Rolling Stone: Inside the making of Madden 06

[kjcheezhead]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

As the story pointed out, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is one big reason as to how Madden 06 came to be. To that end, it doesn't surprise me that Tiburon learned from their bad experience and avoided making the same mistake twice.

Except that the ps2 version was a solid foundation worth porting over. The foundation they ported over to the current gen was barely playable from Madden 06-09.

They threw the baby out with the bath water the first time. The second time they had cold dirty bathwater the baby crapped in and decided it was good enough for baby’s big brother.

[mykelmosinee]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

Except that the ps2 version was a solid foundation worth porting over. The foundation they ported over to the current gen was barely playable from Madden 06-09. They threw the baby out with the bath water the first time. The second time they had cold dirty bathwater the baby crapped in and decided it was good enough for baby’s big brother.

Sorry, but this analogy made me lol...at work. Astute observation.

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[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

Except that the ps2 version was a solid foundation worth porting over. The foundation they ported over to the current gen was barely playable from Madden 06-09. They threw the baby out with the bath water the first time. The second time they had cold dirty bathwater the baby crapped in and decided it was good enough for baby’s big brother.

Again, there's no guarantee that throwing out existing code for hypothetical new code means the imagined new code will work better and not have its own problems.

Sure, hypothetically Madden could have had a better start on Gen 4 if they threw everything out, even after the game had mostly stabilized by the time M12 / M13 rolled around. The debut Madden 25 on the XBOX One and PS4 was, while not terrible, mostly forgettable IMO. It also hypothetically could have been Madden 06 all over again, which is exactly what EA couldn't afford. Perhaps the consistently positive momentum Madden has built up over the past four releases wouldn't have been possible without porting the existing base. Perhaps this rewritten Madden would have ended up in development hell next to NBA Live.

It's fun to live in a world with rose-colored glasses where everything went right the first time or everything went how we imagined it in our heads, but that world doesn't actually exist. We all make mistakes, we all learn from those mistakes, and we all try to make better decisions in the future based on what we learned. That's what happened here.

[Devaster]

I don't why anyone finds it surprising that EA never started over from scratch with Madden to build a better base for future games. They simply don't have the time to do that. Releasing a game every year prevents that. And then the increased popularity in the MUT mode and Competitive modes mean more resources on content through the year.

Going to a yearly subscription and rebooting the entire game would go a long way towards fixing a lot of the fundamental issues.

[ForUntoOblivionSoar∞]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

As the story pointed out, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is one big reason as to how Madden 06 came to be. To that end, it doesn't surprise me that Tiburon learned from their bad experience and avoided making the same mistake twice.

This. We already went down that road with Madden 06 and it didn't turn out too well. If they were going to restart from scratch, it would need to be a three or four year project.

[kjcheezhead]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Again, there's no guarantee that throwing out existing code for hypothetical new code means the imagined new code will work better and not have its own problems. Sure, hypothetically Madden could have had a better start on Gen 4 if they threw everything out, even after the game had mostly stabilized by the time M12 / M13 rolled around. The debut Madden 25 on the XBOX One and PS4 was, while not terrible, mostly forgettable IMO. It also hypothetically could have been Madden 06 all over again, which is exactly what EA couldn't afford. Perhaps the consistently positive momentum Madden has built up over the past four releases wouldn't have been possible without porting the existing base. Perhaps this rewritten Madden would have ended up in development hell next to NBA Live. It's fun to live in a world with rose-colored glasses where everything went right the first time or everything went how we imagined it in our heads, but that world doesn't actually exist. We all make mistakes, we all learn from those mistakes, and we all try to make better decisions in the future based on what we learned. That's what happened here.

Imagine if Henry Ford or any designer took this attitude.

“We have new designs Mr. Ford, I think we can make a newer car that’s faster, more fuel efficient and safer...and make it cheaper”

Mr. Ford “ There’s no guarantee your new car design will do any of those things. Let’s just keep building model T’s forever.”

[YaBarber]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

As the story pointed out, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is one big reason as to how Madden 06 came to be. To that end, it doesn't surprise me that Tiburon learned from their bad experience and avoided making the same mistake twice.

Eh... I mean I understand that point. But as big of a company with as many resources as they have.. is it too much to think that 12 years later to have learned from the mistakes of that game ? I get it. MUT makes a ton of money for them. Understandle if they don’t care to restart their whole franchise just because the majority thinks it doesn’t represent football anymore if they still continue to make more money off of transactions than actual game purchases. Its good immediate business. But if they took the time to interview and hire extremely talented game developers, artists etc. I can’t seem to grasp how 12 years later they wouldn’t be confident enough in their talents to be able to scrap all the code they have because half of it doesn’t work properly and make a new game with an actual solid foundation. Rather than a foundation made up of thousands of cover up layers to hide old garbage code. The Devs literally don’t have an answer for what certain functions do in their own game lol. How does that not show huge red flags to some people ? It just baffles me.

M18 imo is worse than M17 because of the amount of features they touted to be implemented only for almost none of those features coming to fruition. CFM hasn’t changed and ended up actually having more glitches needing to be patched, gameplay has sacks & turnovers galore plus the god awful truck glitch and jukes/spins causing defenders to fall (sometimes up to 4 at once lol). Plus they make other defenders literally stop pursuing the ball carrier and just watch the animation play out even if the guy is breaking the tackle. Player locomotion is.... indescribable. Never seen humans move the way they do in madden. It’s just a mess overall. If not for MUT I don’t think people would buy this game.

[YaBarber]

Nothing I want more than M19 to be a huge huge improvement. But the way it’s been going with EA sports the last decade and change shows i’ll just be getting my hopes up again. I hope that’s not the case.