Madden game plan: Run same play, collect $50
By JOSH KORR
Published September 4, 2006
It's time to take a stand against John Madden.
For more than 15 years, the football broadcaster/tailgate party meat aficionado and Electronic Arts have been preying on what I call the Guy's Rain Man Gene.
You've seen the gene in action: the compulsion to memorize lists, facts and minutia of sports, cars, video games, comic books, music. It's why many of us obsessively collected hundreds upon thousands of baseball cards. It's what allows the afflicted to recite the starting lineup of every pro sports team, the scores and highlights of late-'80s World Series games, the cheat codes of old Nintendo games.
Fantasy sports could not exist without it. Seen High Fidelity? John Cusack's character has it bad. Women have the gene, too, but its usually recessive.
Every year, a new Madden game exploits this gene. EA sells millions of copies at $50 or $60 a pop to people who have the previous half-dozen Madden games but absolutely must get those new team rosters and couple of new moves. This year's big control change lets you try to flatten the defensive line to make a hole for the running back. Whee.
The schtick is wearing thin. With Xbox 360's Xbox Live offering downloadable updates and online services planned for the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii this fall, it makes no sense to pay $60 for what's essentially a roster update and a new role-playing-game mode. We should be able to download the new players for 5 bucks, or a you-be-the-owner mode for 10.
Reviews of the game show how absurd the annual Madden ritual has become. As Jeff Haynes writes for the Web site IGN.com, "Considering that many of the gameplay features are extremely mild remixes of previously included gameplay options, this year's Madden comes across as a solid title, but one that's starting to show its age."
It's like if Mission: Impossible: III had been the exact same movie as Mission: Impossible: II - except the characters had new costumes, three actors had switched roles, half the CGI scenes were improved and Tom Cruise's stunt doubles added a somersault and drop kick to each action scene.
I'm not trying to kill off EA's cash cow. And it's not like they're forcing anyone to buy Madden. Millions would still buy the full version even if cheaper, downloadable bits and pieces were available.
Making the change would at least tacitly admit to the charade and give gamers a choice. Once the truth is out in the open, maybe EA will be inspired to innovate and come out with a truly new football game every couple of years.
Until then, I'll be content playing John Madden '93 for the Sega Genesis. I love those Super Bowl champion Redskins: Mark Rypien, Earnest Byner, Art Monk and Gary Clark are unstoppable.
Whoops - looks like I've got the gene too. 'Course, I'm an excellent driver ...
Josh Korr can be reached at jkorr@sptimes.com Read his video game blog at www.sptimes.com/blogs/videogames.