Madden NFL 08 Producer Interview

Jul 5, 2007

Lots of attention has been paid to the PS3 and 360 versions of Madden, EA Sports' long-standing football franchise. Whether it's the improved visuals, revamped gameplay systems or newly included weapon systems, most articles written about the game have been focused on how the current generation of Madden will play. But what about the respected series on the last generation of consoles? Plenty of sports fans haven't made the leap to the PS3 or 360, preferring to hang on with their PS2s, Xboxes or Gamecubes.

Well football fans, you're in luck. We sat down with Dan Baker, the Producer of Madden NFL 08 on the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube to find out what features players will be able to expect for the last gen systems. Tiburon and EA Sports definitely has a couple of tricks up its sleeves. Read on to find out about the new Skills Drills mode, the Fantasy Challenge mode, and the revamped focus on drawing casual football fans to the Madden fold.

IGN: What are some of the new features to be found within the last gen versions of the game?

Dan Baker:This year -- obviously, with most of the hardcore guys moving onto the next-gen systems - we wanted to do a couple of things that we haven't really done in Madden before that really cater to the casual fan who's going to go out and buy the $129 PS2, for example. One of the things that we worked on is something called Skill Drills. Skill Drills is kind of an interactive tutorial that will teach the new user how to play the game. We've always had the tutorials in the past that were just videos that you watch that explained some things. In Skill Drills, there's a pre-play, rushing, passing and defense tutorial. But you're actually doing things in this mode.

If you're doing the Passing Tutorial, for example, you have guys that are running routes. All of these tutorials are being played against the tackling dummies. We tried putting all of the football animations on them and they look fantastic - it's just funny to watch. So all of these drills are against the dummies. To continue the example of the passing drill: you're learning how to read the coverages, you're learning how to time routes, and you're learning how to avoid the blitz and things like that. When you go to the pre-play tutorial, a lot of people don't know how to put guys in motion or hot route a receiver or do slide protection for your offensive line to block to a certain side to try to pick up the blitz. So what we do there is throw out different assignments and try to walk you through it. The first levels of the drills are pretty basic - we'll walk you through it and tell you how to do things - but as you get deeper and deeper into the tutorial, it gets a lot harder. You have to do things by memory and we start throwing things at you faster. So really, it's a lot of those advanced user techniques that a lot of the more casual guys don't do. We just want to introduce those techniques to people and make it like, "you versus these robots."

IGN: So would you consider this a pretty decent refresher for even hardcore guys?

Baker: Absolutely. We wanted to make them fun as well. You can do them with two players. Instead of something like the head-to-head rushing drill where one guy would go and try to get points and then the next guy would try to get points, we tried to make the drills more interactive. So in the passing drill, for instance, when you're playing with two players, there are these two big tackling dummies in the middle of the field. The defender is actually using the left and right analog sticks to move those dummies independently to try to swat down the ball and figure out where your friend is trying to pass to. So we tried to do little things like that in the two player experience to make the game a lot more fun, but yet a lot more different than in the past - a lot more interactive, but much more different. I think it came out really good. We're really excited about that mode.

IGN: Can you break the skill drills out into their own training mini-games, or are they contained to their own game mode?

Baker: For this year, it is kind of contained to itself. One of the cool things about it is that as you play Play Now games or other games, we'll actually evaluate how you played. If we find out that you didn't use too many pre-play controls, for example, then at the end of the game we'll suggest, "Hey, we saw that you didn't use motion or hot routes very often. Do you want to go and jump into the pre-play tutorial?" We'll do the same things with running moves and how you're passing or how you're doing on defense. So we'll evaluate as you play and then suggest a drill if we think we can help you out and get a little bit better. But these are really contained to themselves - they are totally different experiences between one player and two players, which we definitely wanted to capture - but they're not really incorporated into any other game mode.

IGN: One of the things that the PS3 and 360 versions have been touting is the weapons system. Is that somewhat different than the read and react system, and if so, can you elaborate on that?

Baker: It's the same system, it's just that we had to word it differently. In-game, it's actually referred to as weapons, but it's the read and react system. A lot of this stuff we had buried on screens in the past games, and it was hard to find - you know, it wasn't really accessible. What we tried to do is really bring it to the forefront, so a user can quickly scan the field and identify mismatches. So let's say you've got Marvin Harrison, who runs really great routes and he's fast and elusive. If you've got a lockdown corner on him, he's still going to get open, but not anywhere as near as much as he would if the defender wasn't a weapon. He's going to be able to find spaces in the zone or beat his man one on one. So if you see a match up where he doesn't have a weapon lined up against him, then obviously you can exploit that. If you see someone with a lockdown corner on him, on the other hand, then you have to be careful and pick your spots to throw to him, because he's not going to be open all day. This works for all different positions, but that was a quick example of how wide receivers and cornerbacks would work. It really gives you a good quick scanning of the field so you can identify these mismatches right away so you can exploit them.

IGN: The weapons that are in the last gen version of the game will be the same ones as the current gen, right?

Baker: We actually scaled back and have a few less than the next-gen version of the game. There were a couple of them that we looked at and decided that we probably didn't need that particular one. Again, we're catering more for the casual user than the hardcore player on the current gen than the next gen version, whereas Madden next-gen is really trying to pick out the things that the hardcore player would really enjoy. But the icons that are in both games have a consistent look, so if you know the icons in the current gen version, you'll know them in the next gen and vice versa.

IGN: Will there be any additions or tweaks to Hit Stick 2.0 in the last gen version of the game?

Baker:Absolutely. Hit Stick 2.0 is in both games. You now have the ability to flick the stick up or down - if you hit down on the stick, you'll try to cut a guy's legs out from underneath them. So, for example, if you're a cornerback going up against Mike Alstott and you try to hit him up high, there's a pretty good chance that you'll bounce off of him. On the other hand, if you hit him low by flicking the stick down, you'll do the hit stick animation where you cut his legs and send him flying. It's a really cool system and we think that it really innovates the hit stick. Hit stick is a feature that everyone loves and I think we've just taken it to the next level and added another layer of strategy to it. You want to make sure that you use the right move at the right time and go low if you're a little guy; if you're a big guy, you can blow up a player. But obviously if you time hitting up on a smaller back, you can possibly cause more fumbles.

IGN: One of the things that was missing from last year's version of the game was the ability to jump the snap, which was something found in NCAA Football. Has jumping the snap been implemented in Madden 08?

Baker:You know, that's one thing that we actually didn't do with Madden current gen this year. It was one of the things that we talked about a little bit, but it didn't actually make it over.

IGN: One thing we noticed is that the current gen has tighter break animations to render quick cut steps or changes in direction. Has the last gen received any improvements to its animation in the same manner?

Baker: No, that was probably one area where next gen needed to improve on more than the current gen. As far as transition animations between changing directions, I think that current gen has a great feel to it already - you know, those direction changes have all felt pretty good. The lean curve runs when you're making subtle changes just feel really good in current gen, so we didn't really tweak too much of that this year. One of the things that we did add on the animation side, which we're pretty excited about, is that we have way more gang tackles on the current gen side than ever had before. I think we've got 24 of them now where I think we had 8 in the past - hardly any. So we added a ton of new gang tackle animations, a ton of new catch animations that look really nice, and that's where we focused our attention efforts this year. That's the stuff that people see so often and they get repetitive pretty quick if you don't have a good variety, so we definitely wanted to make sure that we had a good variety on current gen.

IGN: Are there any new additions to the franchise mode or to classic features of Madden, or will it be rather minor like it was last year with its off-season roster management options?

Baker: With current gen, the focus was really on new experiences for the more casual guys. We figured that most hardcore franchise guys are going to be playing that on next gen, so we didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on Franchise. One of the things we did do is we modified the flow of the Franchise mode to be more accessible to players with a tab called My Week. In that tab is going to be all of the main things that you're going to need - it kind of walks you through all the things that most users would want to do. Before, we'd just have a big menu system, and some users would sometimes not know where to go. But the My Week screen has Rosters on it, it has Study Opponent, it has Practice and it has Check Your Email: all that you can do on a step by step basis. Now, you don't have to go into everything if you don't want to, but it presents the main things that you would want to do before Game Day to learn about your opponent - how you might exploit them and what their weaknesses are. Basically we just tried to group all of that information into a basic flow; it's not vastly different than what we've had in previous years, but it's much more intuitive than it has been in previous years. Again, for the casual franchise guy that may not want to play 30 years in franchise but may want to dabble in it for a few years, I think we've captured the flow of it a lot better and they'll be able to navigate it much easier.

IGN: One of the things that stood out to us is the new fantasy challenge mode. What's that all about and is it its own standalone mode like the skill drills?

Baker: This one, again, is its own mode. We had some good ideas about it, but it just kept growing and growing, and it became way more important and cool than we ever thought it was going to be when we first started it. The idea is that we divide the NFL into three separate tiers, and you take a team - the Dolphins, for example. You can just take them or take the Dolphins and do a fantasy draft. It's a quick 15 round draft; if you go to franchise mode, you have to draft all 53 players on your roster - it can take a long time. What we did was group certain positions together. So you draft an offensive line - you can draft the Tampa Bay offensive line or the Ravens linebackers, for instance. Basically what that gives you is a 15 round mini-quick draft where you've customized your team, and then once you've got them on your team, you can trade all of those guys. For instance, if you take the Ravens linebackers corps, obviously you've got a pretty good set of linebackers there, but you can then start upgrading those individual guys. So we did the groupings for the draft, which you can then customize for your team.

The league, as I said, is broken up into three tiers, and you start off in the lowest tier called the Newbie League. You play a round robin situation and if you qualify as one of the top teams, you get placed in the Newbie Playoffs, which has four teams with two playoff games. If you win that championship game, then you move up to the next league, which is the Black and Blue league. We give you harder teams, but it's the same format, where you're trying to build your teams: each game you win, you get points that you can use to upgrade your players. You have a roster of 25 players and you can only protect three of them, so the other 22 players on the team are all up for grabs. Other teams can try to lure your players away from your team, and you have to decide if you're going to let them go or counteroffer and spend points to keep them. In-between each game, a team will challenge you to one of the mini-camp games, like Rushing Attack, and if you beat that other team, you get a chance to take one of their better players. Now if you lose, they'll take one of your good players. You don't have to take all of the challenges - the computer will challenge you every game, but it's up to you as to whether you want to take that challenge based on who they're offering, or who they want to take if they win.

Now, once you pass the three tiers of the NFL teams, we place you into what we call the Supreme League. You're playing against six teams that we throw at you: the AFC hall of fame team - obviously we have the rights to a pretty good list of players. If you beat them then you move on to the NFC hall of fame teams. Then, there are the crazy created teams that all have special powers. We had our concept guys come up with some pretty cool teams. One of them is the Deceivers that play in a demonic-like stadium. They cheat a little - they get five downs, their goalposts grow to be longer, penalties are half the distance of normal ones, stuff like that. Another team is the Glaciers, and they play in a snowy stadium. They'll blink out of view: you might be throwing to a receiver, and the defender will blink out and suddenly reappear, making it much harder to know where the coverage is. The same happens with their receivers and running backs, which is trickier to cover them. There are the Tridents, big Atlantean players that are bigger than your players, hit harder, and really use Hit Stick tactics to force a lot of fumbles. Finally, there's a team of tackling dummies that never get fatigued, but they are pretty stupid. They always go for two point conversions and go for it on fourth down instead of kicking.

IGN: In last year's game, Sterling Sharpe broke down plays in the NFL Network mode. Since the focus is on the casual player, has this been augmented in any way to help instruct these gamers in this year's game?

Baker: Actually, NFL Network mode is one of those modes that we just couldn't figure out what to do with it to improve it, and we thought that Skill Drills was the way that we wanted to take this year's game. So we actually removed NFL Network mode out of the game this year. It was one of those things that we weren't going to be able to upgrade the way we wanted to, and we put so much effort into Skill Drills that NFL Network mode was kind of rendered obsolete.

IGN: Okay. Has superstar changed at all within Madden NFL 08, or is it the same as last year's game?

Baker: We did a couple different things that I think are pretty significant. One of them is we changed the way that you create your guy. We did the random dice roll for a couple of years. Most people know who they want to create, and they don't want to go through 150 dice rolls before they get the guy they're looking for to be a quarterback or all-star running back. So we put the controls into your hands to make the kind of player you want to create instead of spending half an hour rolling dice. You can come in and say, "Hey, I want to make a superstar running back," and you can tailor your guy to be that superstar back. You still have the same setup: you're coming in as a rookie with pretty decent stats, but you'll still need to do practices and drills to make them better and make them elite. I think that will take away a lot of frustration from users so they don't have to do all of that now.

The second cool thing that we did is we said, "Hey, there's a lot of cool rookies that are out there that people might want to take with Superstar mode and see how far they can take them." So this year, we're allowing players to play Superstar mode as any one of these rookies. So if you want to take JaMarcus Russell and see if you can turn him into a superstar, we're going to let you do that this year, which we obviously haven't allowed before. This was really driven home last year when we saw the kind of year that Reggie Bush was having and figured that other people would want to take one of these great rookies and try to control their career. We did some enhancements and tweaking to the cameras, but largely the experience will be pretty similar to what happened in the past

IGN: How far into this previous draft does this new Rookie Superstar mode go? Does it include everyone from JaMarcus to Mr. Irrelevant, Ramzee Robinson?

Baker: I think we give you the whole list. Originally, we'd talked about taking the top ten guys, but it should be everybody in here. You've got a pretty good list to choose from.

IGN: So the influence system hasn't been tweaked at all? Meaning if someone else doesn't do their job, you'll still be penalized for it?

Baker: We did a little bit of tweaking to that system because we did hear about some issues that people had with that system, but it didn't get a complete overhaul. It's tuned a bit better, but you might still see some issues there.

IGN: Considering some of the changes, what are some of the changes that you wish had made it into Madden NFL 08 that might carry over into Madden NFL 09?

Baker: That's a good question. To be honest with you, everyone says that current gen isn't as glamorous as the next gen stuff. We've had a full development team working on this for a year, and we've changed the direction of the title a little bit, aiming more for the casual user, but at this point I can't think of anything that we didn't get in here that I really was disappointed about. We're going to offer such a different experience than we've had in previous years. We've tweaked the gameplay, we've added all of those animations, the gang tackling, the fantasy challenge mode, the Skills Drills. It's a really complete offering for this year and I'm really proud of the feature set.

IGN: Thanks for your time, Dan.

We'll have more on Madden NFL 08 soon.