Nintendo Okie

We’re just a couple weeks out from the release of Madden NFL 11.  Joining us today to tell us a little bit about Madden NFL 11 for the Wii is Tim Spangler, the Art Director for Madden and Matt Read, the lead designer for Madden.  I’d like to thank both of them for taking time out of their busy schedules to join us today.

First, can you introduce yourself to everyone and tell us how you’re associated with Madden NFL 11?

TS – Hello. I’m Tim Spangler, the Art Director for Madden NFL 11 on the Wii.

MR – Hi, I’m Matt Read, the lead designer for Madden NFL 11 on the Wii.

I was very vocal about liking the new art style for last year’s game. It looks like it has been refined even more for this year’s release. Can you tell us about why that art style was chosen and how you’ve improved it for this year’s game?

TS – We chose the art style because we felt it was the best fit for the type of game we wanted to make: a visually distinct version of Madden that’s easy to pick up and play, while still delivering the authentic football experience Madden is known for. We looked all across multiple industries for influences. We looked at everything from Pixar to TV commercials to games with similar challenges.

This year, we’ve started to refine our art style. Before you can evolve, you have to create a solid base. That’s how we approached Madden NFL 11. We bought our art style further into the world of NFL football with our uniform degradation and authentic practice gear. This year, weather was a big focus for us and that became a natural extension of our art style. You can see it in everything from the weather effects (snow and rain) to the uniforms and into the field itself. These elements combine to create an immersive experience that’s built upon our art style. For our popular 5on5 mode, we looked at how NFL teams approach practice. Here, we found the specific gear that NFL teams practice in. For the first time in Madden, these are represented in the game. It’s really interesting when you see it. The team designs range from similar to what they wear on Sundays (Ravens) to derivative of existing uniforms (Cowboys) to something unique (Steelers).

I like the family friendly aspects of EA’s sports games. I think they work really well for families with younger gamers. What options are there that are new for this year’s game compared to last year?

MR – A great innovation in this year’s Madden is the new playcalling system, GameFlow. GameFlow works great are some many levels. Not only is it only more authentic but it also makes it easier for less football savvy gamers who don’t quite understand all the X’s and O’s. What GameFlow does is analyze the situation and call the most appropriate play keeping you right in the action at all times. Of course, more experienced gamers can override GameFlow at any time to call their own play.

One thing many hardcore football fans want is more of the simulation type gameplay that’s the focus of the 360 and PS3 versions. What about Madden NFL 11 on Wii will speak to those really hardcore football or Madden fans?

MR –Madden NFL 11 for the Nintendo Wii has strong roots in football simulation and authenticity. Hardcore Madden NFL fans are definitely going to be very pleased with this year’s game. A large amount of the year’s effort was spent creating an exciting new Franchise Mode with all the depth a hardcore fan would expect with all new features you can only find on the Wii.

Campus mode is new for the Wii this year, if I remember correctly. What can you tell us about this mode?

MR – The campus is a component of the new franchise mode. One of our design goals was to keep everything in Franchise visual. This is accomplished in a number of ways but the most predominant is your franchise’s campus. After creating a new franchise, one of the first things you’ll see is a representation of your team’s campus on the screen. Instead of delving through numerous screens and spreadsheets you simply click on different buildings inside your campus to access different information. For example, say you want to adjust your team’s jersey prices. You point and click on the pro shop and adjust your price from them. It is definitely more fun than just flipping through menus.

Another cool thing is how the campus changes over time based on how well you are doing. Let’s say you are losing a bunch of money, well, your buildings start to become broken down and dilapidated. Alternatively, how about when your fan attendance is through the roof, well, your fans will throw a festival in the streets before every game.

How hard is it trying to balance making the game accessible to everyone while still making it feel like Madden to the veterans of the franchise?

MR – I think a great example of that is this year’s franchise mode. We designed it to be as hands off or hands on as you want. Your team’s staff consist of different assistants that help you balance team performance, fans, and finance. For example, your Team Performance assistant can help you during the draft or you can draft by yourself. Either way, you can participate in all the off-season activities such as free agent signing, renegotiating player contracts, and the NFL Draft, or let your assistants handle it for you.

This works great for people both new to the game and Madden veterans.

The big new feature for this year’s release of Madden is the Gameflow where you have a more immersive way of calling plays that feels like you have an offensive or defensive coordinator talking to you. Is that going to be a feature for the Wii version and can you talk a little about how it works?

MR – Gameflow is a great feature and we definitely included in the Madden NFL 11 Wii version as well. We were not able to support the offensive/defensive coordinator speaking to you but we did create another playcalling system, Arcade Playcall, in addition to the Gameflow. Arcade playcall, similarly to Game Flow, looks at the situation and provides different play choices based on that situation. Let’s say its 3^rd and inches. Arcade playcall will appear with four different play categories, Short Pass, Deep Pass, Run, and Special Teams. You click on run and Arcade playcall will provide you with four different run options that will work best for 3rd and inches. It’s a two-click choice before you’re back on the field. Overall, it’s very easy to use and provides more control than GameFlow without all the depth of conventional playcall.

Gameflow feels very much like the Ask Madden feature where the game suggest plays to call. Does this replace Ask Madden or is it another feature in addition to that?

MR –Ask Madden is still available in the full playcall option.

Madden always makes changes to their game play every year. Sometimes they’re large changes, other times they are changes that most fans might not even realize. What other changes to areas like blocking, defense or offense have been added to this year’s game?

MR – That is a great point. Every year so much work goes into so many different areas of gameplay we don’t possible have a chance to talk about it all. Those small intangibles just make the game feel better and it is sometimes hard to put your finger on what changed when you’re playing the game. We have touched many different areas of gameplay including adding over hundreds of new animations, retuning running, blocking, passing, and catching. These changes might not be sweeping but they definitely make the game play better.

With an annual franchise like Madden, do you start the development cycle thinking “this year we will improve *blank*” or do you try to continually improve the whole game simultaneously?

TS – From an art standpoint, we’re always looking for areas of improvement. We do critical analysis on other mulitple titles (not just the Sports genre) identify improvement areas. We also listen to the fans. We have a great number of vocal fans and we always take that into consideration. From there, we balance improvements that will make the biggest impact against ideas we have that will evolve the game to meet our consumer’s expectations.

Will the Wii version’s online support Wii Speak?

MR – Madden NFL 11 will not support Wii Speak this year but we are always investigating new opportunities to incorporate Wii peripherals in our game.

Is the Wii version of the game going to support online leagues? How deep are the online options going to be for Wii users?

MR – Madden NFL 11 will support online head-to-head games with the full suite of stack tracking. We also take advantage of the EA Buddy system that doesn’t require friend codes.

Will the Wii version use Wii Motion +, or possibly support a Classic Controller option?

MR – Madden NFL 11 does not support Wii Motion Plus or the Classic Controller but we are always investigating new opportunities to incorporate Wii peripherals in our game.

Were there any problems you had to overcome in mapping the controls for the Wii?

MR – Mapping the buttons wasn’t as tough as figuring out the most appropriate gestures to incorporating into gameplay. Making a gesture for gesture-sake is not how you want to design anything for the Wii. Madden NFL began its life on the Wii back in 07 and back then, let’s just say most developers got a little gesture crazy. Madden 09 had over 25 gestures and to think about having to remember those imagine them as different buttons. That’s a lot of buttons you have to remember. We boiled it down to two major gestures, flicking the wii remote up and flicking the wii remote down. We only put a handful of moves, like Big Hit and Power Move, on those gestures because it felt good and it makes sense.

You’ve been releasing the rankings for each team little by little over the last few days. How much time goes into those rankings trying to dial them in perfectly?

MR – Donny “ The Ratings Czar” Moore, the man behind the ratings for all Madden NFL games takes his job very seriously. You would have to ask him exactly how much time he spends but it’s definitely not a one-day job. The process takes months and continues as we release roaster updates throughout the length of the NFL season.

Do you have to balance making the game accurate to the real world teams while trying to make each team happy with how they’re represented?

MR – Thanks to our close relationship with the NFL, our job of making the game incredibly authentic is not as hard as you’d imagine.

How many complaints do you get every year from players or teams that feel they’ve been wronged with how they’re ranked in the game?

MR – Players understand not everyone can be a 99 in everything. I would imagine everyone wants to be rated higher but they always understand the ratings are based on strict statistical information.

Who do you think is going to win the Super Bowl this year?

TS – That’s an easy question for me. That’s right, the Dallas Cowboys will be the first team to win a Super Bowl in their home stadium. It’s not going to be easy, though. The Cowboys’ schedule is brutal and the winner of the NFC East likely won’t dominate the entire division. However, these late clashes could prove as the perfect battle ground for the postseason. All the pieces are in place, we just need a little luck along the way (avoid the injury bug) and we’ll make it.

I want to thank both of you once again for joining us.  I have to disagree with his assessment that the Cowboys will win the Super Bowl.  I’m a Panthers fan and they’re going all the way this year behind Matt Moore at QB.  Madden NFL 11 releases for the Nintendo Wii on August 10th.  Nintendo Okie will have a review of the game available then so check back with us in a couple weeks.