Friday, April 20, 2012

Idea for Madden PC - Everything Moddable, No Annual Edition

I just wanted to float an idea of what I'd love as a Madden PC fan for something that solves the 'business challenges' for EA and satisfies the Madden PC gamer. I think the solution lies in making everything moddable in a single "Madden PC" product and then Madden could eschew try to come out with an annual edition.
The PC gamer is a different gamer than the console gamer. The key to many successful PC products (Oblivion, World of Warcraft, Half-Life, Spore, The Sims) is to create a good core product that appeals to that market and then give the PC market the tools to craft the game they want through a powerful editor.
When I say moddable, I mean everything moddable with user-designed content - way beyond the scale of what current Madden games offer: - full 32 custom team support, full custom uniforms, face texture pacts, announcing packs, league rules, weather effectsstadium models, animation models, name editing, nickname earning, touchdown dances, injuries, statistical scaling, storylines, actual owners...everything in the game plus whatever anyone else can come up with.
This way, Madden wouldn't have to release an annual product and could just give us a good game of football and let us do the rest. Imagine reconstructing the old Mutant League games or Blood Bowl using the madden architecture. Re-create the Fog Bowl. Play in old-timey, face-maskless leagues. Imagine playing on a field of ice or in front of the Pyramids. Imagine putting Al Davis in the game or Jerry Jones and having the camera cut to the owner's box.
This would satisfy me for years and Madden could ignore the PC market and maybe make money by controlling the way modded content is disseminated a la the i-phone. I'm sure they could come up with a profitable business model. They could even generate new ideas for their console games based off of user-created content without having to try it in an actual product only to have some ideas fall flat. The console gamer can still have their annual update Madden game with its sharper graphics, updated rosters, and custom-tailored-NFL experience.
Anyway, that's the product I'd want. I am still playing Madden '04. I recently picked up '08 from the bargain bin only to be shocked to find that I can't start a franchise league with a custom team without some sort of hack. Every other Madden gamer I know has the same frustration with the game - how limited the customizability is.|||Have to laugh...I just read their blog on "How do we improve the franchise experience?" What a laugh. Give us a customizable game, one time, no annual version, and PC users will come up with genius franchise additions that Madden can confiscate and put into their XBOX/PS3/Wii product.|||PC Gamers came up with genius additions,it was called THE SYNC. Thats why there is no more PC version....Madden 11 comes out in less than a month!

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