Wednesday, February 13, 2008

OBR News-o-rama

OBR News-o-rama

It's in the Game

Posted: 13 Feb 2008 09:06 AM CST

madden2004.jpg

I just noticed that Madden put Michael Vick on the cover of their football game back in 2004 and Ray Lewis was slapped on the box in 2005. Perhaps the Madden Curse is largely earned, a noxious byproduct from the kettle of douchebaggery cooked up by EA's marketing folks.

We can't say for sure that the decision to feature vomit-inducing players on cover of EA Sports' lucrative franchise has caused subsequent cover boys to suffer doomed seasons. We can say, though, that the game has proven stunningly lucrative for EA and the NFL.

So lucrative, in fact, that the NFL, NFL Players Association and Electronic Arts announced that their exclusive agreement with the NFL and players union will be extended through 2012.

I've personally never had a strong desire to purchase and become a master at Madden. When I crank on the XBox, games like Command and Conquer, Halo 3, and Portal are the ones I boot up. Heck, I spend all day writing and talking about football, so when I crank up a video game, I guess I want to blow stuff up. To me, it's not a video game unless there are explosions, aliens, or zombies. Preferably all three.

It wasn't always this way, though. I was very fond of Sega's NFL2K series, and we used to have video game competitions here around them. I even sort of liked Microsoft's NFL Live series and was a relatively adept drunken NFL Blitz player back in the day. I bought the home versions of that one as well.

Of course, nothing will ever take away my memories of playing endless games of Tecmo Bowl, perhaps the best football game in the history of civilization. The cheesy music and chunky graphics just made it better.

Maybe it's my fondness for those games that causes me to dodge the yearly Madden/EA cash extractions to the best of my ability. My son loves the games, and has cajoled me into playing them at times, but I've never adopted them the way I did the older games.

Perhaps my lack of affection for  Madden can be found in the fact that the NFL told me that I could no longer play the games I chose to play. They wiped out the 2K series and Blitz with the stoke of a pen when the NFL owners grabbed cash from EA sports. After that, the other games quickly folded when the NFL threatened to unleash the legal hounds on anyone who hinted that their competing games had some form of NFL legitimacy.

Problem is, I like competition... it makes for innovation and better products. When the consumer has choices, the supplier has to work harder.

So, I've never bought Madden for myself, although it's been purchased for my son for Christmas and birthdays. I'm not going to make him suffer my personal distaste for how the NFL has extracted cash from fans simply by squashing their available choices, rather than improving their product or introducing something new.

It was interesting talking to my son about the game last year, however. He tells me that it's basically the same as the year before, with roster updates and without any new features that he found useful.

Perhaps other folks have different impressions, but that's exactly what I would have expected.

Four more years of the same ol' thing.

EA has no financial incentive to invest heavily in new features or significant game improvements in the coming years. They'll do enough to keep the NFL happy and stop fans from thinking they're being completely ripped off, but little more. It wouldn't make sense to invest more in the game than absolutely necessary.

Monopolies simply don't work for this reason... take away competition, take away motivation. Romeo Crennel gets it, Bill Belichick gets it, the owners who run businesses outside the NFL certainly get it.

A number of NFL owners didn't really have to compete and achieve for their wealth - they inherited it. But many others took advantage of the free and competitive marketplace to amass their fortunes.

It's amazing how quickly they turn their backs on competition and free enterprise when it suits their purposes. I can't blame them - greed is supposed to be good, after all - but I can find other games to play, and I will.

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