Madden is one of the most popular video game franchises, but over the past decade the quality of the game has devolved to a point where it is almost unplayable. A major reason this is happening is due to the nature of how Electronic Arts (EA) develops the game, and its yearly release schedule. Unlike yearly released games like Call of Duty, where they have multiple developers cycle through year by year, EA is the only development team for Madden.
The problem with this release schedule is that it doesn’t give the developers time to focus on fixing any issues that come up with the game. Most video games take years to develop, this is so they can make the best game they can, and playtest the game to make sure there are no glitches or bugs. When you don’t have time to playtest, in the case of Madden, it has a lot of bugs that don’t ever get fixed. The other issue with the release schedule is that a lot of these bugs roll over into the next game, because EA uses the same base game and adds on to it. With them having to add new players, and work on trying to add new features they don’t have time to fix these bugs.
The other major issue with Madden isn’t just an issue with Madden, but an issue with sports video games as a whole right now, and that is the Ultimate Team game mode. Ultimate Team is a game mode that lets you buy virtual card packs, with real money, and build the best team you can with that, to compete with other players. This makes EA a lot of money, so they focus on this, and let other game modes and the gameplay as a whole suffer.
The last issue with the new Maddens is the gameplay. After going back and playing “Madden 07,” the new Maddens just feel bad. The animations aren’t as good, it feels like you have less control when playing, and the game just feels less natural. I have put over 180 hours into “Madden 21” and just playing a few hours into “Madden 07” I could tell how much the gameplay has deteriorated over time.
So how should EA fix Madden? The biggest thing EA could do is to stop releasing Madden yearly. Rather, every year they should sell a roster update. This way they could still make money, keep the game up to date with the real NFL, and focus on making a good game. This would allow EA to focus on making other game modes better, not just Ultimate Team, yet still bringing in money from Ultimate Teams profits. This would also allow them to be able to focus on fixing bugs and making the gameplay the best it can be.