Ideas for integrating fantasy football into Madden
February 29, 2008 by pastapadre
EA Sports is currently looking for some ideas of different ways that their fantasy football setup could be integrated into Madden. This is a great opportunity to help shape the future of how the their fantasy football can take advantage of what Madden has to offer.
Personally a few things off the top of my head that I’d like to see are some sort of fantasy football achievements, the ability to play online with your fantasy teams (without having to go through the current lengthy process of building a custom team) and have the ticker at the bottom display FF league scores, stats, and news.
What ideas do you guys have that would get you interested in using it and ultimately make it worthwhile? Even if you have some thoughts that are way out there they want to hear them so leave them in the comments and they’ll be passed along.
I like the idea of being able to play with your fantasy team. But the problem I foresee with this is the “Madden player” phenomenon. For those who don’t know, a “Madden player” is someone who is incredible in Madden but doesn’t really live up to his Madden hype on the field (i.e. tall receivers, really fast linebackers). I feel that people would prefer to draft “Madden players” and would then be suprised when they don’t put up ridiculous fantasy stats.
If you were to play online ranked games with your fantasy team against other fantasy teams, I would like these games to be held against members of your league. This way we don’t have 2 Peyton Mannings and 2 Randy Mosses playing against each other. This phenomenon was very prevalent in NBA Live’s Quick Pick Play. Everyone would “draft” Kobe and TMac and Garnett. So you’ld ultimately have Kobe covering himself. I would not want to see this doppleganger universe translate to Madden. I am someone who loves the idea of putting together a fantasy team, but its no fun if everyone has an identical team of the top players at each position.
My idea to get people more interested in EA Fantasy Football would be to add an online league feature into madden. With the ability for every owner in the fantasy league to be able to play out their schedule in Madden. But the twist is in the game, you redraft, and you CAN’T pick your own players. So all the stats you pickup from playing Madden games in the league go towards a secondary FF score. I knwo it is a rough idea, i have way more this is actually something i have thought about before. I just can’t word it as well as I want right now.
Why not add the ability to have complete control of your team within Madden, just like you would control it on the website?
Set your roster, do adds/drops, propose trades, view the standings and upcoming games through while connected online through Madden.
You guys actually believe this PR garbage from EA Sports? If you throw a thousand suggestions, chances are some of those suggestions would’ve already been implemented by EA anyway, without your feedback. EA Sports is obviously against the ropes, which is why it’s trying so hard to fight back by resorting to its greatest strength: marketing and bull. I hope 2K Sports realizes this, and I’m sure they do. That buyout offer from EA is a bluff, a desperate attempt of EA to save ITSELF, as 2K Sports is on the verge of taking over the sports gaming industry.
pasta you got a good idea so far…..it would be pretty fire to play with the fantasy team you draft but really thats only a online league which madden has been needed…they should base the leagues off the format of league daddy. and give us the ability to capture highlights of the game.
They need to first concentrate on putting out a complete game and leave these gimmicks alone! I think they should be looking for better ways to integrating ESPN, Presentation, and game play. 08 was a small step in the right direction.
-Kaz
The Saint wrote:
You know what? I’ll allow myself to believe this. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
As for fantasy football, until EA gets the only NFL simulation game on the market right, I have no interest in these side ventures. Plenty of other companies and sites handle fantasy football just fine. Focus on the game, EA. As Coach Belichick would say, “Do your job!”
Details wrote:
couldn’t agree more. honestly, i know this will never happen, but i would LOVE nothing more than to see Madden 09 have ZERO new features. i would be ecstatic if they went in and devoted all of their time to completely redoing the “gameplay”, record hundreds (in not thousands) of new animations, work on the game AI, add some freakin ESPN presentation!, just make this game look, run AND play beautiful… THEN worry about all the gimmicky features
EA dont care about the community. If they did, they would of improved thier games!
Outkaz79 wrote:
I agree 100% Fix the game before you add useless features that you call new just to put on the back of the box.
Beau wrote:
It’s really the consumers’ fault. People always want new features and pretty much want to be told only the things they want to hear. EA is good at this, and at the end of the day, the bottom line is how well their products sell. Perhaps if consumers displayed more intelligence, although that is unlikely. The overwhelming majority of gamers consists of kids and teenagers, maybe some college and people in their 30’s like myself. Kids are stupid, they truly are. I was a huge fan of EA’s boxing franchise from KO Kings all the way to Fight Night 2004 (except for the abyssmal KOK2002). And then they introduced the g a y makers and the 5-second parries in FNR2 and made it worse for FNR3. Features, features, features. The gameplay was practically broken.
I say they keep the idea of fantasy football like it is let the real guys play it out. And your guys fantasy stats along with your opponent and the top players from the day should also be I the ticker. Kinda like espn does on Sundays. I’d like to see the draft be more personalized for example have it where it can be done with ur voice communicator. I say leave the on field part madden. But let the fantasy stuff play out like on ur computer
EA needs to be worrying about fixing Madden..Not fiddling around with some damn fantasy football…Madden is already fantasy football
The Saint wrote:
Yes, it is our fault. We keep buying Madden year after year, despite the gameplay is lame and sometimes even broken. EA should really focus on how they improve the way the game is played, add animations, add referees in the sidelines, add more crowd reactions, add more ESPN integration, i.e. do a good game and not just a mediocre one which is right now.
Fellaz, why do you blame consumer for purchasing a substandard product?
It’s the only NFL game available. Period. That’s why monopolies are bad: consumers are forced to purchase the product because they have no alternative.
Now, when 2k/ESPN had the NFL license you could at least make a case that consumers preferred Madden to their competitor–now we are stuck with perfunctory efforts.
This years game came so close to being good. Then 3 weeks later we realize how many holes were in the product. 3 months later people realize that there was nothing innovative about the product.
The Fantasy Football is an attempt at innovation, they simply are going about it the wrong way. EA is trying to market an idea rather than upgrade their product.
Now, it is possible that this FF pitch is part of a larger plan to upgrade their online offerings…but EA needs to know that consumers aren’t just bitter, they are growing apathetic.
I’m not there as I think Madden 08 is “good enough” to play. But as I venture out into other video games I realize that the madden franchise is years behind other Next Gen sports, RPG and shooter titles.
Why worry about this? EA knows as well as us that they are going to change the name of an old feature or put things that were missing from the previous game, but SHOULD be there and call them “new” (ex: fantasy draft). They really need to focus on improving the gameplay, environment of games, make the faces of the player at least resemble them, etc etc etc. But hey, like some people said, we are stuck with this, they can throw some “tecmo bowl” graphics at us, it will still be the only NFL game…
i have a really good idea but i want 2 tell ea in private
I think they need to integrate something else into madden to counteract the boredom that I sometimes feel just playing football. I think they need to have a mode similar to superstar, only after you created your player and have done your drills and get drafted(in a round that your performance in the drills deserves, not just the 3rd round or later), then get an actual salary that can be used to purchase houses, cars, furniture, clothes, football accessories and so on….and instead of just purchasing these items from a list, you could roam around your city of the team you were selected to, like you can do in GTA. You could go buy a house, drive to the stadium, go to the clubs or what-have-you. You would have to be at the stadium at a certain time for practices and games and meetings and such, then the rest of your time could be used to do numerous things. This idea, of course, could be made way better. I just think that this would be a great idea if you are like me and get bored with playing nothing but games all the time. If you just like playing the games and franchise mode is enough for you, that’s cool, but I think that something like this would take madden to another level, and I think it would be pretty fun to play. Let me know if you hate it or love it.