked tripp hawkins if modern day ea has lived up to his initial vision this is what he had to say no not really you know i know that i know they call the category simulation and of course you know there's a distinction now between the nfl exclusive the ea has on the simulation category and how that is differentiated from the rights that the nfl just gave take to for something that's more of an arcade game and i think if you look at a great arcade sports game like nba jam that's really fantastical right and the players can do magical things and it's a lot of fun because it's really over the top and i suppose you know take two can go in that direction and do some of that but madden does that too the madden games are so bad now it retroactively makes me like nostalgic for the madden games from like five years ago which i didn't enjoy at the time which were still very flawed ea sports has absolutely fallen in terms of quality over the years i haven't bought madden 20 yet i don't plan on it and i'm not gonna buy madden 21 either for the past few years madden with all its flaws just makes me so angry to play like angrier than i should be getting while playing a video game that for my own mental health i had to stop playing it like i would go into fits of rage you play these like 40 minute games where you're just putting up with like crap after crap but you're still in a position at the end of the game to pull one out and then like your quarterback gets sucked into a strip sack or throws an interception because he threw it 12 yards away from the receiver playing in franchise on all madden there are so many games where you just feel like the game is trying to get you to lose they're going to force a loss on you no matter what you do so finally i committed to a boycott of the game i'd wanted to do that for a couple years but i you know like everyone else who plays a game i just want to play a football game and there's no other option so i would keep buying it but madden 20 was a year i just said no until they can prove to us that they're actually going to put any effort into making a good game at the very least expanding franchise into a playable game mode i have no reason to buy the game in cases where e8 didn't buy out their competition they failed to match their competitor as seen with nba live if they had games that weren't massively profitable they would cancel them as we've seen with fight night for example it's almost crazy how drastically the company has changed within the past two decades where there were once 19 ea sports franchises there are now four the potential for sports games is next level in my opinion nowadays with like all the micro transactions and the ultimate teams it's all shifted to what's going to get us the most money what's going to get us simple like mind-numbingly boring surface level content let's just try to throw for 10 passing touchdowns in the next hour and we'll give you this virtual card or you can speed it up and not waste your time by giving us your dollars it's all a scheme man personally i think micro transactions are a cancer the gaming industry hopefully they'll be illegal within like the next five to ten years because it's legitimately preying on children to like get their parents credit cards and to spend ungodly amounts of money i asked tripp how he feels when he sees ea taking punches whether it's from winning the worst company in the world award or just the constant backlash the company gets as the founder of the company how does that make him feel yeah you know i'm sad to see it you know i frankly as i kind of transitioned away from the company i could see ways in which uh the leadership and the culture began to shift away from the way i would have done things and you know it's a little frustrating to see it's like it's like having your child grow up to be a teenager and you know start going off and individuating and doing their own thing so you know that that's been a process or a journey for me to kind of get used to that because uh ea is uh kind of like my first child and it's fully grown it's a it's a full of adult and it's done really well overall so i've got the pride of a parent about it and then some of the frustration and disappointment that you know maybe it could have done some some things differently but this is just the way human life is has ea sports fallen off in terms of quality over the years i would have to say yes i think this goes for most sports games but ea sports definitely is on the worst end of this i mean you see what happened with nba live they continue to get shelved and that whole market got taken over by 2k you look at madden you know they had so many features back in the day that still aren't in the game you know now and it's just kind of weird to see yeah i'd say that the introduction of ultimate team kind of impacted negatively upon the game as a whole if you look at the changes that have been made to career mode and pro clubs in the last 10 years or so for example since ultimate team came in there just hasn't really been enough done with those game modes you can understand it to a point obviously ultimate team makes ea sports a lot of money so they're gonna put a lot of time and resources into it but sadly it's been to the detriment of other game modes and as a result the overall quality of ea sports games in general has suffered obviously nba live has fallen off significantly because we don't even know if there'll ever be another nba live and in what format so that's a significant fall off but madden is the one that is still active that i would say in several areas it has fallen off it's all about money it's all about you know selling these dlcs and selling these packs you know uh specifically with men we already know that ultimate team is pretty much king on there now franchise has been dead for a while and in the case with nascar games as well you know i know this is a different company but you know again there's you know just different dlcs packs that you have to buy blah blah blah and really it's just the level of immersion for these game modes and really a lot of sports titles now uh it's not up there where it was in the early 2000s now granted back in those days online play was rare like we really didn't get that until around 2004 2005 and then you know once we graduated to the next gen consoles well the next gen back then consoles ps3 xbox 360 that's when i really noticed a shift you know it was really leaning towards you know more online game play rather than you know these game modes having the levels of immersion that they did back in the day you know on the ps2 and the xbox like you definitely needed to have those game modes you know they needed to be as immersive as possible because there was no other options back in the day really there wasn't really online play until you know a few years later well i mean ever since they moved to the 360 just how on the ps3 it just has not been the same now we're talking about two generations removed going into the next one but i think that you know it's all about money money money is not a situation to where they're just trying to put out a quality product in my opinion i mean they try to do some things to do it but i don't think i think they're more driven towards the money side to the point where now we're looking at uh basically you you have mud and tournament guys are basically running the show and that's what makes the money yes ea sports has fallen off in quality 100 there's no doubting it all they really care about these days are the micro transactions the madden ultimate team mode uh that's the thing that gets all the attention and and now it's all like these wacky modes being you know promoted by rappers and and you know singers and players themselves these mo's that have nothing really to do with football or side football stuff you've got a situation where so many different people come in and out of the program that even if they have a vision that they want to execute it can easily get lost because you have so many people trying to decipher what may not always be very clear in addition to that with ea you've got a company that is really in the industry rather entry level so they're going out and they're bringing people in that in some cases are just looking to build a resume for themselves so if you're starting out and you want to get an entry level programming position you know you may find yourself at ea just trying to build a resume for two to three years and move along and while that may be great for the individual the problem becomes you know while they're putting madden programmer on their resume to move forward you know they may not have the expertise of dealing with code that what many of us believe is years old and be able to make meaningful changes no matter what is coming down from a designer in terms of telling them what they need to do and i think no matter who you have there at ea trying to overall design the game unless you can get it relayed to a programmer who's capable to do that it's not going to matter i think one of the big issues is that ea just does not have the capability to go and get the best talent to fill those roles pay that price for those people because in many cases they've already been to ea moved forward with their careers and don't see value in working there any longer now i'm not going to once blame the actual developers working on the games because i come from a software development background i know how hard it is to build out software for people to use that's going to be sold they're building what they're told to build and how they're told to build it all of this to me goes to the decision makers and the powers that be and i blame personally the rise of ultimate team as does a lot of people but ever since that mode was introduced to ea sports games i feel every other mode that people have fallen in love with over the years has been thrown on the back burner or cast aside never to be seen again it just drives me insane when i see people complain about ultimate team and it's like franchise hasn't received any update at all in nearly a decade a decade i think it's almost indisputable that ea sports has fallen off in terms of quality right i think a big problem circulating with ea right now is there's a lot of passionate people that have worked their careers to get to the the jobs that they're in right now working for ea the problem i believe is the higher-ups not letting them have the freedom to implement the features that uh the true fans want uh basically telling them uh what the direction of the game is going to be in oftentimes a direction that is to maximize revenue which is really unfortunate because i i really think they're they're they have the people in there that can accomplish a lot of the things that we're asking for but there's a huge disconnect between what the fans want the people actually working on the game and then the people in charge of resources and development of the game and i would really point to that being the biggest problem and i really hope we see a change in that in the future you know i think one of the problems with a topic like football is that it is extremely challenging to simulate it perfectly you've got to get just for starters you've got to get the physics right and the physics go into things like oh all right uh how how well are you gonna finish this block and how would the how is the blocker's body gonna come off the defender that's trying to shed the blocker and where's the momentum going and okay so i'm leaning to the right but i'm trying to reach out with my left arm to trip up that ball carrier i mean it's just really really challenging and complicated of course you're trying to lay on the top of some kind of physics engine some other rules about oh this according to this guy's rating he's gonna make that tackle no according to the runner's rate he's gonna break that tackle you know you're trying to overlay the statistics around it and and boy even the from the very first time making the first version of that there would there be really aggravating things like setting up the punt play i remember how hard it was figuring out how to successfully block all of the people that were rushing to try to block the kick and there were situations where you couldn't quite get that right and it was just too easy for one of the blockers to penetrate and block the kick well that's no good you know you've got you've got to figure out a whole lot of my new details and then of course even when you've done that i think some of the best versions of madden have pretty good simulation you know they in history have had versions that produced you know scores that are like football not like basketball but you still have the uh money plays you know so every every player is looking for uh you know one one or two plays that go to the right or go to the left where they've got a run pass option and they're watching this they're keying what their opposing player is doing with their joystick and what player they're controlling and what they're reacting to and you just know okay so if i see him coming in then i'm throwing you know yeah i know my guy i know my guy's going to be open and and it's just too easy to then boil the game down into just choosing between those two plays all day long that's not football that's the kind of thing that if i was making a version of the game today now that would just drive me crazy and i would work really really hard to make sure that no this is the real thing this is authentic which means you're going to be needing that full playbook and if you expect to throw that uh pass to a touchdown you're gonna have to do what john baden taught me so for example if if i'm trying to get you to cheat in to stop the run uh i'm gonna first of all establish a good run again i'm gonna establish certain running plays that are going to make you get conditioned to pursue when you begin to notice a pattern like oh he's running that off tackle play again oh here it comes again here it comes again and it's just when you start to become familiar with that rhythm that's when i'm doing the play action pass where i'm going to show you all of that it's all going to look like that same off tackle running play but now i'm throwing the ball into the tight end that's wide open because this tight safety or the linebacker that had assigned coverage bit and sold out on the run fake and you know it's super satisfying would you work hard over the course of the game to set things up that way you know and a good coach that's good at play calling they'll be doing stuff in the first quarter that they're going to be using to set up something that's going to score a touchdown for them in the third quarter so i love strategy like that and i and i i really would love it if all the score simulation games really maintained that kind of authenticity so you could have good strategy obviously creating a realistic simulation football game is no easy task but it doesn't even seem like ea is trying to achieve that with x factor abilities superstar ko and the focus of the game being virtual trading cards and simulated gambling are these even sports games anymore i think probably a lot of large corporations especially they uh they kind of uh get too disconnected from those kinds of things they're just you know cranking out sausage from that satisfactory and it's you know i think for a lot of big companies they uh uh you know just don't don't have that uh depth of feeling or care about what they're doing ea sports is hated by most people nfl fans buy madden because it's the only nfl game nhl fans do the same fifa features a much wider variety of club licenses compared to its competitor pro evolution soccer yea makes the only ufc game despite the quality of these titles people will buy them it's all they have could ea even come close to returning to its glory days when it was at the forefront of innovation in video games when they supported their developers and gave them the freedom to create what they felt passionate about it's really tough to figure out like what they would have to do to get back to their glory days uh because we're definitely not in those right now but for me it's it just comes down to like passion it just comes down to passion it comes down to caring about your product it comes to caring about your community it comes to caring about your game i think ultimately that's where creativity stems from you have a game like madden where in 2005 the game had countless features that used to be in the game and today in 2020 no longer are after hashtag fixed madden franchise went trending number one in the united states which was started by brian mazzique he finally acknowledged their neglect of this mode and gave a blueprint of potential fixes for the future why did it have to come to that how disconnected are these executives there are so many fundamental flaws with madden as a game and just as an operation that i don't even know where to start with retooling it to make it better it's such a big team that it needs to come from the top there needs to be a consistent direction from the top because i've heard stories of certain developers at ea sports who have good ideas for the game who want to expand franchise mode and make it a better game mode like it used to be but they're shut down or they're not given the time to work on it because ea doesn't value that they only value ultimate team because that's the only thing making them money and until fundamental leadership ever changes which i don't think it's going to i don't know if ea sports can recapture its glory days the way to fix madden the way to fix football games has to come from the nfl they have to stop giving one crappy company the exclusive rights to the largest sport in america the fact that 2k is now getting a chance to make an arcade style game is encouraging at least it's something but i think it needs to be the other way around ea sports is pretty competent with their fun little game modes i used to play draft champions in like 17-18 and that was pretty fun but they don't make a simulation football game competition is the only thing that will bring ea back to its glory when nfl game day came out for the ps1 ea actually got worried and started putting out a decent madden product started putting ai in their code and actually had to get off their ass and figure out what gamers wanted it's hard because the sports junkies all need are fixed so you can only divert to an fps game or gta for so long until you need the high of breaking off a long td run in ot and winning what you think is a meaningful game i don't know the definitive answer to this it's much easier just to point out problems like a guy never passing for an entire tournament and winning the whole thing than to find actual solutions so good luck in order for ea to get back to his glory days the key thing they have to do is allow their devs to thrive put them in position to succeed put them in the best possible position to develop creatively allow their thoughts and imagination to run you know realistically wild and give you know give a true simulation football product i firmly believe ea has more than enough of the talent but you have to let these people actually thrive actually build not according to to the mold of an executive but to the mold of what's going on in the in in the in the uh you know in the league more time and effort needs to be put into the game modes that have been there for years and that made us all fall in love with ea sports games in the first place career mode needs more love pro clubs needs more features the servers need improving and for the future we just need to see more love being shown across the board ultimate team is the ea sports cash cow and fair enough of course they want to milk that but ultimate team isn't the only reason that people buy ea sports games i had a look on playstation at the trophies the other day and less than 12 percent of people have ever even qualified for the weekend league so the vast majority of people aren't interested in competitive fifa and ea sports really needs to be making improvements and general changes to game modes across the board you should never get mad at the developers for features that don't make it into the game because i've talked to the developers many times as an ea game changer i was a game pager for what men 18 and 19 and they kind of well i was there for a little bit of mad 20 but that was it they haven't really responded to me since that's probably because i said some negative things about the game online so not likely to bring me back after that and also stop playing the game but besides the point the developers are very nice people and they want to make the game as best as they can make it they have great ideas they listen to the feedback like we would we'd bring in ideas every single year they would they'd be like yeah i mean we've heard this a million times like we want to do this but it's just either one technically not even feasible with like the setup they have or whatever or like it's it's way above their pay grade to where like it's like we can't even make that call like we'll try to present that idea to them but they'll get shot down because it's either the nfl or it's someone they're one of the higher ups it's almost like depressing to hear it because like they have to take all the flock on on twitter and the developers are targeted but it's like it's not always their fault directly like if there's some bugs in the games or something then that might be more on them but it's like they can fix that but big overall features they don't always get a choice in deciding what goes in it's the executives the ones that you should be mad at because those are the ones calling the shots that are shifting all of ea you know how like fifa will try out like they tried their story mode and then man's right behind them it's probably some top ea executive making the shots for all these franchises it's like we need something to fit this demographic like they're looking at it as how much can they sell and to what demographic and to like how can we package it to be more serving for this area they're not thinking of what's the best football game we can make and that's probably the main problem that ea needs to fix itself ea sports became famous for its slogan it's in the game over the past decade and a half it's become clear that the entire company's focus has completely shifted away from creating quality products it's easier to point out what isn't in an ea sports game than what is many people take videos like this the wrong way thinking there is just this angry hive mind who hates ea regardless of what they do and while those people do exist myself and everyone involved in this video we would have no issue with ea if only they went back to creating quality sports video games we used to love ea sports and we just longed for a return to form we are passionate about sports and video games allow us to interact with them on a level that would otherwise be impossible all we want is for ea to start focusing on their consumers show that you are in touch give your developers creative freedom instead of blocking people who offer criticism on social media embrace criticism will that ever happen who knows i think it's easier to predict no massive corporations don't usually get more in touch with their consumers as they grow but that doesn't mean we can't hold out hope or come together to create videos like this thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: SOFTDRINKTV

Views: 422,911

Rating: 4.9420056 out of 5

Keywords: the fall of ea sports, the fall of ea, the fall of madden, softdrinktv, softdrinksports, trip hawkins, the fall of nba live, fight night, nhl, fifa, nascar, documentary, electronic arts, madden nfl 21, madden nfl 20, franchise mode, fixmaddenfranchise

Id: eECvnIGeTxU

Length: 50min 50sec (3050 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SinisterSound83]

I wholeheartedly agree with this video. Puts a lot into perspective.

[u/h3rho]

Good stuff.

[u/rickyjean1]

Generally speaking companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders that supersedes its duty to the players...I know that’s not a popular opinion here but they seem to be doing a decent job of making money.

[u/SinisterSound83]

It has nothing to do with how much they made. Its saying that since they decide money was more important (hut), the quality has gone down. Its not like they sat and glorified how much they make. The founder said from a business standpoint hes proud of his baby (ea) but as for products, hes become very disappointed.