ORLANDO – Nestled in a suburban office park just north of Orlando, the exterior of EA Sports’ Tiburon campus looks like it could house an insurance company or accounting firm.
Then you get inside.
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If the active Xbox One and PS4 consoles in the lobby don’t give away that this isn’t the typical corporate workplace, the employees do. Decked mostly in a mix of sports jerseys, shorts and sneakers, the people responsible for creating the wildly popular Madden NFL video game series all seem to have some sort of NFL flag or jersey adorning their cubicles.
In some way, it’s an extension of the dorm room camaraderie that made this game, whose newest version Madden NFL 15 comes out on Tuesday, such a cultural touchstone among sports fans of multiple generations.
While the making of the football franchise might literally seem like fun and games, the process of annually trying to deliver a version that is more realistic, has better gameplay and generally captures more and more of what the fans want than the previous one is a very serious business.
For The Win got an inside look at how the game is made from a few of the people who are directly responsible for bringing the Madden experience into living rooms, dorm rooms and even NFL locker rooms across the country and beyond.
Donny Moore, Madden “Ratings Czar”
“The last time I was down here it was midnight and I’m leaving the building and Donny is going in through the front door,” Zach Farley, who along with partner Steve Gibbons creates the annual Madden Prima Official Game Guide, said. “I said ‘You’re going the wrong way, buddy.’ He said ‘I’ve got to create more rookies.'”
Moore has been with EA Sports since his persistent questions to EA staffers while playing in a local NCAA Football 99 tournament as a college student 15 years ago got him in the door as a game tester. His ratings are anything but arbitrary. He uses sites such as Pro Football Focus, Football Outsiders and Ourlads as resources as well as advanced stats and often, his own eyes.
When Cam Newton came into the EA Sports offices in the offseason, he complained to Moore about how his speed needed to be better in this year’s game. Moore looked down and noticed that Newton was in a walking boot after routine surgery and called him on it.
“I’m not going to make you faster if you’ve got a walking boot on your foot,” he told the Panthers star.
While his assessments of top players like Tom Brady and Russell Wilson, who are both rated a 93 overall in this year’s game, usually get the most attention, the contagiously energetic Florida native spends just as much time evaluating guys who probably won’t make an active roster as he does Pro Bowl starters.
After seeing footage of Carey Spear, currently the second kicker in Eagles camp, Moore gave him the highest-ever hit rating for a kicker.
“It’s based on a couple of highlight videos that got pushed my way when I was creating the guy,” Moore said. “His nickname is Murderleg. He hits people like a linebacker and I think he’s 5’9″, 180 pounds. Nothing big. We wanted to make sure we captured that in Madden and on kickoff coverage he might be a guy who could jar the ball loose.”
The ability to constantly update rosters and depth charts via online updates means that Moore’s main responsibilities no longer end when the game comes out in August. In the past, the ratings would have to be more of a projection. With the ability now to adjust them from week to week during the season, he’s constantly making tweaks based on the previous Sunday.
Clint Oldenburg, Madden NFL gameplay designer
For a long time, EA Sports’ slogan has been “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game.”
Oldenburg is the rare Madden staffer who can actually claim both. A former offensive lineman at Colorado State, Oldenburg was drafted by the New England Patriots in the fifth round of the 2007 draft, spending brief stints with the Jets, Rams, Broncos, Vikings and Redskins over the next three years.
“About the seventh time I got cut in the NFL, I decided I need to find something else to do,” Oldenburg said.
He signed up for an internship with EA Sports through the NCAA fellowship program and was hired full-time ten weeks later. Oldenburg describes his job as “writing in-depth football concepts into a detailed document so that an engineer who may or may not have ever watched football can understand what we want.”
One of his main focuses as a former lineman is making sure that Madden‘s blocking schemes mimic those in the pro game and helping to ensure that the team playbooks accurately reflect those of the real teams.
But one of the most interesting parts of his job usually happens at NFL team facilities, where he’s often dispatched to scan the faces of individual players for the upcoming version of the game.
The Madden crew will usually set up in a room for a day and players will come in as they can for a five-minute shoot where three cameras capture 12 shots each, giving the game’s artists 36 simultaneous facial pictures they can render onto a 3D skeleton. By the end of July, the designers had captured most players from 22 teams and some stars from the remaining ten franchises for Madden NFL 15, enhancing the lifelike details of those players in the game.
For the first time in Madden history, player tattoos will also be visible in the game.
Well, one player’s tattoos. 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick really wanted his body art visible in Madden, so he received permission from the two artists who designed his tattoos and filed it with the NFLPA.
Even though he isn’t responsible for the player ratings, Oldenburg often hears complaints from former teammates and players about how their virtual counterparts are scored too low.
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One of his funniest encounters came with Cincinnati Bengals tight end Jermaine Gresham, who received an 80 overall rating in Madden NFL 25 last season.
“He wouldn’t let us capture his head in the game because he said ‘You guys hate me so I don’t even want to be in your game,'” Oldenburg said. “I tried to tell him ‘You’re pretty good,’ but for whatever reason, he wasn’t specific, he didn’t like the way he was rated so he wouldn’t participate in the face scan.”
It’s a sentiment Oldenburg understands somewhat, considering his own player rating in his final appearance in the game in Madden NFL 12.
“I thought Donny had me too low,” he said. “He had me at a 65, which in hindsight was probably right because I sucked.”
Rex Dickson, Creative Director and Anthony White, Assistant Producer
One of the main initiatives Dickson had when the joined the Madden franchise in 2012 was to make “authentic simulation football.”
“In my mind the game had gotten too arcade-y,” he said. “It was too much based on exploits in that it played like Madden but didn’t play like football.”
One of the ways the team has tried to improve on that ideal in Madden NFL 15 is to focus on making the defensive gameplay better. In addition to additional defensive line moves, there is more realistic interaction between wide receivers and defensive backs in this year’s game.
Such changes are usually several years in the works, with some staffers already focusing on the next two editions of the game. The need to constantly find ways to improve every edition weighs on White, who has worked on the franchise since 2005. This responsibility actually changes the way he watches NFL games.
“When watching the Niners, I’m mostly a fan,” he said. “But yeah, I am actually paying a lot of attention to what they’re doing. Everything from how they tackle to the way they block to the way they line up. One of the things I’ve been watching now is the way the quarterbacks call their cadences at the line of scrimmage.”
There’s good reason for that. The Madden team met with former Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore this past offseason to learn more about the “check with me” system that he devised with Peyton Manning. With so much attention focused on Manning’s “Omaha” calls at the line last season, the creative team plans to add more audible options on offense in Madden NFL 16.
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One of the biggest challenges for Dickson is figuring out how to balance the need for new flashy innovations in each annual game with fixing numerous small issues that will improve the foundation of the gameplay from year to year.
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“You really want to put a Jacuzzi in your backyard but you’ve got to replace your roof,” he analogizes. “There’s nothing sexy about fixing your roof and you shouldn’t want that Jacuzzi but the right thing to do is work on your roof. It’s a lot of decisions like that.”