How Madden can be made a simulator viably
One of the biggest reasons why EA seem reluctant to really go all out and make Madden (or an off shoot franchise) a simulation focused experience is because of the mass market appeal factor - the average gamer wants realism, but not at the expense of fun and pick-up-and-play ability. In this sense, I've always thought of Madden as the NFL gaming equivalent of Call of Duty - it's meant to sell, and that's that.
And you know, despite making that parallel to CoD, it never really clicked in my head until recently that the same way the FPS genre handles simulations could possibly work for NFL gaming.
What do I mean? Well, there are shooters out there which focus on realism as the primary concern. It takes a lot more work to do this and the games are not as popular as CoD. But they exist, and the reason for this is some of these games are actually aimed at professionals - that's right, military people, contractors, security firms, etc. One such game is ARMA on the PC.
Can you see where I'm going here? What if there is a market out there to make a football game which everyone from NFL teams down to junior league teams could use to develop strategies? Run scenarios? Collect data and determine probabilities? It would have to be pretty well made, but I think it could be done to a high enough degree that it would have a place in the ever progressing world of football, and could eventually develop into a serious tool in time. EA would probably have to do it as they have the resources and the baseline in Madden to get a head start, and could market it still with the Madden name, although I guess anyone could really do it without NFL licensing.
It would probably be for PC for data collection and control/editing purposes, but it could be treated as "software" more so than a game - so if you're a professional team, the license cost could be in the thousands, just like Adobe's software is for professional designers etc. It would still be available for normal gamers though, and sold at normal game prices - just like ARMA is.
Personally, this is why I believe EA is criticized. They have the resources to try and do something like this and I truly believe this is a seriously viable option going forward. Chalk it up as a future building project which could develop very nice long term returns - perhaps the NFL isn't quite willing to adopt such a thing just yet as a whole but I would bet anything there are a few teams who would jump on this and get in early. Who knows, NFL teams may even start to directly invest in it.
And you know, despite making that parallel to CoD, it never really clicked in my head until recently that the same way the FPS genre handles simulations could possibly work for NFL gaming.
What do I mean? Well, there are shooters out there which focus on realism as the primary concern. It takes a lot more work to do this and the games are not as popular as CoD. But they exist, and the reason for this is some of these games are actually aimed at professionals - that's right, military people, contractors, security firms, etc. One such game is ARMA on the PC.
Can you see where I'm going here? What if there is a market out there to make a football game which everyone from NFL teams down to junior league teams could use to develop strategies? Run scenarios? Collect data and determine probabilities? It would have to be pretty well made, but I think it could be done to a high enough degree that it would have a place in the ever progressing world of football, and could eventually develop into a serious tool in time. EA would probably have to do it as they have the resources and the baseline in Madden to get a head start, and could market it still with the Madden name, although I guess anyone could really do it without NFL licensing.
It would probably be for PC for data collection and control/editing purposes, but it could be treated as "software" more so than a game - so if you're a professional team, the license cost could be in the thousands, just like Adobe's software is for professional designers etc. It would still be available for normal gamers though, and sold at normal game prices - just like ARMA is.
Personally, this is why I believe EA is criticized. They have the resources to try and do something like this and I truly believe this is a seriously viable option going forward. Chalk it up as a future building project which could develop very nice long term returns - perhaps the NFL isn't quite willing to adopt such a thing just yet as a whole but I would bet anything there are a few teams who would jump on this and get in early. Who knows, NFL teams may even start to directly invest in it.
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