Day 47

Fresh Start_47: Back the community

Today’s article is something different from everything I have done prior to this. I consider myself a casual gamer and one game I love and buy every year is Madden. Last year the game was a massive over correction for the problems that plagued the game in Madden 15. Madden 16 had Odell Beckham Jr. on the cover on it, and the selling gimmick was the “aggressive catch” meaning that you would be able to catch the ball like OBJ and make incredible catches. The animations that triggered made the game utterly unplayable. The improvements to the game in Madden 17 made the game fun again, but it still has its faults.

The way Electronic Arts is moving with Madden is too beginner friendly. I would say I became good at the game of Madden in Madden 25. I played the game almost every day and new the ins and outs about the game. I enjoy playing head to head games with regular teams. I created my own scheme of plays that made my offense really good. That is stayed true for each of the past four years. My defense on the other hand, I hope and pray that my opponent makes a mistake and throws an interception or fumbles the ball. What Electronic Arts (EA) is doing is making it so if ever pick up the game on a random day, you would be able to compete. That is the thing that bugs me the most. When I first picked up the game in 2009 and tried to play online, I got absolutely creamed. I didn’t score a point. I thought I knew what I was doing, but in all honestly I didn’t know a dam thing. It drove me to be able to do that to my opponent, shut them down and make them want to say “how do I do that?” There was no tackle cone to track down a player if he beat you. If you ran a play and just destroyed your opponent, it didn’t show your opponent what the play was so they could figure out how to stop it. You had to find out how to stop it. I’m sorry, but that isn’t how the real world works either.

I heard once that football is the closest sport to real life. If you get knocked in the teeth, you had to step up, and get back to work. If EA is preaching that the game is the most realistic game in the world, then it should act like it. Practice what you preach and make it the best you can. Make it hard on new comers so they can become the next generations of players of the community.

Speaking of the community, last weekend EA turned their back on their own community. The company put out a set in the mode “Madden Ultimate Team” and the objective was to put a player rated 75 or higher into the set and get a better card. What had happened was, the set was broke and users could put any player into the set and they were getting “elite” players, and flooding the auction block and getting great teams. Not only that but the “elite cards” were extremely cheap and it was easy to buy a good team off the auction block. What EA did to respond to this issue, is suspend the users that did the set wrong or even bought cards off the auction house—with or without knowing of the glitches in the set. You couldn’t buy anything off the auction block, but you could buy packs. So basically what EA has done is blame the community for their mistake and say to the community you have done something wrong, but you can still support us by buying points and packs that cost real life money.

That is just plain up wrong, and not the way you do for your community, when you mess up. The community is what keeps your game going and why a video game company makes money. So my message to EA is I love your game, but if you don’t fix your issues, I will not continue buying your game, and will stop supporting your community. And to anyone that was effected by this temporary band please stop supporting the game that has wronged you. Stop giving money to the company that has no respect for their community.

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