But now, with some of the diehard football fans calling for the community to boycott the next installment of Madden, where does this leave the casual fans?
This will be partly anecdotal, but I believe many gamers will be able to relate.
I have a large group of friends, and nearly every one of them is a fan of the NFL to varying degrees. We all play fantasy football, and watch our team on Sundays. Some know the intricacies of contracts, whereas some don’t. Some know the depth chart for their team, some only know the key players.
There was a point in time when we all had Madden, but over the years, my friends began to lose interest one by one. Last year, every one of them elected to pass on Madden 20, and I don’t blame them.
How does one convince a group of friends that Madden is worth the $60 price point every year?
Madden 20 received a user score of 1.5 on a scale of 10 on MetaCritic last year. The game hardly changes on a year-to-year basis. The game features an aggressive system of micro-transactions in their Ultimate Team mode, which is essentially just a pay-to-win online casino for mostly kids. The games’ biggest tournament was won by a player who used one play the entire game and exploiting flawed mechanics.
(Last year’s Madden 20 received a user score of 1.5 on a scale of 10 on MetaCritic.)
Now, let’s compare that to the other options.
When my friends can play Call of Duty: Warzone for free, in a massive online world featuring 200 players, that releases free monthly updates with a ton of content, how do I convince them Madden is worth $60?
When my friends can play Fortnite for free, with dozens of other players in a constantly changing map, receive weekly new content, including concerts by Travis Scott and Marshmello, how do I convince them Madden is worth $60?
All of these games are free and provide refreshing updates filled with content at the end of their “seasons,” which last typically between 60 and 90 days.
(Call of Duty Warzone’s midseason update; which featured a new weapon, new map, new operator, among many other changes.)
EA released the Gridiron Notes for Madden 21 on Tuesday, and it fails miserably to compete with the free updates that the games like Warzone, Fortnite and Apex Legends release to their customers on a monthly basis.
Being the only NFL game is no longer a good enough reason to look past the games’ glaring flaws and severe lack of content and improvements.
So again, I ask, how does one convince them it’s worth the $60?
“Well, you see, they had to remove the referees from the game because the system couldn’t handle it,” I say, as we lift off from a helicopter on a 20-story building with three other friends in Warzone.
“Well, they didn’t have the resources to improve Franchise this year,” I say, as I know very well that EA posted a net revenue of almost $5 billion in 2019.
“It’s too difficult to implement a physics-based engine,” I say, as I know Psyonix, a once small indie development studio, perfected their game Rocket League using a physics based engine in 2015.
It is 2020, and gamers in general are highly informed. They appreciate transparency from developers more than anything. They understand the limitations and workload that developers struggle with, and I don’t think the frustration should be directed at them.
But EA, and those at the top of the company, cannot continue to think that gamers will blindly believe that they don’t have the resources to massively overhaul this game. They cannot continue to expect gamers to be satisfied with a low quality product being sold at full price.
Madden, as it stands right now, is
- Not good.
- Annually unchanged
- Filled with micro-transactions
You can’t have all of those while still being sold at full price.