The hype curve for a new Madden game is a cruel self-repeating cycle with no end in sight. Every year, the classic franchise mode gets very little to no changes, every year EA takes on the task of focusing on the mode next year as an olive to the hardcore community that is eager for depth and adaptation, and each year, that core audience will be left behind.
It’s a story as old as time at this point, and it looks like Madden could unexpectedly repeat NFL 21 from the same mistakes.
End of an era
There is no greater example of why competition is the best way to breed innovation than the state of Madden. Since EA first inked its exclusive sales with the NFL ink, we’ve seen marginal changes with each iteration, the depreciation of fan-favorite features, and the introduction of modes designed to continuously charge players after they have already purchased their new annual copy.
The last time Madden really offered anything special in their traditional franchise mode, in which you take over a team or organization and control it over the course of multiple seasons, was back in Madden NFL 12. Then you could not only be a player, but you could also create a whole team with a custom name and choose from a list of pre-made logos, uniform styles, stadiums, etc. It has offered real ownership over things and that is simply no longer in the series.
Creating your own team and filling it with players named after your friends and family was a unique kind of excitement that now literally misses the series for almost half a decade. It’s been a real sore spot ever since and is a big factor in the embarrassed hardcore fans who feel their way with every passing year.
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Sports fans are rabid and passionate, sometimes even more so than gamers. If you’re developing a love for a sports team, whether it’s because of a location connection in your city or deep-rooted family tradition, it comes with a sense of ownership and pride. In part, you begin to identify with the brand you hold. It’s natural to feel that way and that’s why sports are such a powerful (and lucrative) business. Allowing fans to take a controller and literally create their own team in their favorite sport is incredibly exciting, and it has amazed me for years why EA ever decided to remove it.
Regurgitated Mistakes
On top of the lack of features from years past are the revolving carousel of mistakes and fumbled ideas. There is, for example, the microtransaction-laden Madden Ultimate Team. The infamous mode first debuted in Madden NFL 10 and, on paper, it’s a great idea. It’s really, really cool to think about building your own fantasy squad in Madden and competing online against others. The gimmick of opening up card packs is also addictive and packs in that same sense of excitement found in Pokemon cards and even gacha mobile games. But over the years, it’s just become one of the worst parts of the AAA gaming industry.
If you play other modes that are completely unrelated, pop-ups will often interrupt the game’s flow to advertise a new limited edition card, or ask you to open a new card pack, or try to persuade to create an Ultimate Team and play a game online, where it can then try and sell your currency and in-game card packages and so on. The whole game mode is like a live, breathing lootbox.
It feels like dedicating a team big enough to build Madden Ultimate Team to be the behemoth it is today, the classic Franchise mode experience had to be put on life support, and that’s a damn shame.
In Madden NFL 20, as stated in IGN’s review last year, the biggest improvement of the mode was more aggressive contract negotiations by players. That added some need for realism and immersion, but it still fell flat in the face of years of neglect. I would even go so far as to say that Madden NFL 20 is probably the best franchise mode the series has seen since Madden NFL 12, but that excuses the fact that it’s still very, very bad in comparison.
Longshot and Face of the Franchise
In Madden NFL 18, EA introduced Longshot, a narrative gameplay with full voice acting, choice-based dialogue options, and a branching story that Devin Wade (QB, starred) and his best friend Colt Cruise (WR) followed on their journey of small stars high school stars to NFL hopeful. Madden NFL 19 continued that storyline and let you transfer your storage data, and in Madden NFL 20 they introduced Face of the Franchise instead. The new mode was a combination of Longshot and classic Franchise mode in which you created a character, played through some college games, were drafted and worked for a place on a team as a rookie. Ultimately, it’s most likely to be just like franchise mode when you decide to take control of a QB.
In Madden, NFL 21 brings back EA Face of the Franchise and expands it to include high school games, more college games, the NFL Combine, and the concept. There are full-blown characters in the new storyline who take on the role of rivals, friends, coaches, and a few celebrities.
To be clear: I find this all very good. Personally, I was a big fan of Longshot and I thought Face of the Franchise was a really cool way to personalize a career mode in Madden. The new extensions sound great and I love checking them out. The lingering problems with the classic Franchise mode and literally just tackling it on a long prologue to cover issues is really not what most fans want to see. A more balanced approach is sorely needed – an approach that focuses more on problem solving than introducing new features where no one is asked for what Madden needs above all else.
The future for franchise mode
I will attribute credit where credit comes from. Overall, it seems that EA is aware that the franchise mode is badly lacking and has been for several years now. However, I do not think they intended to allow that anytime soon, but growing support online for the #FixMaddenFranchise movement forced her hand. In a recent apology video, Madden Executive Producer Seann Graddy directly referenced the hashtag. What follows, however, are mostly vague promises and verbal promises to do better.
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Back in late June, EA published a Gridiron Note blog post detailing the changes and expansions coming to Face of The Franchise, with the classic franchise mode relegated to a footnote at the very end, that culminated in short patch notes that it could have applied to any Madden in the last three to five years. Things like the promise to update it with the new X-Factor statuses from the main game, expanding Wild Card rounds to conform to the actual NFL rules, and making rookie contracts more realistic are all things that ‘ t just happened to have happened. Fanfare for bare-bones updates seems to have been the mantra for franchise mode over the last nine years, and unfortunately, that trend has continued.
Earlier this month, EA finally published a blog post dedicated to the classic franchise mode, but it’s unfortunately shed light on possible changes. EA has spelled out that Madden will be treated as a live service game that receives ongoing updates and new features but does not provide a time frame. These add-ons include continuous roster tuning (which they have been doing for years), customizable X-Factor capabilities, better AI management, better trading logic, a UI of career statistics, more retirement features, and so on. To be clear: these are all post-launch updates coming for Madden NFL 21, but on paper they sure sound like things that should already be in the game.
To go further, EA included some bright details about what’s in store next year for Madden NFL 22, further emphasizing that it was never planned on the actual redesign of classic franchise mode, at least not soon. In fact, the blog post literally says that it is “not yet fully committed” to any of the ideas for Madden NFL 22. Those non-dedicated ideas include a team chemistry system, scouting improvements, coaching personnel management functions, and for me, relocation / branding assets for franchises such as uniforms, names, and logos. Again, these are ideas they do not even intend to do a year from now, let alone ever.
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EA lays all the groundwork for Madden to become a ‘games as a service’ title, as it’s literally called a live service game this year, but it’s not really going to require just updating the roster and introducing new features and modes. use via patches like any other title of live services – probably because it loses too much money that way.
I do not know if full games as service go is necessarily the answer, but the day for EA to dramatically change Madden is long gone, as is the dire need to repair Franchise mode.
David Jagneaux is a freelance writer for IGN. Madden talks to him on Twitter at @David_Jagneaux.
