BOOM! ‘It’s in the Game: Madden NFL’ Looks at the Legendary Sports Video Game
It’s more than just a video game, it’s an institution.
Since 1988, EA Sports’ Madden NFL has sold more than 130 million copies, and amassed legions of fans, celebrities and NFL players who can’t wait for the release of the updated version (and its player ratings) every year.
Prime Video’s It’s in the Game: Madden NFL docuseries (premiering Tuesday, Nov. 26) takes a look at the history and evolution of the game and its cultural impact. The series goes deep with archival footage and interviews including NFL players, Electronic Arts developers both past and present, and John Madden’s son, Mike Madden.
In the mid 1980s, Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins was looking to create a football game simulator for personal computers. The company had already had success with the basketball game One-on-One: Dr. J. vs. Larry Bird, and Hawkins wanted to bring consumers the ability to play as an NFL star.
After meeting legendary coach and broadcaster Madden on a train, it became apparent that the technology needed for an authentic 11 vs. 11 football game was still way behind. Computers simply weren’t powerful enough to animate 22 players on the field, and Madden would accept no substitutes. “There’s no !@#$ way I’m putting my name on a game that has seven on seven,” Madden said.
Developers also lacked deep knowledge of football X’s and O’s, so Madden gave EA the Oakland Raiders’ 1980 playbook.
The first John Madden Football game was released for Apple II computers in 1988, and it was not good. Madden’s son, Mike, remembers the first time he played the game and told his father, “Dad! Your game’s crap! It is crap!”
Both Hawkins and Madden had faith in the game and stuck with it. EA’s Jim Simmons made revolutionary changes to the game, creating the illusion of depth on the football field. Madden also added numerical ratings to the players, basing them on their real-life speed, size and catching skills.
There was an opportunity to bring the game to consoles, but EA was unwilling to pay Nintendo or Sega to license cartridges. EA instead reverse engineered the Sega Genesis system, and was prepared to bring a Madden cartridge to the market at the risk of a major lawsuit.
Sega was attempting to sell its own football simulator, Joe Montana Football, but it was behind schedule. Sega and EA negotiated a deal in which Sega would sell both Madden and Montana if EA could complete the programming for Montana. EA completed Montana in six weeks, making it intentionally inferior to Madden.
Madden immediately sold 300,000 copies, and was a huge hit.
Gordon Bellamy, a young football and video game enthusiast, had big ideas for Madden even before he was employed by EA. He envisioned bringing players’ names to the screen with updated NFL rosters. While EA was ready to ship the game with just player numbers, Bellamy took the bold step of shipping the game with player names, even before the company’s deal with the NFL Players Association had been finalized. Bellamy also brought players’ authentic skin color to the Madden NFL ’95 edition.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, there was stiff competition from Sony’s NFL GameDay for the PlayStation console and Sega’s NFL 2K for the Dreamcast. Both games offered state-of-the-art graphics and gameplay, and were chipping away at Madden’s market. When Sega reduced the price of ESPN NFL 2K5 to $19.99, it made a bold run at undercutting EA’s pricier Madden game.
That move, made without the NFL’s consent, raised the league’s eyebrows. In a controversial business move designed to protect its brand, the NFL and NFLPA struck an exclusive deal with EA in 2005, essentially granting the company a monopoly on NFL team names and player identities for football simulation video games.
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