I don’t expect most of you who follow me to get into this post. Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking about this for months for some reason and it’s time to write it down.
For years and years I played Madden 2010. Like, I was still playing it regularly during COVID. I play Franchise Mode. It’s really fun for me to not only play the games, but to make all the player transactions, make the spending decisions, and most of all – to develop the skills of the players and coaches. But I’m also persnickety – I once tried out a newer version of Madden (maybe Madden 2012? It was probably Tim Tebow‘s second year in the league) and found the gameplay to be bad enough that I just went back to 2010. Much can be written about how Electronic Art‘s monopoly on NFL football games has degraded the quality of their product, but I’ll let people who pay much closer attention to those games write on that.
So here’s what I want in a video game based on American Football. What I’m about to layout is probably pretty labor intensive to make, above and beyond what is being made now…
Multiple Leagues in One Game. I don’t just want the NFL. I want the United Football League (UFL). I want the Canadian Football League (CFL). I want the European League of Football (ELF). I’d want Arena Football included as well, but it seems that there are so many leagues that it would be unwieldy. I also want NCAA Football, division 1, division 2, and possibly even division 3. All in one game.
I also want to be able to do Franchise Mode for one team in each league, at the same time. So when I pull up my yearly schedule, it would have the schedule for all of the teams I’m controlling at once. Why? I want to be able to scout and develop players starting when they get to college, and see their career trajectory even if they don’t go into the NFL. Does the second or third wide receiver on my college team go to the CFL? The UFL? After a few years bouncing around in other leagues, does he then have the experience to break into the NFL? Maybe three quarters of the way through a season when injuries have depleted the wide receiver depth on a couple of teams? Maybe that’s when my NFL team signs him, since I know his strengths already and he has shored up his weaknesses enough that he isn’t a liability on the field in the NFL game.
Maybe the guy who couldn’t get off of my practice squad on my NFL team goes to the UFL and lights up the league? Maybe someone is so dominant in the ELF, like Glen Toonga of the Rhein Fire, that they can come over to the CFL or the NFL to provide running back depth on a team when the ELF season is over? Maybe I can use these other teams in other leagues to develop players in my style of play, partially making them minor league teams for my NFL team? Not true minor league teams, that wouldn’t be fair. I’d still want the players in all the other leagues to be considered free agents for the NFL’s purposes.
In a video game of American Football, player development is really fun for me. As in life, where facilitating people’s growth is really fun for me. The other video games I have played have focused on players who are at the top of football when it comes to development, I want to be able to look at everyone.
Also, I’d be really curious to play football using the other rules in the other leagues. Especially CFL rules with 12 players on the field and three downs instead of four… and Arena Football rules.
Make your own Playbook. The Madden series has sometimes done this. Often it’s been pretty poor in it’s execution. I don’t want limits on the amount of plays that can be in your own playbook. I want the ability to take plays from any other playbook in the game and add them to my own. I want the ability to design my own plays and add them to my playbook. I want to be able to make trick plays, including having other players besides the quarterback throw the ball. I want to make my own formations as well. Heck, I don’t want to be stopped from making a formation with two quarterbacks and three kickers if I really want to. I also want to able to set who receives the snap for each play and pre-snap motions.
Someone who is into dynamic offense, as I am, eventually just has to make their own plays. The game needs to support people who want to do that.
I’m real curious to see if the jet sweeps that Kyle Shanahan uses with the 49ers can also be employed by the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I’m curious to see if any team, in any league, can be successful with the playbook that the Baltimore Ravens are using with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry. And heck, let’s throw some classic playbooks in there as well. I’d love to be able to take plays from Bill Walsh‘s playbooks from the early 80’s, the Atlanta Falcons spread offense playbooks from the early 90’s… I’d love some of the real old stuff, like the t-bone or the single wing.
These playbooks that we make would have to be able to be used in Franchise Mode, obviously.
Real Special Teams Positions. If you follow American Football, you are probably familiar with the Kicker, Punter and Long Snapper. But what about Gunner? Kickoff Specialist? Jammer? Here is a list of the different Special Teams positions. Also, punt teams and punt receiving teams require much different skills than offense and defense. Players playing on the offensive line on the punt team need to be good at blocking, but also need to be able to run well and tackle. Players on the defensive line on the punt receiving team need to be able to pass rush, but also block. Those are much different skill groups than standard offensive or defensive players. Typically, in the football video games I have played, players have a primary position (either offense or defense) and there’s just a (seemingly) random assortment of players that are then used on special teams. For every player, I’d like to be able to toggle between their offensive or defensive positions and the positions that they can play on special teams. If a player is a good Upback, for instance, I’d want to know that. That’ll give me a lot more options when my team is punting the ball. (Upbacks, it seems, need to be able to read a defense pre-snap, make calls at the line of scrimmage, be decent at throwing the ball, run the ball, pass block, have a decent overall speed, and make tackles. No other position in football has that mix of skills) Plenty of football players make a living mostly playing special teams, it would be nice for that to be reflected in the game as well. Also, as a player building a roster, knowing these skills forces me to make the same sorts of choices as these team’s management have to in real life – choosing when to prioritize people who are good at offense or defense to be on the roster over people who are good at special teams. Also, maybe your starting Free Safety has a good leg and can serve as a backup kicker or a kickoff specialist? It would be good to know that, and have the option to play them there – especially if your kicker gets injured.
Practice Squad. The games I have played haven’t included a practice squad. Especially now, with the expanded practice squads and ability to call up practice squad players for three games a season in the NFL, I certainly want a practice squad in the game I’m playing.
A true preseason roster and real practices. During the preseason in the NFL, team rosters expand to 90 players. As practices go on, some players get cut and the teams sign new players to either try them out or to make sure they have enough players to practice with. A lot of the players who are on these rosters in the preseason end up getting signed by teams during the season as other players get injured. Having a standard preseason practice schedule, with a number of plays for first, second, third and fourth string per day, would allow the game player to simulate that experience and make similar decisions about who to cut and who to sign as the preseason goes on. It would also mean that I, as the game player, would know the approximate skills of quite a few of the free agents available during the season – as they would have been on the preseason roster. This would also open up opportunities for players to get injured and decisions to be made about who will replace them in practice and/or on the roster – which is certainly one of the realities of actual football.
Also, with the ability to operate teams in multiple leagues at once, maybe I can sign a guy to my CFL team to get him more experience if I wasn’t able to make room for him on the roster of my NFL team – and then re-sign him to my NFL team after the CFL season is over and I’ve had some injuries.
This practice format should extend to the regular season as well. However, not everyone is going to want to actually play through practices. They should be simulatable.
Positional Awareness. Though it’s certainly more sophisticated now than it was for Madden 2010, Awareness has been the standard measurement for how much a player knows what they are doing when they are out on the field in all of the games I have played. I think that as players gain experience and have success at a particular position, their awareness at that position should go up. Some players will get most of their experience on special teams, in that case their awareness should go up in the special teams positions that they are playing. As a player’s awareness goes up in their best position, their awareness should go up some percentage less in positions similar to theirs, and again some percentage less in all other positions. Practice should raise a player’s awareness if they are playing a position that they are under a certain threshold of awareness in – that would allow for the “project player” who didn’t grow up playing the game or who came from another sport to improve enough during practice to be able to get on the field for games. Or for a player who is better at another position, but needs to transition because of roster needs, to be able to practice so they are less of a liability on the field during the game.
Ease of Scouting. Generally, when sorting through available players that can be signed to a team, you can sort by position and physical abilities. I’d like to add a couple more categories: players I like, and players that have played for one of my teams before. There are times, like when I’m looking over another team’s roster or when I’m looking at available free agents, that I see players that I’d like to acquire sometime in the future but that it doesn’t work to acquire right now. I’d like to have a way to mark them for later, so that I can keep alert to them for when it does make sense to acquire them.
This will also add a lot of ease if I am playing college teams as well, because I’ll certainly see college players on other teams that I’ll want to add to my pro teams in the future. Also, if a player played for me once and I know what they can do, that makes me much more confident signing them to another one of my teams. This will especially be cool if I’m playing both as a Division 1 and Division 2 college team. They’ll have up to 80 players on each roster off all skill types, that my teams and all the other leagues may want to sign in the future.
Also, I’d like to have the option to get alerts when another team is attempting to sign a player with either of those designations. Especially because, as far as the NFL is concerned, every player in every other league is a free agent who can be signed at any time. Keeping that in mind, I’d obviously also want an alert if a team in another league is trying to sign one of my current players.
Coaching Careers. In the version of Madden that I have played most, you are only able to hire the head coach, offensive and defensive coordinators, and special teams coach. I’d like to be able to hire every position coach. Also, I’d like an ability to encourage recently retired players to enter into coaching. Position coaches should also be able to be moved to different positions – so after some experience coaching different positions, a coach could then be ready to coach an entire offense, defense or special teams unit. Especially with operating multiple teams in multiple leagues, then there are enough positions and different levels to truly train a lot of good coaches. That sounds like fun to me.
Real injuries. In football, people get injured all the time. I’d want this game to reflect that. That also means having an injured reserve that matches the current NFL rules. Also, gotta make players inactive for games just like the real NFL.
Making it harder. In the games that I have played, if you increase the difficulty of the game the opposing QB just completes a higher percentage of their passes – regardless of what you do on defense. I’d like to see the game learn your tendencies and deploy offensive and defensive adjustments to counter your tendencies, at least at the hardest level.
Retirement. I’d like this game to show me each player that has played for one of my teams and retired from football, by year. I’d like to be able to see their career statistics, for all the teams and leagues that they’ve played in. Including the snaps at each position for each season. All their awards, and any championships they’ve won. A separate entry for their retirement from playing and their retirement from coaching. For me, this will allow me to look back and see the ongoing results I’m producing over time. Sometimes it is fun to reminisce, and seeing all of that in one place would be fun for me.
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