As an avid PC sports gamer, I should be used to this by now. The ritual of humiliation and self-abasement that is part and parcel of dealing with the avaricious thugs at EA Sports to get my semi-annual fix. It all started (for me) back in the mists of time known as the early 90s, when my platform of choice was the vaunted SNES.
Back then, the yearly editions of the EA Sports franchise (Madden 9x, NHL 9x, NBA Live! 9x) actually showed marked improvement in the games themselves from year to year. For example, I can still remember how cool it was when one-timers made their first appearance in NHL 94, and how full season play was introduced the following year. Sure, there were no other games for which you paid for a new version every year, but it was OK, because the games, by and large, were the best of their genre at the time.
Fast forward 15 years to 2008. I have moved on from the SNES, to the PS1, to the Dreamcast (don’t ask why), and, exclusively for the last 8 years, the PC. In the meantime, EA Sports has gone from good to mediocre to poor. I first started noticing in the late 90s that the amount and/or significance of new features added to the title of the year was steadily dropping, to the point where the game often felt the same as last year’s edition, with only updated rosters. Even worse, the quality control became abysmal, with game-breaking bugs upon release increasingly the norm, and patches slow to come by. Lately, they don’t even try to make versions designed specifically for the PC, instead clumsily porting over the PS2 or Xbox iteration. But at least there were still games to complain about, and very often the on-line fan communities would devise clever tweaks that made the game run well, if not optimally. Until now.
Cued in by the link in Justin Bailey’s signature, I’ve just discovered that EA Sports will, for the first time since the inception of the franchise, not be making a version of Madden 09 for the PC. Mind you, if this was, say… 1997, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I’d just by another NFL game. The thing is, in 2008, there won’t be any other NFL game, because those motherfuckers at EA hold an exclusive license. Listen how Peter Moore, President of EA Sports, justifies his decision:
I should have seen this coming. I still tenderly clutch my copy of MVP 2005 (baseball), as it was the last MLBPA-licensed game to be released for the PC (EA holds a similar exclusive license with regard to MLB). But Madden has consistently been the flagship of the whole EA Sports brand, widely out-selling their other games on a yearly basis, and I figured that no matter how half-ass of a job they did on it, there would always be Madden for the PC.
Just to make it explicit, in case it wasn’t crystal clear, EA has an exclusive time-limited license to produce officially licensed NFL games for the PC, for which they presumably paid a not insignificant amount of money, which they are not using. Now, I have some understanding of this on a business level (EA is nothing if not skilled at enriching its stockholders), but on a purely emotional level (these are games, after all) I have to say that this really, really sucks. As such, please allow me to express my frustration via the admittedly juvenile act of paraphrasing Mr. Moore’s remarks:
as committed as a gaming company can be, without actually releasing games
as demonstrated by our incompetence…
…because you losers can’t take the hint and buy a PS3 already
we’re working on an unholy combination of sports and MMORPG’s, because fisting you once a year isn’t quite often enough
because we’re out of ideas
unless you’re hankering for Bocce Ball 09
just buy a PS3 already, loser!
