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Sports Licence Limitations. We all know, the public image of all the major Sports licence's is too golden for their rulers to every let be corrupted, look at what happened within the real world and FIFA this year, they have covered up all traces of misdoings and corruption, swept it under the carpet or set up an internal investigation into things rather than have a public or independent one. CW.

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I can see both sides. You should be able to pull people off the IR if you are starting your new Franchise. I also hate going online and waiting for a minute while everyone puts their injured players back on the depth chart. Rosters should include an IR where people can't be called back from in Online games. You want to roll with your team, roll with the punches, too. -Scott B.

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Online Communities as a Replacement to Online Franchise

Online Communities is a new feature for EA Sports that allows groups of like minded people to come together and play regularly. First introduced in Madden NFL 12, Online Communities basically sets up a chat room (minus the chat) where the community members from websites like Operation Sports and PastaPadre can gather and play the games under a rule set that is created by the communities administrator.

OC

For some communities this can mean playing with full fifteen minute quarters. It could mean the game is always played at night and with the wind speeds raised above ten miles per hour. You can customize the sliders to make passing impossible or turn the fumble rate so high that running is more like a game of pinball than pigskin. You can even give your community a logo for people to rally under.

  Do you think my new community logo violates anything?

OF

Online Franchise in contrast allows for very little in the way of customized games of football. There are no sliders to adjust the difficulty of different game aspects, and while you can adjust the amount of time per quarter you are limited to 32 members in the League. Online communities memberships are limitless. 

Previously I have mentioned that I participate in an Online Franchise, and had anyone asked I would have said the most enjoyable aspect of being in the 4thstrin Madden League was the communal aspects and not the competitive ones. With the introduction of Online Communities I wonder if those that had previously joined Online Franchises for the same reasons will begin to migrate away from them if they become too competitive.

Is it a good thing? 

In my opinion this would be a poor conclusion to EA's Online Franchise experiment. Online Franchise offers a persistence that no other mode in sports allows. The games you play affect your standings, you craft a roster to call your own and if you are in a league like the one I am in, you are competing for a chance at the great trophy. While Online communities are a great way to play a pickup game, as a replacement to Online Franchise, it is lacking that kind of persistence.

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The Limitations of a Sports License in Annual Iteration

For any licensed product be it Sponge Bob to Spider-Man certain restrictions will be placed on the licensee as far as what they can and can not do. I may license the right to manufacture and sell a Sponge Bob Square Pants plush doll, but I guarantee you the contract I sign forbids me to sew a butchers knife into his hand.  Sports games come along with their own set of restrictions.

Who has the Control?

Last week I touched on why the NFL Blitz series went away. While the gameplay itself had grown tiresome another reason it went the way of the dodo was that the NFL would not renew their license (even before EA was awarded exclusivity). The over the top violence and total disregard for safety was something the NFL did not want representing them. These limitations live on, and not always in the most obvious ways. Unrealistic (and to a certain extent realistic) tackles are something you just won’t see in Madden anymore, there are more restrictions placed on EA Tiburon then anyone would care to imagine. They are not publicly shared however so imagine we must.

Restricting the Imagination

This years edition of Madden NFL will be released next week, and as has been the case for the past 2 years the Online Franchise feature will allow communities of people to form a league made up of the NFLs’ 32 teams. However one thing it does not allow for, something I am certain is the result of one of these license based restrictions, there is no allowance for an expansion of any kind. 32 is the number because 32 is the number of NFL franchises. This is a shame, for fans of the game Online Franchise is a great way to foster a community of players who enjoy playing the game regularly.

The Online Franchise I participate in, the 4thString.com 4thStringLeague has had to split in two to accommodate the growth of its membership. While we all instantly had the grand dreams and bright ideas of a championship game where the 2 league champions meet the game simply does not allow for it.

This is why I am certain it is not EA Tiburons fault, but rather the fault of the license agreement. Sports championships are built around 2 leagues meeting in the end, across all major sports. NBA championship finals are where the Western Conference meets the Eastern Conference Champion, as is the case with the NHL. In MLB you can swap out the East and West for the NL and AL, NFL with the AFC and NFC. The point being it is the format of major sports championships. So when trying to expand a league beyond 32 members it is not hard to imagine why this would be both the customer and by obvious observation, the developers first thought.

The NFL is not alone, there is a reason you never see a mound charge in MLB the Show. For these games to ever become the perfect representations we desire though, they will have to abandon the public image they wish to market. The NFL has violence, deal with it If they do, we may get some other cool stuff.

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How Do You Feel About Real World Injuries in Game?

Last night New York Giants Cornerback Terrell Thomas went for a sack on Chicago Quarterback Jay Cutler. He became tangled with a teammate and went down hard. So hard in fact that he tore his ACL and will miss the remainder of the season.

All of this of course was in a preseason game and the result of the game will have no impact on the Giants season. Except of course that they now have one less Cornerback.Earlier this month, another Giants Cornerback, Prince Amukamara broke his foot. Sidelining him for several weeks as well. For real life Giants fans these injuries are huge, but for madden fans they are meaningless.

And in Madden?

EA does not enforce real life injuries in their annual release. Terrell Thomas will be just fine when Madden 12 launches next week. Sure he will be lower on the depth chart, but a few button presses in the pause menu and he will be back to his starting position.

This presents an interesting question for both the players and the developer. Should real world injuries be enforced in the game?

The Bad Apple and the Bruised One

For that matter, should real world events be represented in the game? Last summer Vincent Jackson refused to play for the San Diego Chargers, missing all of the preseason and the first 11 games of the regular season. Madden players did not notice though as Vincent Jackson, like any other player who wasn’t seeing game time, was just lower on the depth chart.

The beginning of any online game with teams with injuries (see all) has a brief pause where your opponent will reset his or her depth chart to bring these players back into the line up.

If you really want to, AP can be a WR, even an injured one. 

There does not seem to be a clear right or wrong answer to this question. People buy the game so they can play with their teams, these teams in their heads don’t ideally have injuries. However for it to be an accurate representation of the NFL injuries do need to be represented. How do you think injuries should be implemented in sports games?

Send me your thoughts and I will update the post to share them.

I can see both sides. You should be able to pull people off the IR if you are starting your new Franchise. I also hate going online and waiting for a minute while everyone puts their injured players back on the depth chart. Rosters should include an IR where people can't be called back from in Online games. You want to roll with your team, roll with the punches, too. -Scott B.

Sports License Limitations. We all know, the public image of all the major Sports license's is too golden for their rulers to every let be corrupted, look at what happened within the real world and FIFA this year, they have covered up all traces of misdoings and corruption, swept it under the carpet or set up an internal investigation into things rather than have a public or independent one.  - CW

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EA Wants to Hire You, but Not Pay You

Not content with the feather ruffling that followed the announcement of the Season (I’ll) Pass, this week EA announced that they will be giving fans the chance to vote on who should receive a 100 rating in the season opener day patch for Madden 2012. Innocuous enough I suppose to offer this type of control to the public, but if you have ever used a headset while playing madden, or ever been on the internet in general than you would know, as EA should, that it is not populated by the wise and just. Rather we are made up of the bone headed, egotistical and rude.

It is also setting up an extemley uneasy precedent for future community interaction. Long debates on player ratings have been as old as the school yard. I have seen a thousand and one message board posts claiming that the Ratings Czar (that is his real title) is biased towards this team or this player. That they are paid off or refusing to give credit to a certain players performance. That everyone on their favorite team should be at least a 90 overall and everyone on their rival team should be in the 60’s .

Corrupts Absolutely?

Point being, that man has a job, and it is his job to do. What benefit is it to the community of players who want an accurate representation of the NFL in their game to know that JoeShmoeCowboysFan39 is the guy who put the vote over the top and gave Dez Bryant, a player who has only been in the NFL for 1 season a 100 rating in spectacular catch. Therefore becoming the player with the absolute highest spectacular catch rating in the entire league. Preposterous!

Community Responsibility 

And what position does that leave the Ratings Czar in? If Dez Bryant goes on to drop ever spectacular catch he attempts for the rest of the season, is he to abide by the peoples choice? If Aaron Rodgers is voted to have 100 accuracy but then throws 100 incompletion before 10 completions, does he automatically retain it? If he doesn’t, then what was the point of the vote, so we could temporarily have an inaccurate rating in the game?

  Really, thats what they call it.

Locking In

What happens in online franchise mode? Where the players attributes are locked in once the league is started. I play in an online franchise and I would be pretty annoyed to see one of my rivals stats boosted because of a fan vote.

I question EA’s recent need to involve the fans in the decision making process, I did not feel a compelling need to vote for the cover athlete and I feel more compelled to leave the ratings to EA. Let the experts be the experts and let the fans bitch, because they are going to anyway.

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NFL Drama: Part 1

The NFL has had a lock down policy with its image for years. A very public personal conduct policy for its players, but they also have a less publicly known way of controlling their image, licensing partners. There was once a time where a license agreement granted carte blanche to someone to do what they wanted with the license.

NFL Blitz, one of the most fondly remembered series of the last two decades in sports gaming is a primary example. It was an NFL football game that played fantastically, and delivered an over the top performance that represented an exaggerated NFL. An NFL filled with nothing but huge hits, crazy turnovers, ignored penalties and violence. The violent shocking disregard for safety represented in that games depiction of a football game was both wildly entertaining and slightly gruesome.

The Public Face

In 2005, EA locked up NFL football with an exclusive licensing agreement, becoming the only game in time, literally. While the Blitz series lost its luster long before this agreement it was a mitigating factor in the NFLs decision to close out the video game competition for Madden.

The NFL did not like Blitz, or its over the top violent attitude. The NFL likes to play this game where they tell the public that they are really concerned over players health, while also trying to downplay the dangers inherent in a football game. Dangers not only present in NFL Blitz but also exaggerated and encouraged. When the NFL signed with EA, they made sure to make it a part of the agreement to have strict control over the content of their games. It was the end of unrealistic violent depictions of NFL Football.

The Blitz series continued in various forms without the NFL license, but it quickly lost traction as a game, and disappeared.

Wide Reach

The desire for control was not limited to games. In 2003, ESPN launched their first scripted television program. It was a show called Playmakers, it depicted an incredibly seedy underbelly of a professional football team. The show was a hit, and was not entirely based on fiction. That got the NFL all hot and bothered, and threatened to not renew broadcast rights of the real NFL with ESPN.

ESPN knew which of their programming was more profitable and the show was cancelled after a half season. Ironically, many of the writers from the show went on to work on Blitz: The League, one of the post NFL era of Blitz games, following the shows cancelation.

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Questioning the Purpose of a Demo; Why Was this Madden 12 Demo Released?

Earlier this week the demo for Madden 12 was released to awaiting fans online on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This is an annual event that like most games is done as a marketing strategy to boost sales of the game upon its release, but EA does something for Madden that most companies don’t. The demo they release annually is very old.

Many demos released for games are designed from the get go as a demo for the public, but for Madden this week and in previous years as well we were given a demo that was marked to be at least three months old, and possibly older.  

The Issue

It is missing features and polish that one would expect from a demo. Play by play commentary is not included while wacky camera angles and glitches are abhorrently frequent. One of the games biggest touted improvements over last years game is the gameflow play calling option. In the demo released it is completely broken, always choosing a zone Defense while the user is playing defense.

EA has heard the feedback, and responded saying that all of those things are fixed in the game proper. So then why did they release this demo[nstration] of the game if it is not only just an inaccurate representation but also one that could negatively affect buyers?

Why This One?

More so then why did they release this demo to begin with? Some enthusiast outlets are reporting that they had played later demos of the game that were more fully complete and accurate to the real game. If such a demo had already been prepared, why was this older one the one chosen for release.

EA is not in the make dumb decisions business, so more likely than not this was a concession made and not a pre-planned decision. A game breaking bug or some other preventative occurrence must have been the impetuous for using an older build of the game.

This is incredibly unfortunate for them. Since a demo is designed to convince potential customers that they should commit to a purchase it will be hard to track the impact this has definitively, either negatively or positively. Perhaps in the future we may see more frequent delays in the releases of demos in addition to the delays of games.

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Fake Players; Real Attachment

Licensing agreements have a sordid history with sports gamers. They can be an additive to the experience such as a realistic advertisement is placed on the outfield wall of your favorite teams ballpark or having access to team logos and player profiles. They can also be terrible absences when a game can not secure the license. Take Soldiers Field for example, home of the Chicago Bears. Until this year, Soldiers Field was not included in the annual Madden release because they failed to reach a licensing agreement until now.

Professional athletes, never known for their undersized sense of self worth, sometimes will not agree to the use of their likeness in games and replacement players will be created to fill their spots.

Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, and others who at the height of their careers could only be vicariously played through as “player” or Jon Dowd, the lanky Caucasian Left Fielder who was conspicuously absent from any of the Giants games I watched on TV. These fictional players become even more prominent after strikes, when replacement players were denied entry into the players union.

The most interesting fictional players I find however are the ones with absolutely no factual basis whatsoever. Based on no one and made from nothing.

A standard option in modern sports games is an extended career mode otherwise known as a franchise mode. In this mode you control a team not through one game or one season, but for decades. Control over the contracts, the depth charts, the personnel and the coaches decisions are all within the players control.

As the timeline progresses, older real life players will retire and rookies will need to take their places. A name like Calvin Pope may not mean anything to anyone in the NFL, but he was a steal in the 3rd round of the 2007 NFL 2k5 draft on my Xbox.

Pope played for 8 seasons, first as a back up to veteran Patrick Surtain, but midway through his rookie season Surtain was sidelined with a meniscus tear and Pope was given the starting role. He never looked back.

Kenarious Fluellen, a fictional HB in Madden 11. The NFL can't stop him from tweeting, any more than being fictional does.

Pope averaged 7 interceptions a year for the next 8 years. People had jerseys with his name and number on the back and the held signs in the stands with slogans like The Pope-mobile. He was on 2 Super Bowl championship teams and had his number retired by the Dolphins after he retired.

Of course Calvin Pope is not a real person. He never was drafted for the Dolphins and he never played those 8 seasons. The attachment a fictional athlete can have on the player is no less compelling than that of a real athlete.

And the year after Pope was drafted, Jamie Leels came and was terrible. He was a 1st round draft pick that missed every tackle. With the games skills tracker he was superior in every way, but he never made the plays that Pope did, so Pope continued to play while Leers road pine.  

Pope may never have existed but he had a bigger impact on my burgeoning Dolphins fandom than any real player ever did. In my mind, he is sitting in the Hall of Fame right next to Dan Marino and Larry Czonka. For someone else, he may be sitting there next to Night Train Lane, because outside of my little box, Pope played a thousand other careers.

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EA Sports Season Ticket Early Demo Feature a Draft Day Bust

This week EA Sports introduced its Season Ticket program to consumers. For a $25 annual buy you will get:

Discounted Downloadable Content

Free (after you pay $25) Premium Web Content

Membership recognition Badge

But the aspect that I want to touch on today is

Early (but Timed Expiration) Digital Access to Games:

Three days before an EA Sports game is released, owners of the Season Pass will be able to download the full game in its entirety. However this will expire upon the games release. Sports games are already some of the most regularly updated titles, begging the question of how to value a sports title on day one of its availability.

The Rub

Madden 11 was partially unplayable on its first day of release. Formations such as play action and kick returns would result in broken plays with 100% consistent outcomes. Not something that makes a football simulation very accurate. The fans clamored and soon after there was a downloadable patch released.

The Question

This summers latest EA Sports release, NCAA Football 2012, is one of the worst case studies of a sports game being released on schedule instead of when finished. All of the games highest touted and marketed new features were all broken upon release. Fans are still waiting for a patch to be released a month after the game was available in stores, meaning that a month after the release of the game it is still broken.

So what is the incentive to own it three days early when this is the track record?

The Brits

Another aspect being overlooked by many is that this offer is available internationally, but only for EA Sports releases. Annually these would normally include FIFA Soccer, Madden NFL, NHL, NCAA Football, NBA Elite, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour. However NBA Elite has not been released in two years and NCAA Football is not sold outside of North America. This essentially cuts the potential value of the package by 1/3 if you like basketball and live in Queensland Australia.

The Sell

Sports games are also more often than not, annual releases. So convincing an “on the fence” customer that this years game is worth investing in should be a bigger priority to EA than they seem to be making it. These are exactly the types of potential customers who would like to be convinced that the 2012 edition is not 2011 with a roster update.

Which is what makes this feature so poor. It is not even accessible after the games release. Where as EA could have used this as a way to sell a full demo to customers who were on the face of a purchase, it instead becomes a non existent feature of this program the day the game is released. 

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Eagles Make Off Season Moves. Madden Community, EA, Weeps

This past week the NFL exploded with Free Agency signings as the leagues 32 teams sprint (literally and figuratively) to prepare for the upcoming season of football.  For many the biggest name in the FA pool for most was pro bowl Cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha who the was at one point reported to have a 90% likely hood to sign with the NY Jets and a 10% chance to sign with the Dallas Cowboys then shocked the sporting world by agreeing to a contract with the Philadelphia Eagles.

For Madden players this was the cherry on top of an Eagles off season that included such acquisition DT Cullen Jenkins, trading for Cornerback Dominque-Rodgers Cromartie, and retaining most of their division winning team.

In Madden the Eagles have already been a popular choice for undesirable opponents. A game full of cheap plays and exploitive moves, Mike Vick and Desean Jackson were a cheesers dream. With the addition of 2 of the games top cornerbacks the Eagles are now without a doubt going to be the most common opponent you can expect to face.

They will Be Good, So What?

The issue with this is not only the cheap cheese players who run a bootleg with Vick and sprint, or run a bootleg with Vick and throw to Jackson running a slant. The issue is overwhelming boredom with playing the same team consecutively.

The Madden community typically will all choose to play online with only a handful of teams. Any other teams pose a significant disadvantage. As the season progresses and talented players put the game through its paces, the team pool will lesson further and any dedicated Madden player will find his or herself playing against the same 4 teams for the remainder of the games lifespan.

There Will Be Blood

But now, with the Eagles now possessing the exploitive fast players of Desean Jackson and Mike Vick and the defensive prowess rivaling that of any team the in the franchise’s history, you can expect that the opponent you always want to avoid is always going to choose the team you want to avoid; exacerbating the already exhausted fan base who loathed these (Madden) players already.

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MLB Bobblehead Pros Trial Impressions

MLB Bobblehead Pros for Xbox 360 is a silly looking game with much more simulation to it than a passing glance would have you believe. There are no fire balls or out of the park dingers; what MBP does have is some frustrating choices wrapped into a very deep package. At first I was very impressed by MBP, a downloadable game boasting a lot of depth, which is not surprising if you have ever played its cousin Power Pro Baseball. It has a cool look and an easy to understand interface that will be familiar with any modern baseball videogame player. It is easy to be blown away by the flashy glove flips and close play action cameras. The longer I played though, the more expansive my negativity became.  

Audio The first thing that sticks out is the announcer. Some of the lines the announcer has are actually pretty funny. Things like “Hey fans, come back for friendship day” make me chuckle, but almost always these lines do not play to completion. Instead they fade out as the innings transition. Another annoyance is that there are no player name announcements. I’ve heard player names coming out of my video games since the Nintendo64, and weighing in at a 481 mb download, the omission was most certainly not due to any size limitations.

Fielding 

The biggest problem with MBP and many other contemporary baseball videogames is that its players lack anticipation and forethought. Something so simple and standard in a baseball game that like me, you probably never notice it until it’s omitted.

The batting and pitching feels accurate and rewarding.

To throw to a base you use the face buttons on the controller however before the fielder has the ball every button is a dive button. Left and right I had routine ground balls turn into doubles because the game could not anticipate that I would want to throw the ball after fielding it. Watching a CF plant under a fly ball and then suddenly dive out of the way is almost as frustrating as watching my Catcher not throw to 2nd base during a steal because I pressed the Y button before the game was ready for me to do so.

A.I.

This exaggerates another issue, which is the computers choice of who should field a ball. When a ball is hit into the infield the computer decides who you will control when you attempt to field it. Most of the time this worked as expected, with an accurate choice and an easy out. About 1/5 of the time though the computer would make wild choices, often even changing the player half way through the play.

I hope one of them decides to pick up the ball.

During more than one occasion I observed my first baseman first try and field a ball, but as he strayed too far from the bag the game would switch control to left field and give up on getting the out at 1st. On another play the ball simply sat between the shortstop and the 2nd baseman as each decided that they would prefer to hand control over to the other.

Too Long; Didn't Read

It’s not all bad news though. The batting system feels very responsive. The direction and power of the ball coming off the bat always feels accurate and earned. There is an interesting duel system called “Turning Point”, where the screen will focus on the batter and pitcher and whoever wins the duel earns a buff for their team. Overall I think that MBP may be the Xbox 360’s best available baseball game, but that is more a comment on the sad state of baseball on Microsoft’s box than any praise of the game itself.  

Based on the trial of the game only and not the full release.

MLB Bobblhead Pros by Konami Digital Entertainment

$9.99 MSRP and available now for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

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Mission Statment

This blog is about Sports and sports video games. Opinions, impressions, facts and everything in between.