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Tag Archives: Madden
‘Citadel’ Review: Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden in the Russo Brothers’ Big, Basic Amazon Spy Series – Hollywood Reporter
- ‘Citadel’ Review: Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden in the Russo Brothers’ Big, Basic Amazon Spy Series Hollywood Reporter
- Citadel review: Prime Video’s spy drama is generic and boring The A.V. Club
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- View Full Coverage on Google News
Switch Dominated 2022 Sales, While Call Of Duty Beat Elden Ring
Now that 2022 is over (thank God), the NPD group has done its thing, collecting and processing all the resulting sales data. Now we can look back at the last 12 months and see what games and consoles sold best, and how much money people spent on this stuff. Shocking nobody, Nintendo had another successful year while Elden Ring nearly topped the charts, beating out both God of War and Madden.
Yes, it’s once again that time of the year when the NPD Group—a decades-old retail tracking and market research company—releases data on what people bought last year. While the group tracks and monitors many different industries, since 1995 it’s monitored the sale of video games and consoles in the United States, and usually publishes some of this data every month.
Nintendo is likely pleased to see that in 2022 the top-selling video game console in the United States was the Nintendo Switch. The NPD doesn’t release specific sales numbers publicly, so we don’t know just how many Switch consoles were sold this year, but Nintendo’s aging console outperformed the PlayStation 5, which was the second best-selling platform last year, and Xbox Series X/S, which came in third. It should also be noted that the Switch was the best-selling console of December 2022 so it appears the Switch is still the hot item to get around Christmas. And two new Pokémon games in 2022 (even if they were buggy) probably helped, too.
Late last week, the NPD Group also released its list of the 20 best-selling games of 2022. Before we jump into the list, remember that Nintendo doesn’t share its digital numbers with the NPD, potentially hurting its own games’ rankings. But anyway, here’s the NPD top 10:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Elden Ring
- Madden NFL 23
- God of War: Ragnarök
- Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
- Pokémon Scarlet/Violet
- FIFA 23
- Pokémon Legends: Arceus
- Horizon Forbidden West
- MLB The Show 22
While Elden Ring was on a roll this year and still ends up as the second best-selling game of 2022, it wasn’t able to defeat the juggernaut that is Call of Duty. There’s a reason Activision continues to focus almost all of its resources and studios on Call of Duty: because it makes a lot of money. And as always, some big-name sports games and console exclusives fill out the rest of the list. This data is also a great reminder that most folks outside of the people reading this or commenting below don’t care about bugs, as Madden NFL 23 and the new Pokémon games launched in fairly rough states yet they still cracked the top 10.
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Now that 2022 is over and done with, it’s time to place your bets for the best-selling game of 2023! The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom seems like a solid bet…assuming it releases this year.
We all need to stop buying the Madden video game
Sports video games are notoriously awful. Rarely anything about them changes from year to year aside from roster updates and an occasional graphics overhaul. Gameplay stays relatively the same, thus the fun stays about the same as well. Actually, the fun may be decreasing as several sports franchises turn their attention to money-making modes like Ultimate Team or Diamond Dynasty, neglecting the modes that give the games a public appeal. EA Sports’ Madden NFL game is arguably the worst offender.
I don’t have to say how low the Madden franchise has fallen in recent years. Search YouTube and you’ll find a library of creators with in-depth videos about the unprecedented decline in quality of Madden games. You could probably do that with any sports franchise — FIFA, NBA 2K, MLB: The Show. Even a series as beloved as the NHL series has seen a considerable decline in consumer ratings in recent years. However, with the popularity of football in America, Madden has more or less become the poster child for sports video games’ mediocrity, and this past week, Madden may have made their biggest blunder ever, a real serious whoopsy-daisy, if you will.
Madden’s Christmas blunder
If you’re not up-to-date with Madden news, I don’t blame you. I haven’t played Madden 23 since like Week 4 of the current NFL season, and I only bought it because I’m a weak-willed individual who succumbs to peer pressure way too quickly. However, I hope you’ll still get upset when you realize what Madden did to its user base.
It all started on December 26, when Madden gave its users a faulty franchise mode for Christmas. I guess they were all on EA’s naughty list for not stealing other people’s credit cards to buy more MUT packs, I’m not sure. Regardless, for some unknown reason, people were having trouble logging into Connected Franchise Mode, which is the only mode some people, including myself, play nowadays on Madden. It’s a way to conduct seasons with friends and play against each other in a “realistic” setting.
If I can’t play connected franchise mode, I’m not playing their terrible game. Thankfully, they were investigating the situation, and it would hopefully only be a few days before Connected Franchises were back up and running smoothly. No.
TWO DAYS! It took two days for them to get their second-most popular mode up and running! My word, the incompetence of EA Sports never ceases to amaze. Okay, whatever. Maybe it was a huge issue that needed to be resolved. At least it’s working again and people can get back to playing their friends. After all, the official Madden Direct account had given players the thumbs up on Connected Franchises.
This was tweeted out the next day. Oopsies! Turns out not everything is solved. I know we told you everything was good-to-go, but in reality, we just wanted our users back so that you could start spending money on our terrible product again. We don’t care about this game mode, so we put minimal effort into fixing it, and once the masking tape started to hold, we told you all that it was okay to go back. That wasn’t the case though.
That’s how the tweet above felt. EA Sports had been neglecting franchise mode, and now that there’s a problem, they basically don’t do anything, hoping that minimal effort will hold them over as it always has.
The Madden 23 news keeps getting worse
Unfortunately, minimal effort didn’t just not work this time, it may have destroyed several users’ files.
“Hello Madden Franchise Community,
We wanted to provide you with an update and next steps around your Online Franchise, CFM Leagues and FOTF saves from 12/28.
From the Developers: On Wednesday 12/28 around 2:45 pm EST, Players trying to access the Franchise server were given an error that leagues were unavailable. The issue persisted until 12:45 am EST on Thursday 12/29. Unfortunately, if you logged into Franchise leagues during this time, your data was affected due to a data storage issue that resulted in Franchise files being corrupted.
Note: Players and leagues who did not log in during that window, your leagues were not impacted and are currently safe to log into and play.
First off, we are sorry that this happened. We know how important your franchises are to you and we are actively working on a fix to restore some files via a backup as soon as possible. However, not all affected leagues can be restored. The team is currently projecting around 40% of leagues to be recovered. We will communicate an updated timeline next week around the potential restoration of save files from a backup.
If you logged in during the above window, we encourage you to start a new franchise as theEA mode is up and running. Stay tuned to @MaddenNFLDirect for updates around Franchise restoration.”
The above is an actual statement from the Madden developers. The “too long; didn’t give a shit” version of this statement is that anyone who tried to access franchise mode between December 28 at 2:45 pm ET and December 29 at 12:45 am ET, had their file corrupted and ultimately erased. For simply trying to play the game, players were gifted a huge middle finger, after Madden had told players it was alright to try to get back on Franchise Mode. Holy smokes, talk about your all-time fuck-ups. Talk about a hilarious gaffe, right? I’m sure all those players loved losing their six-year franchise where they built a 93 overall dynasty against their friends with an X-Factor rookie linebacker. I’m sure none of them were upset.
The statement does say that some of the leagues will potentially be restored, but they don’t offer a timeline for that fix. They also project that only 40 percent of files will be saved. In other words, more than half of all files are gone forever. In reality, the number is probably something like 5-10 percent and Madden is just trying to save a little bit of face by giving players a figure that gives them a little bit of hope that their franchise will be recovered. Pathetic.
Having trouble logging in is bad, but it’s not a problem only Madden has dealt with. Ultimately, if the problem was just that some users were having trouble logging in, even if it took two days to fix, players would have forgotten about that trouble relatively quickly. But to say that it’s okay to log in and punish franchise players for doing so…that’s a tear even Flex Tape would have trouble mending. How can their user base trust anything the company says anymore? I don’t care how many dances and touchdown animations you add to the game, I lost my 22-year-old X-factor quarterback Johnny Flanagan!
What’s sad is that Madden may literally try to save face by offering exactly what I said above — an emote or animation that can make DeVonta Smith floss or something. I know some people like that stuff, but if Madden does in fact do this as an “apology,” how little do they think of their fans? Yeah, I know you paid $70 on the game, and potentially more in MUT, only for us to erase your favorite save file. You have every right to be upset. So here’s an add-on that can make your players do a cool handshake, totally free. We’ll even throw in a twerking emote for only $4.99. We sure do love our players. Get out of here with that bullshit.
Like I said earlier, I haven’t played Madden at all in months, but franchise mode has always been what keeps me a customer, even if I don’t buy every game every year. If I lost my 99 overall defensive end Javonte Morant, my 97 overall cornerback Devin Burney, or my 98 overall tight end Allen Winn, each of whom I spent weeks developing into X-factors, I’d be done. Madden would be going straight into the trash, right next to Gotham Knights and Babylon’s Fall. In fact, I wasn’t even affected, and I might still do that. It’s just the right thing to do.
While I may not have been affected, fellow Deadspin writer DJ Dunson was one of the unfortunate souls whose league was tarnished by the mighty hammer of EA Sports’ incompetence. “I’m pissed. Very, very pissed,” said Dunson, rage fueling every keyboard press of that sentence. I don’t blame him. According to reports, it wasn’t just online franchises either. Even offline franchises succumbed to this awful corruption catastrophe. No one who wanted to play the only simulation-style football video game available was safe. All I can offer is my condolences.
Seriously, things aren’t going to get better if this doesn’t hurt EA’s pockets. Why would they try to improve their product if they know we, as a group, are going to keep buying the game and spending real money on fake money to spend on virtual cards? Stop buying Madden! They clearly don’t care about you, it’s time to stop caring about the game.
Madden Streamers Are Going On ‘Strike’ Over Gambling Odds
Some of the biggest streamers in the Madden community have announced they’re going on “pack strike,” creating a hashtag and refusing to spend any money on Madden 23’s Ultimate Team mode until publisher Electronic Arts makes some changes.
What’s Ultimate Team?
Both Madden and FIFA have wildly-popular multiplayer game modes called Ultimate Team, which let users create their own teams of all-time greats. The catch is that you have to obtain your players via cards, and those cards are sold blind in sealed virtual packs, and those packs are paid for with real money.
As Polygon reports, the streamers—who for sports games like this are a huge part of the online community—have created the hashtag #packstrike, and are urging all players, not just their content-creating peers, to refuse to spend a cent on Ultimate Team until EA addresses their concerns.
Zirksee, speaking for both himself and “other creators in the community,” shared the group’s demands earlier today. He says they’re asking for, among other things, “better rerolls” and “better pack odds overall” when opening the more expensive player packs, as well as the restoration of rewards that used to offered for games (including some that were initially offered during the first week of Madden 23’s release) that have since been removed:
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Like I’ve said only this week, there is no number of tweets, reviews or comments that can make publishers walk back the extent to which they’ve monetised major sports game series in 2022. The only thing that moves the needle with these companies is money, and so the only way for disgruntled players to get their point across is to withhold that money.
So seeing content creators mobilise as a means of protest is heartening! Though it’s also wild to consider that a decade of turning sports games into shakedowns has normalised things to the extent that people are “striking” not to have the modes thrown out, or made entirely free considering you have already spent $60 on the game. They instead want some of the game’s most exploitative systems made a little less exploitative.
It’s like asking your prison warden for fluffier pillows. It remains to be seen of course how successful this “strike” will be, but if it does have some kind of impact with EA Sports, I’d hope this at least sets a precedent for sports game fans: If they’re really as sick of this constant nickel-and-diming as much as they say they are, to start taking some more drastic action.
Madden 23 Devs Promise ‘Most Polished Version In a Long Time’ After Years Of Buggy Releases
Madden NFL has been undeniably stuck in a rut this generation. Since the release of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5, EA’s long-running NFL sim has consistently hovered around 65 on Metacritic. The complaints have been the same: unpolished, drab presentation, and modes that have failed to keep pace with the competition.
Many fans trace Madden’s decline back to Madden 13, which formed the basic template for the current version of the series. Others go back even further. Wherever it started, it’s hard to ignore the sense of malaise that has taken root in reviews, social media, and elsewhere. EA has protested in previous years that it’s just a vocal minority, and that the series is actually doing quite well with the average player who isn’t extremely online. This year they’re embracing it.
“As a game developer, especially on a yearly sports title, it’s not as much having thick skin as much as [needing] to have a great filter, because there’s a reason that these players are going to say whatever they’re going to say about the game, and you’ve got to figure out why,” senior producer Clint Oldenburg tells IGN. “And even if there’s a hundred words in there that don’t tell you why, there might be one or two that will tell you why, and that’s what you got to focus on so that you make sure you’re delivering the experience at its core, what those players are asking for.”
‘A little too animation-based’
Oldenburg and fellow producer Mike Mahar say they’ve gone through reviews and social media posts “line by line,” grouping together bugs and other issues and trying to sort legitimate criticism from the usual noise around annual sports games. What EA Tiburon has come up with in response to all of this criticism is to basically go back to basics. It’s not an exciting approach on the face of it, but strip away all of the usual marketing hype words like the confusingly capitalized “FieldSENSE” and you’ll find what seems like a pretty fundamental — and much-needed — rebalancing of the action on the field.
In other words, EA may finally be moving away from what has made Madden “Madden” for so long and toward something that more closely resembles actual football. At its core is a desire to move away from gameplay that’s a “little too animation-based” — that sense that you’re constantly gaming Madden’s mechanics every time you pick a play or make a throw.
“Our players have told us very strongly, their words, not ours, Madden has gotten a little bit too animation-based, meaning that they feel like they lose control at critical moments and are watching quick-time events, for lack of a better word,” Oldenburg says.
In Madden NFL parlance, that means getting away from the so-called money plays and formations that dominate YouTube every season with a system that’s “emergent, organic, and natural.” Defense has received the bulk of the improvements, with a greater focus on gang tackles, pass coverage, and quarterback containment.
“I think, from a high level, just the changes we did in deep zone and pass rush this year helps combat the problem of money plays, specifically those deep crossing routes that I already talked about. We added zone drift logic that gives our deep zoners the awareness to not continue drifting up the field if they don’t have a vertical threat so they can leverage that deep crossing route,” Oldenburg says, referring to a pattern that has been devastatingly effective for several years now due to Madden’s various defensive AI quirks.
As a game developer, especially on a yearly sports title, it’s not as much as having thick skin as much as it’s you got to have a great filter
“
Oldenburg also talks about fixing formations like Gun Bunch, which have been overpowered for years due to how easily they can be adjusted to open up large parts of the field, as well as the frequently overpowered QB rollouts used to extend plays.
“We think we’ve clocked that one pretty good this year,” Oldenburg says.
The feedback from the beta so far bears out the impact of these changes. If Madden 22 was akin to backyard football in how easy it was to roll out of the pocket and fling the ball to a wide open receiver breaking to the corner or the flats, then Madden 23 should prove to be a rude awakening for many players.
“I think it would be, probably, hubris of us to think that some expert level gamer in our community isn’t going to find a glitch in the matrix, so to speak, but we definitely went play-for-play, feedback-for-feedback, with all the stuff we’ve heard up to this point to try to address it,” Mahar says.
One way or another, it’s evident that most of the focus for Madden 23 is on rebalancing the gameplay this year. It’s much-needed — if the moment-to-moment gameplay isn’t fun, then it doesn’t matter how much work is put into Franchise Mode or Madden Ultimate Team.
The real test is whether EA Tiburon can put out a polished game. Madden NFL has been heavily criticized in recent years for its strange bugs and glitches, which are endlessly lampooned on social media. To that end, Oldenburg says that polish is a “top priority” in Madden 23, “especially from a gameplay perspective.”
EA Tiburon is hoping to catch bugs using something called “vision hooks,” which utilizes a mixture of bots and other technology to quickly reproduce troublesome problems. The Madden team is also allocating additional resources to fix bugs during production.
“We are very confident that our game for Madden 23 is going to be the most polished version of Madden that we’ve had in a long time,” Oldenburg says. “What I’m not going to say is it’s going to be perfect, but I am going to say that the team is still striving to reach perfection, as hard as that may be to reach. That is what our goal is. Polish is our top priority, and we know that we cannot reach our goals if our players believe that our game is a buggy experience.”
Question marks still remain
Elsewhere, Madden remains a question mark. Face of the Franchise — Madden’s tutorialized story mode — is dropping elements like its college football mode while arcade modes like The Yard are receiving only superficial upgrades, with resources instead going toward overhauling free agency in Franchise Mode.
PC players, meanwhile, continue to receive short shrift. Asked why the PC version isn’t keeping pace with the console releases, an EA spokesperson said, “We have a passionate group of players who enjoy Madden NFL on PC. It’s important to our team that the PC version of Madden becomes comparable to the current generation versions, and we’re working towards that in the future.”
When Madden 23 arrives later this month, it will be EA’s latest attempt to firmly establish the franchise on the current generation of consoles — and bring some shine back to its faded legacy as well. Fans will be able to see for themselves whether it’s successful when Madden 23 launches into early access on August 16.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
John Madden to grace cover of Madden NFL 23 video game; first time on front since Madden 2000
In a homage to its namesake, the cover of the Madden NFL 23 video game will have one person on it: John Madden.
Madden, the Hall of Fame coach who died Dec. 28, will be on the cover of all three editions of this year’s game, which will be released in August. It’s the first time in over two decades that Madden will be the focal point of the cover, which has trended toward using current athletes.
“We were thinking about this year’s game and who was going to go on it; it almost became an obvious answer,” Seann Graddy, the executive producer of Madden NFL, told ESPN. “I say that because we really wanted to celebrate Coach in the product this year and what he’s meant to us for the 30-plus years that we’ve been using his name in our game.”
Madden last was the main cover person for the 2000 edition of the game, which was released in 1999. He appeared in a small box in the next four editions of the game with his signature and the All Madden logo off to the side of the main cover athlete before disappearing from the cover for Madden NFL 06, which featured Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.
EA then pivoted to using current athletes for each year’s cover. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady shared it last year.
Graddy told ESPN that putting Madden on the cover has been discussed only for this year’s game, but said, “Anything is possible, to be honest,” about putting the former coach on the cover in the future.
The All Madden cover — one of the three covers this year — is reminiscent of the original John Madden Football, released on June 1, 1988. That cover had a young, sandy-haired Madden holding a football and making a hole through a diagram of X’s and O’s on a chalkboard with the game’s name across the top of the box.
The cover for the All Madden edition has a similar-looking young Madden holding a football busting through what appears to be a paper full of X’s and O’s. On the side of the cover, in white lettering, is “Thanks, Coach.”
Chuck Styles, a Philadelphia-based artist who has created exclusive trading cards for Topps in its Project70 release as well as many works depicting NBA players, designed the cover for the All Madden edition.
The other two covers, not created by Styles, look at Madden as a coach and a broadcaster. The broadcasting cover has Madden in a blue shirt and tie appearing to draw on a telestrator, which he was famous for in his career. The coaching cover has Madden, who coached the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978, lifted up by his players after beating the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI.
“The thing that we wanted everyone to take away,” Graddy said, “is that we’re celebrating all three phases of Coach Madden’s kind of legacy.”
Madden was immersed in the game from the beginning, demanding it be 11-on-11 and handing over his old playbook to game developers to create more realism. As the game grew, so did its influence on players. Many current NFL players say Madden was part of their upbringing — Detroit Lions defensive back Jeff Okudah told ESPN in 2020 that he learned football by playing Madden — and that was always a prideful point for the game’s namesake.
“That gives you the satisfaction that you’re doing something worthwhile,” Madden told ESPN in 2021. “You and everyone involved are putting in the time, and it works and influences people to not only enjoy the game but to be able to play the game.
“It helps them become better players. And I think that’s true of high school, college and the pros. There’s a real satisfaction that you see when someone brings it up.”
While many of the gameplay features for this year’s edition haven’t been announced, Graddy said the opening experience will have two versions of Madden from the 1970s coaching against each other — one leading an NFC All Madden team and one an AFC All Madden team — at the old Oakland Coliseum.
“It’s just kind of a fun fantasy experience where it’s Coach Madden vs. Coach Madden,” Graddy said. “With a callback from the All Madden teams that he used to create and that we used to have in our game, a mix of both legendary players and current-day players.
“Honestly, the thinking of why we wanted Coach vs. Coach is we want Coach to win.”
During that experience, Graddy said, there will be lines spoken by Madden interspersed throughout the commentary about some of the players on the All Madden rosters.
As part of the cover announcement, EA announced its $5 million donation to the John Madden Legacy Commitment to Education will be split, with $2.5 million going to nonprofit organizations College Track, Girls Who Code, StreetCode Academy and Mission Bit to support five years of programming in the science, technology, engineering, art and math space. The other $2.5 million will help create the EA Madden Scholarship, which will work with the United Negro College Fund to provide scholarships for students at 12 Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
SteamWorld Quest and Madden 22 are free with Prime Gaming in March
It’s time to complete your SteamWorld collection
We’re nearing a new month, and that means it’s time to hear about some free games on the horizon across multiple platforms and subscriptions. In the case of Prime Gaming, Amazon Prime members can claim seven PC games in March, a few of which stand out.
These games will be free with Prime Gaming on March 1:
- Madden NFL 22
- SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech
- Surviving Mars
- Crypto Against All Odds
- looK INside
- Pesterquest
- The Stillness of the Wind
Those first three are the big boys, so let’s run through ’em.
Madden NFL 22 might be worth a look if you’re able to push through ongoing issues and do your thing in Franchise mode, although there is always that lingering sense that there’s clear room for improvement, and that can be distracting. I mean, you know the drill. That’s the annual sports game life. It’s worth noting that if PC isn’t your preferred platform for Madden, the Xbox version is currently a part of EA Play / Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
I’m sure plenty of us who loved SteamWorld Dig and even SteamWorld Heist have not taken the time to check out SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. It’s a turn-based RPG with card battling, which is not everyone’s cup of tea, myself included. That said, I feel like the SteamWorld charm can do some heavy lifting here, and I think a decent chunk of players have gotten more comfortable with card mechanics from games like Slay the Spire.
As for Surviving Mars, it’s a chance to build the (probably) ill-advised colony of your dreams. One of my favorite facets of management/builder sims is the ever-present threat of shit going real bad, real fast, and the need to adapt to situations on the fly.
What about the other four games?
Crypto is a tower defense game with “hackers and other blockchain threats,” while Pesterquest is a visual novel for Homestuck fans, and looK INside is a point-and-click adventure that’s a family affair. Of the lesser-knowns, I’m most curious about The Stillness of the Wind — that palette is such a mood, and the solitary homestead premise is unique.
That’s it for March, but it’s not too late to grab Stellaris if you missed it earlier this month.
Jordan Devore
Jordan is a founding member of Destructoid and poster of seemingly random pictures. They are anything but random.
Bethesda Ditching Its Stupid Launcher, Returning To Steam
Easily one of the worst trends to hit PC gaming in the last decade has been the obsession major publishers have had with creating their own launchers and digital marketplaces, moves which have done little for the user but make botting up a game fiddlier and more tedious.
You can see why they’ve done so from their points of view; the shopfronts give them a chance to sell things directly, rather than give Valve a cut as a Steam or Epic sale would, and the proprietary nature of the launcher means they get to have you login to a specific account and all kinds of other locked-in stuff like digital rights management.
For us, though? It’s a huge pain in the ass. Especially when you buy and launch a game from Steam and it then has to load a publisher’s launcher on top of that. In just the last few months I’ve been locked out of Madden 22 because EA’s Desktop App couldn’t verify my purchase, had Far Cry 6 launches held up because Ubisoft’s launcher wouldn’t let me login or sync properly and wished for a quick death every time I’ve had to do anything with Rockstar’s launcher.
Mercifully, one publisher has now seen the light and will be ditching this approach entirely. Bethesda announced earlier today that they are “sunsetting” the Bethesda Launcher and marketplace in April, having launched them in 2016, and “migrating to Steam”. Bethesda games have of course always been available on Steam, even when the launcher was active, but this move means that the publisher is now moving everything back to Steam, so even if you had bought games directly from Bethesda, they’ll soon be transferred back to Valve’s service, in some cases (though not all) with your saved games included. There’s a FAQ under the blog if you need to know anything more particular.
Given Bethesda is now a Microsoft company, this is potentially exciting news for anyone who is also annoyed by the recently-purchased Activision Blizzard’s own Battle.net launcher.
Texas professor claims ‘Madden NFL’ games ‘dehumanized’ Black athletes
The “Madden NFL” video game franchise promoted by legendary NFL coach John Madden “dehumanized black athletes” and helped create a digital “plantation,” a college professor claimed this week.
Andrew McGregor, who teaches history at Dallas College in Texas, further claimed that Madden “profited off of Black athletic labor and glamorized the violence inherent in the game.”
Since posting the comments Tuesday, the same day Madden died at age 85, the professor, who is White, has locked his Twitter account, the Washington Examiner reported.
But several of the posts were saved by social media users, some of whom reacted to the remarks.
NFL TO HONOR JOHN MADDEN IN WAKE OF ICON’S DEATH
“I have a lot of opinions on John Madden,” McGregor wrote in one post. “The creation of the Madden video game was not a great development for the U.S. It further glamorized violence and dehumanized black athletes, helping to establish plantation cosplay that has grown worse in the era of fantasy football.”
In another, he wrote: “It glamorized athletes, using their name for profits while encouraging fans to disregard the humanity. Madden built a digital plantation.”
Madden, who first became known to NFL fans as a young head coach of the Oakland Raiders (1969-1978), and then spent three decades as a broadcaster, was long known for drawing media attention to less-publicized football players, such as offensive and defensive lineman, whose contributions were often overlooked versus those in the “glamour” positions such as quarterback and running back.
In addition, his Raiders teams of the late 1960s and 1970s featured many African-Americans among the star players – such as Gene Upshaw, Art Shell, Cliff Branch and Jack Tatum — with several going on to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Upshaw later led the NFL Players Association while Shell went on to become the first African-American head coach in the NFL’s modern era, with the Raiders.
The team, previously also known as the Los Angeles Raiders (1982-1994) is now known as the Las Vegas Raiders.
Twitter users noted that McGregor previously posted about “Madden NFL” games in 2017, appearing to enjoy playing them.
“The fake kneel down is the exact kind of play I would have used against my brother in Madden,” McGregor wrote at the time. “It would have perfectly complemented my fake punt offense.”
The “Madden NFL” games are from EA Sports, with whom Madden was associated since 1988. Being the NFL player selected for the cover of the next edition of the game has long been a coveted honor among many of the athletes.
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Previously, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick compared the NFL’s annual draft of college football players to slavery, despite players drawing large salaries for playing in the league and also being free to not play, if they so choose.
A Dallas College spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Examiner that McGregor was employed there and the school provided the following statement:
“The views of professor McGregor are not those of Dallas College, and comments made via his personal Twitter account do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Dallas College.”