The Game That Killed Madden

[Music] today the madden nfl series is a laughing stock in the gaming community few actually enjoy the games but many buy them because ea has a monopoly on using the nfl license for simulation style video games but as i've shown in some of my older videos madden wasn't always a bad game sure you can argue that espn nfl 2k5 was always and still is better at replicating simulation football than madden and i will 100 agree with anyone claiming that all pro football 2k8 has the best gameplay ever seen in a football video game but in madden's prime during the ps2 era the games were great while gameplay wasn't ever truly realistic it was fun and wasn't as buggy or animation based as we see today but what made those older madden titles great was their depth there are no football games with a better or deeper franchise mode than the ones found in the later ps2 entries with matano 7 having in my opinion the greatest franchise mode ever in the entire series when jumping to the xbox 360 and ps3 ea basically started over and rebuilt the game code losing a lot of awesome features and depth but by madden 10 most of that depth was back and franchise mode was back on track to being great again now there's a reason i call madden 12 the last good madding game it had gameplay that was hit or miss and the depth of the game wasn't as strong as it was in the ps2 era titles but it still had depth and it was the last madden game i could actually sit down play a single player franchise in and actually have a good time doing it madden 13 however killed the series now you may be wondering what exactly is missing from modern madden games especially if you're a younger player in one of my recent videos i broke down every single feature that used to be in madden games but aren't anymore and i counted 89 features instead of repeating myself you can click the top right of the screen to watch that video now if you have it on the surface madden 13 actually seemed promising looking back at reviews for the game at the time you'll notice that the game was praised ign said that madden 13 made madden fun again critics had found madden stale by madden 12 while the game featured many modes such as franchise mode superstar mode created team and many of those awesome features we missed today it was lacking innovation compared to madden 11 it was hard to really notice any differences the community was getting fed up with ea at the time for more or less copying and pasting the same game each year oh boy be careful what you wish for for madden 13 longtime creative director ian cummings had stepped down and rex dixon came aboard for my interview with rex he said that the direction madden was heading in in madden 13 was already decided before he joined the team if that's the case i would assume cummings left his position because of the forthcoming change although i can't confirm or deny that since he has never really explained why he stepped down and he has never replied when i've contacted him for an interview madden 13 decided to modernize madden remember windows 8 how the start menu was replaced with that awful giant start screen in an attempt to modernize windows that's how the madden 13 menu looked gone were the organized and standard gameplay menus but hello tiles and ads coming from madden 12 yeah madden 13 sure did change this was no copy and paste this game was being built from the ground up while gameplay borrowed a lot of the same code as madden 12 it was on the new infinity engine which was focused more on physics than animations wow that sounds like exactly what we've been asking for recently the rest of the game was rebuilt too from the previously mentioned menus to the game modes to roster editing to literally everything else the focus of this game was to bring madden to the new age of the internet and to make this game more connected than ever before before i start criticizing just how terribly implemented ea's idea of innovation was let's go over what madden 13 actually got right first the presentation ea mimicked a cbs broadcast with jim nance and phil sims who are actually rendered in booth the game added over 200 new cutscenes and camera angles meant to replicate what you'd see on tv it included the new nike jerseys for each team the game had dynamic lighting changes sound was re-hauled from quarterback cadences to big hits to crowd noise and players actually had their unique touchdown celebrations such as victor cruz and his salsa dance next gameplay was a nice step forward now tackles were closer to being physics based a ton of new catching throwing tackling and drop back animations were created and every play felt different and organic in older maddens and strangely enough newer maddens after playing the game for a bit you'd end up seeing every possible outcome because there were only so many animations built into the games with the infinity engine there was more randomness to it sure there were awkward jarring animations and players would rag all around but it was a nice improvement that ea completely abandoned a few years later the third thing madden 13 got right wait there is no third those were the positives so here's what was wrong with the game everything else you see while gameplay was a step forward it still wasn't anything special when playing all pro football 2k8 a game from 2007 five years before madden 13 released it was clear that 2k simply made a much better on-field product you would think after five years ea could top 2k but still the game was far behind now saying that today feels weird because i think the game play in madden 13 is much better than the gameplay in madden 18 through 21 but let's try to look at this game as if we are in 2012 for this segment of the video in what was the most bizarre and terrible decision of madden's rebuild superstar mode and franchise mode were combined into one shallow watered-down game mode called connected careers gone was the ability to create a player hire an agent go through combine drills and get drafted now you simply create a player and you're in the nfl with no storyline or anything it was simply a watered down franchise mode except you can only play games and control your player that's it in connected careers you could also be a coach instead of a player and this was the replacement for franchise mode now you had no control over anything the owner's mode introduced in 1904 was gone no longer could you relocate a team you couldn't build a new stadium coaching trees disappeared there was no more pro bowl no more historic teams no more ability to import or export a team mouth guards were gone no more rookie workouts or combine drills no more player rolls or player weapons scouting was super watered down when the game first released you couldn't even edit a player's jersey number in a coach career gone was the in-depth stat tracking this was the game that removed the team column from player stats in franchise mode likely because when rebuilding the game code the developer simply forgot about it unfortunately it took 8 years for ea to bring this feature back and it's still broken further cementing my theory that madden has been building on top of this broken code ever since ea took a franchise mode that they had been rebuilding since they jumped to the 360 generation and destroyed it was it as good and deep as the ones in the ps2 era games no but it was getting there ea decided to fix what wasn't broke and in return stripped away literally everything that made franchise mode in superstar mode fun now you simply played through a schedule drafted new players and started over the depth was on the level of a playstation 1 madden game all this for what the ability to play online is that innovation remember around this time 2k managed to bring their association mode later called my league and now called my mba online while retaining nearly all of its depth the few features that couldn't make it online were still kept for offline play i'm convinced that the people working on madden 13 were either untalented or didn't care because this foundation they built for the future was a massive step backwards for every single game mode was the on-field experience better sure but it still wasn't good enough for a triple-a nfl game in 2012 when 2k did it better in 2007 and besides gameplay the rest of the game was a far cry from where it once was remember ea tracks those awesome varied soundtracks of licensed music that made those older madden so memorable in another failed attempt to modernize the game ea killed ea tracks and simply had instrumental music for the game while i like the classic nfl music come on not even a single licensed song that's just lazy one of the worst parts of all of this was the removal of create a team even today it's still gone this was my favorite feature in madden i loved creating new teams with my own logos names uniforms colors and more i'd often create a cupcake team which meant the team had terrible generated players and try and rebuild them i even made a whole series doing this removing create a team took nearly all the fun out of the game for me customization and creativity make games great look at a game like need for speed underground or midnight club 3. those games are popular not just for their gameplay but because of how much control players had over aesthetics let people get creative while yes in an nfl game people will want to play with their favorite teams as a change of pace create a team was a lot of fun i can't stress just how upsetting it was that ea killed this feature outside of all of that something dark was beginning thanks to the new metro or modern style of the main menu now ea could throw ultimate team ads in your face instead of having to go to game modes and then select ultimate team it was now right there when you start up the game this was in my opinion ea's main reason to rebuild the game they wanted to center it around their new money maker their micro transaction filled gambling game mode disguised as a card collecting game remember matting cards this was not that this was something far more nefarious and if you personally enjoy ultimate team and think it's a great mode good for you but no one asked this game became the foundation for all future madden titles while madden 25 brought back the franchise mode name and added an owner mode and some new things like a very limited relocation option those editions were basically never touched again for years in years after this game ea didn't change anything except ultimate team in some slight gameplay tweaks franchise mode continued to get neglected every single year until finally when madden 21's franchise mode was announced with no new features for the seventh year in a row the internet got fed up and got madden trending for all the wrong reasons now only because they were negatively trending ea has decided to focus more on franchise mode by adding back a couple features that used to be in the game anyway while the 89 or so features in that video of mine i mentioned earlier are still nowhere to be found while nba 2k continued developing their my career mode ea never touched their terrible player career mode again until very recently and it's clear that it needs a lot of work it's honestly insane how much was removed from madden 12 and how to this day ea has yet to add most of it back how can they even think about innovating when the game is far behind matano 5 had ea simply taken madden 12 moved to the infinity engine and continued building on the good franchise and superstar modes they had we'd likely have a fantastic franchise in career mode right now it's not hard to come to the conclusion that ea watered down the offline game modes in an attempt to push more players to the new shiny microtransaction filled ultimate team of course none of this would have been that big of a deal if ea didn't have the exclusive nfl license most people would have simply moved on and played something else but because only ea could make games for the most popular sport in america anyone who wanted to play with nfl players or their favorite team was forced to buy this game in the ones that followed it was the beginning of one of the largest scams in video game history that most people don't talk about outside of the sim football community and even today it's still going on unfortunately when madden 13 dropped no one really held ea accountable there was no hashtag fix madden franchise movement or hashtag nfl drop ea while many were mad the internet wasn't really the same as it is today and many people were happy with the changes to gameplay and simply assumed franchise mode would get better as years went on the following game madden 25 did improve franchise mode and added back a few features but then something terrible happened stagnation turns out ea decided to continue building upon the code of madden 13 all the way to today which made adding new features to franchise mode career mode or any other part of the game incredibly difficult combine that with ea's exclusive license basically guaranteeing sales regardless of the game's quality and you have an explanation as for why every madden after 25 was more or less the same yet still successful when matt and 18 came around and jumped to the frostbite engine gameplay became even worse and today we have what i like to call trash the only way madden will ever be good again is if they rebuild the game from scratch again but this time do it correctly it's 2021 we're going to mars you have a super computer in your pocket with an octocore processor 5g is the new standard technology has never been so advanced yet madden 21 is worse than a 15 year old game you can blame that at least partially on madden 13. thanks for watching you

Channel: SOFTDRINKTV

Views: 590,314

Keywords: softdrinktv, softdrinksports, retrospective, documentary, sdtv, madden nfl 13, madden, fall of madden, madden bad, franchise mode, ultimate team, connected careers

Id: Bz3upQnN_dE

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Maddenusedtobegreat]

We needed this

[u/AbstractMarcher]

Fucking hated this game. I had stopped playing after 11. Got this one and hated it. Lost so many features. Looking back on it, the others were just as bad gameplay wise from 13 back to 09, but made up for it with features that matter it a little more fun.

13 was when the fun stopped and I got sick of it. I tried to enjoy it, but having grown up on not even a megabit up and down for internet, live features and ultimate team were and still are scams and wastes of money. I want an enjoyable offline experience again that makes it worthwhile for us non-online oriented people.

Fuck you EA.