Eating BBQ With John Madden

10/17/22

Please note - this is the first full entry where I have spoken the entry into my computer / phone and then attempted to edit it. Speech to text apps do a better job these days than in the past, but what I ended up with was one huge rambling paragraph that I needed to shrink down into this entry.

Another Lucky Role (Roll)

As l stated in an earlier post, for a time I seemed to be as fortunate as Forrest Gump - traveling through my career at EA having talented people & projects just seem to fall into my lap for me to work with / on. While I did work extremely hard to get to the point(s) where I got to work on a lot of the titles I contributed to, when I look back on it all I cannot believe how truly lucky I was. My time as one of the leads of the John Madden Football franchise were some of the best, and most stressful, times I had working at EA. Before I delve into what in retrospect is my microscopic role in the John Madden Football franchise's history, I need to stand and applaud the people truly responsible for initiating the franchise.

Acknowledging History

This list does have to start with Trip Hawkins, since he signed John Madden to begin with, and helped design the initial Apple // version of the game. Robin Antonick was the lead programmer of that Apple // version and it is amazing how much he was able to cram into that 8-bit computer.

The Sega Genesis version of Madden Football that I would inherit was created by Scott Orr, Jim Simmons, and Richard Hilleman. This is the version of the game that would become famous (and also become the first version of Joe Montana Football for the Genesis too, but that's another story).

Going To School

While my luck began when Scott Orr tapped me to help design & produce what would become Madden '94, an extra bit of challenge was added when it was decided that EA would create their first College Football game (with the late, great Bill Walsh being signed to be the celebrity endorser since he was coaching Stanford at that time) - now we were responsible for producing two different football games in the same year (with very few additions to the team working on them).

Coach Walsh made his entire coaching staff available to us, gave me his game plan from the first Stanford game of the previous season, and spent many more hours than he was contractually obligated to with us to help make sure that we created a decent college football game.

Internally the challenge was to make the game feel like a college football game, and not just "Madden with college teams". The playbook(s) we created were a clear departure from the pro game, and it was a blast to try and get "the option play" to work well within the game...everyone in our production team did wonderful work, and the game turned out pretty good - it sold reasonably well (although not as good as Madden), and a new EA Sports franchise was born (at least until the Ed O'Bannon case made all college sports video games go away for awhile)...

Meeting John Madden

As the time got close to the annual design / photo / video / audio session with Mr. Madden, and since this was my first time where I would be the lead "interviewer" (for lack of a better term), I received advice seemingly from everyone in the company that had ever interacted with John on how to best "handle" him. Heading into the session, I have to admit that I was a little frightened and intimidated.

Fortunately, after we arrived for the session, these feelings quickly dissipated - John, and his sons, greeted all of us with nothing but smiles, warmth, and even a catered BBQ lunch! The food was tasty, and the feedback that we received from John on where we were going with Madden '94 was very sage.

This friendly collaboration would by my last opportunity to really exhale during the creation of Madden '94 for quite some time.

The "Other Version"

While the Sega Genesis version was, by far, the best selling and most well known of the versions of Madden Football, there had also been a Super Nintendo (SNES) version at that time as well. This SNES versions of Madden, prior to Madden '94, were all created by EA Canada, and internally it was not a well liked version - the frame rate was rather poor, the visuals more muddy than what one would expect from the SNES, and just wasn't as much fun to play as the Sega Genesis version. On top of that, these previous versions didn't sell as well as what was expected.

Enter Greg Thomas, John Schappert, and Visual Concepts...

From (The Old) "National Pastime" To (The New) "National Pastime"

With creation of Madden '94 well underway already for the Genesis & SNES, I was finishing up MLBPA Baseball with Greg, John, and the rest of the talented team at Visual Concepts. They were huge fans of Madden Football, and wanted an opportunity to do the SNES version of the game. They were positive that they could create a SNES version that would be far superior to the ones we had previously released.

After much internal consternation and discussion (and very much on the sly), Scott Orr agreed to give Visual Concepts a chance to create an "audition version" of Madden '94 for the SNES. I handed them our design docs, answered their questions, and set them loose to see what they might be able to do. Since the SNES version had always lagged behind the Genesis version in previous years, the additional time hit we might take by using Visual Concepts wouldn't be too noticeable.

That is, until...

A Retail Promotion Is Born!

While all this was happening, our marketing department decided that they wanted to create a "Madden Release Event" - Madden Football Friday - where both the Genesis & SNES versions of the game would be available for purchase on the same day. This is where the real stress began as, regardless of whether EA Canada or Visual Concepts would be responsible for the SNES version of Madden, the remaining time to complete it would be greatly reduced (the Genesis version was always tracking to release on the proposed Madden Football Friday date).

Since Visual Concepts had only been working on their audition version for a couple of weeks, internally our team was leaning towards stopping them and adding resources to complete the EA Canada version by the necessary completion date, but then...

An Audition Changes Everything

Early one morning, Greg Thomas & John Schappert showed up smiling with a SNES cartridge of their audition version of Madden '94. From the moment that we booted up their cart, everyone who saw and / or played it instantly acknowledged that this was by far superior to what we were receiving from EA Canada - the graphics were better / cleaner, the frame rate was drastically improved, most of the new features of Madden '94 were already implemented, and the game felt (almost) on par with the Genesis version of the game.

What had been a private audition up to this point now turned into a political hot potato - removing the internal EA Canada team in favor of Visual Concepts was going to be very much like trying to push a large boulder uphill...(even though our production team felt it was the right thing to do for the franchise)...

After a lot of tense internal discussions, it was decided that we would have a series of focus groups come in to play both SNES versions of Madden '94 to receive feedback on which one was the preferred version. If the outcome was close, it was decided that we would proceed with the EA Canada version of the game.

Remember When Chicago Beat Washington 73 - 0?

Three nights of focus groups with a total of 60 passionate players of Madden Football resulted in an almost unanimous verdict in favor of the Visual Concepts version of Madden '94. In spite of this, the issue was still not decided within EA. There would be a (televised-back-to-EA-Canada) "hearing" where I would have to answer questions regarding each SNES version of Madden '94...I was truly panicked now...

"Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, A Member Of Any Anti-Canadian Groups?"

I showed up to the meeting in a suit to answer questions from all of the execs (yes, I wore a suit at EA...and without even a Mickey Mouse tie too). I was an uncomfortable, sweaty mess for the entirety of my "testimony". After it was all over, it was decided that we'd move forward with the Visual Concepts version of the game (although it was still a struggle).

Aftermath

Thanks to this, plus a slew of other erratic / bipolar behavior on my part, this was the effective end of my career at Electronic Arts (although I wouldn't actually leave for another 2+ years).

Madden NFL '94 introduced many features to the franchise that are still staples of the game to this day...(I do still wish I / we had done a better job of implementing / tuning them)...

Visual Concepts would go on to produce many great football & basketball games.

John Schappert (lead programmer of the SNES version of Madden '94) would go on to head EA Tiburon where his company would produce many more versions of Madden (and other games).

There are way too many internal EA people to thank for all of their support / contributions during this challenging time - Scott, Michael K., Michael R., Gordon, James, Rob, Kevin, Ken, Greg, etc, etc, etc...everyone worked hard, and we got both the Genesis & SNES versions done in time for them to ship on...

Celebrating (The First) "Madden Football Friday"

After both versions were completed, and just before the first "Madden Football Friday", there was a company-wide meeting at a warehouse. Inside the warehouse there were over one million copies of Madden NFL '94 for the Genesis & SNES. The sight was awe-inspiring and more than a little scary - my thoughts turned to a world where many of these cartridges wouldn't sell-thru and would end up being buried in the desert right next to all of the unsold copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600...(fortunately, that didn't happen).

John Madden showed up to this event to say "hi" and shake hands, and we even had BBQ catered in from the same restaurant that John had used when he fed us during our design session.

(my brain remembering this celebration is what actually triggered this whole blog entry)

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I apologize if this entry is more than a little bit too much "inside baseball" information-wise...If you made it all the way here, thanks again for reading all of my nonsense!

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