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Cheating, Hot Zones and Approachability

As I’ve mentioned previously, I enjoy reading a lot of the very colorful comments many of you have been providing on my blog.  I now regularly take many of the ideas and questions I see straight to our development teams and look for answers.  I figured it would only make sense if I started sharing some of what I've been finding out.

Again, the best way to get the scoop is to go straight to the source – our production teams.  And about once a month or so, I’ll be trying to report back at least a handful of answers to your most commonly asked questions. Of course, as we get closer to launch on many of this year’s games you’ll want to view our producer blogs on each product website as well for even more detail. 

This week, we talk NBA LIVE and Madden.

Tim G says “There's stuff that should just not happen in basketball games when there's no pressure on your character; going out of bounds on an inbound, stepping back over center court. There’s a lot of frustrating issues in both games but Live they are far more prevalent. Also the "Hot Zones" are quite obnoxious looking. Colouring the entire court during play is ridiculous, and 2k's solution of cell-phone-style signal bars is much better.”

Here’s what Brian Ullrich, our line producer for NBA LIVE had to say about hotzones: 

“We built our hotzones based on the real hotspots tracked by the NBA, so the look was based on that.  We found we had to add a third color (the NBA ones are red, blue, and a kind of brown color) to make them understandable.  We didn't have as much rendering or systems support on hotzones as we would have liked. The hotzones were done late in the schedule and there wasn't much time to iterate on them once they were done.  We tried a bunch of color combinations and found the ones the best we could do in the time we had. We are improving them significantly this year so stay tuned.”

Regarding Inbounds/Center Court Issues, Brian says:

“We had many problems around accurately determining exactly where all of a player's limbs are with respect to out of bounds.  At the end of last year this resulted in players being called out of bounds more than they should have, just through the act of receiving a pass, dribbling in place, etc.  The only way we could fix it was to make the out of bounds call pretty generous.  Usually the camera is far enough away that you don't notice this, but when you look at plays on instant replay it becomes noticeable.  We will be tuning this again this year, and it will be better, but this is something I doubt we’ll ever be able to keep it from happening in all cases.”

AJ says, “My league has been running now since Madden 06. We love being able to draft our teams from scratch and taking them online and playing a full 16 game schedule and playoffs included. Problem is this year there are no stats after the games? Why not Mr. Moore? I ask you to allow us to have the stats of our games, custom teams or not.”

Here’s what Dale Jackson, our Executive Producer for Madden NFL told me:

“Year after year, the discussion of league play and stat tracking has been a recurring theme in feedback on Madden.  Madden NFL 09 will address this feedback directly.  Without giving too much away, let’s just say that those who enjoy online stats won’t be disappointed.  Based on the amount we see this requested in forums, we’re very excited about our features we have planned here.”

Ron says, “ Mr. Moore, I recall in an interview with Game Informer you mentioned something along the lines of making Madden more playable for casual gamers. Is there way to customize the engine to satisfy the casual as well as the hardcore gamer who wants more simulation and realism? For instance why not just create a separate arcade mode for the casual user who knows very little about football. This can possibly perhaps increase your sales which from what I understand decreased last year.”

Great question, Ron.  I’ll take this one first. I’m passionate about making our games more approachable without “dumbing down” the experience.  Sometimes that means new modes (as you point out), sometimes that means creating different control schemes (as we did last year with Family Play on our Wii games), but it’s also very important that this also mean creating approachability in our core game experiences as well.  Tuning our games to be fun and approachable regardless of what your skill level is at first and making them adapt to meet your skill level.

Here’s Dale’s take on this:

“Designing features that make the game more approachable while also adding a layer of depth for the hardcore can be tricky.  Madden NFL 09 has new features that adapt the experience to be fun no matter what your level of skill.  On top of that, it’s highly customizable for those that enjoy tweaking the game themselves.”

Smokecapone says, “What are you guys going to do about cheating in online gaming?  I play Madden religiously (PS3) even though the game is not what it is on the PS2. I get tired like many others that play the game the way it’s played in reality to go home from work or whatever and relax and chill by playing a quick game online only to be cheated because the idiot can’t pick up on basic controls of Madden."

More from Dale:

“I spend a lot of time playing online as well and have fallen victim to the same cheats or glitches that many have complained about.  Believe me, nothing makes the team more angry than to see folks using these to ruin the experience of honest Madden players.  We're constantly reading the boards and reviewing game logs to hunt down any major issues.  Through a few patches for Madden 08, we greatly reduced the number of major cheats in the game.  We’ll be even more diligent for Madden NFL 09 and will patch any serious glitch or cheat that’s discovered. All issues reported by the community from the 08 product have already been addressed in 09.”

Again, as much as I'd like to, there’s no way I can respond to every question I get on here.  But I'll do my best to address as many key themes as I can.  Much more of this to come.

- Peter