I am, by nature, a skeptical person. I'd like to think it's this eye of objectivity that makes me good at my job. (I'd like to think that, anyway.) Sports games are getting tougher and tougher to sell me on simply because of the sameness year in and year out. I've been playing sports games since the days of the Atari 2600 and I am at the point where the yearly updates are getting…stale. This is precisely the reason I am looking forward to Madden NFL 10 this year. This feels different. It’s a complete revamping of the core Madden dynamic – at least that’s what the team behind the game keeps telling us, and after playing it at E3 you can truly feel, at least from a first impression, that this is not your everyday Madden game. With this in mind, I wanted to talk with some of the key members of the design team to get an idea of how this mega franchise is progressing. With us from Team Madden are Ian Cummings (Lead Designer) Josh Looman (Senior Designer) and Donny Moore (Designer). What started out as a simple Q&A turned into…well these guys like to talk about Madden.

Thanks for taking the time, guys. Ian, in reading your blogs on easports.com as well as actually spending a good amount of time with the game at E3, it's clear to me that you and the rest of the team are pushing realism and a truly authentic NFL experience. What about Madden NFL 10, on the field, makes it a better and more realistic game compared to previous editions?

Ian: Yep, you drilled our focus this year – realism. Our team stepped back and really said “what are we not emulating correctly in regards to NFL Football?” Our gang tackling and blocking systems weren’t where we wanted them to be. Generally speaking, we also felt the overall speed of the game wasn’t consistent – it didn’t correctly emulate what fans are used to watching on Sundays. We created PRO-TAK to get many more players involved in gang tackles, as well as to give the gamer the ability to continually fight for extra yards in all those instances where they couldn’t before. Using PRO-TAK steering over our new blocking animations and systems also helped make the gameplay much more dynamic. Lastly, the game speed changes really helped make Madden NFL 10 the most realistic version to date, which our hardcore fans appreciate, as well as much easier to pick up and play for the casual NFL fan.

I embrace any attempts at making a sports game more realistic, but Madden's a ridiculously popular game -- is there any fear that messing with the status-quo -- a formula that has been very successful, will backfire? Is it possible for the game to be too realistic for the casual player?

Ian: At first, it was a definite concern to change up so many things that our Madden faithful have become accustomed to, but when you look at the amazing success FIFA has had recently, I believe their very strict focus on realism and gameplay has paid off, both for the hardcore and the casual gamer. If you focus on creating a game that closely emulates what fans of the sport are used to, then you will continue to bring in those fans that may have passed on the game before. After all, there are over 200 million NFL fans out there, so striving to make an authentic and realistic experience will do very little to turn them off. If it takes a pre-existing Madden fan a game or two to adjust and learn a new way of thinking and playing the game, then I think we are still ok.

I won’t lie though…it’s definitely a tricky balance to make sure that you can provide enough realism for the super-hardcore guys while ensuring that Joe Cowboys Fan doesn’t have a terrible experience. Most of that comes down to tuning the game differently for each skill level and ensuring that you’ve provided a lot of customization via sliders and such.

The experience out of the box (Pro mode) is tuned towards a more offensive style of play – longer time in the pocket, receivers get open more easily, more tackles are broken, etc., to make sure that everyone can have a really good time from the first time they boot up. Once you make the switch to All-Pro though, we really wanted to juice up the realism – accurate 40 times, accurate time in the pocket (3-5 seconds), etc. We want our All-Pro experience to really invoke another layer of strategy and planning – it shouldn’t only be about who has the best twitch skills. Football is much more of a chess match than any other sport…we can’t ignore that part of the game if we want to be the ultimate NFL simulation. I personally want Joe Cowboys Fan to be able to play Madden (and win) thanks to his knowledge of the game and strategy, and not be hampered if his “gaming skill” isn’t up to par.

The core development team for Madden NFL 10 is made up of some serious football fans, some brought over from the NFL Head Coach 09 team. How important was it, being the lead designer, to get the team that you felt you needed in place?

Ian: Having a solid team is paramount over anything else we can do. Having this group of extremely talented and passionate designers is very key…each person on this team was able to own every aspect from high level massive features (Online Franchise for example) to one-off improvements (like hand towels and other new player equipment), and without that commitment to ownership and quality, who knows how the game would have turned out.

Josh Looman and Donny Moore are two of the most passionate and knowledgeable people I’ve ever worked with, especially when it comes to football and hardcore football gaming. Their insane amount of work and commitment to detail, authenticity, and realism on Head Coach 09 proved that. On the presentation front, Audrey DeLong and Tavis Kahler both have extremely in depth knowledge of broadcasts, presentation, cameras, etc. – so with our focus on re-vamping the presentation, re-focusing on cut-scenes, and creating a true broadcast feel, those two were invaluable.

The gameplay team is full of extremely bright and talented designers, animators, and engineers – so without having those folks able to execute on the top level vision of realism and authenticity, we wouldn’t have been able to make all the changes we were able to do in one year. Probably the most important person to have alongside me though is Mike Young –arguably the best art director within EA. Mike’s passion for football as well as technical knowledge of what needs to be done to make the game look phenomenal make him an extremely valuable asset. In fact, our entire engineering and art teams are made up of basically superstars. Being able to take on the lead design role this year was really a perfect situation – all the stars aligned and we were able to really make some major strides and steer Madden into a whole new direction.

I know that the team is very upfront about wanting player ratings to really matter this year. The fact that you guys chain Donny Moore to a chair and make him rate every player -- is pretty amazing when you think about it. But in terms of gameplay, how will we see a difference in say -- quarterbacks? It's been one of my pet peeves with football games for years: it's terribly hard to tell a difference between the QBs outside of arm strength and running speed. Will a quarterback with lower accuracy actually be off target with more throws?

Donny: First off, it is a really comfortable chair. Now to your question.

I think we have captured the strengths and weaknesses of each one of the quarterbacks in the league like never before for Madden NFL 10. No longer is every QB rated 80+ in throw accuracy. We now see guys covering a wider spread, rated anywhere from 50 to 99. This meant totally re-tuning the passing game, but it was something that we felt had to be done.

You can see immediate differences just by taking the Dolphins into practice mode and checking them out. First, we have Chad Pennington. He is rated amongst the best QBs in the game in short and intermediate accuracy. However, he has a sub 75 rated arm (Throw Power), so you do not want to take too many chances deep with Pennington. Throwing the deep out across the field with Chad Pennington = not a bright idea in Madden NFL 10.

Now, sub in the electric backup Pat White. Notice that he is almost like a running back or receiver in terms of quickness and agility. He has a stronger arm than Pennington (low to mid 80’s). So he is capable of making more throws. But you will quickly notice that his accuracy is nowhere near Pennington’s level. White is rated in the low 70’s to low 60’s for accuracy. Finally, sub in 3rd string Chad Henne. He has a laser arm (90+ THP). His accuracy is somewhere in between White and Pennington. Factor all these changes in, and I promise you will feel a significant difference this year. Not just with the Dolphins, but with each and every quarterback in the league.

I also want to mention that we have 30+ unique passing styles and stances in the game for the first time in Madden NFL history. Tony Romo’s sidearm release. Peyton Manning. Brady. Roethlisberger. Heck, we even got Matt Stafford. Each one of these guys has slightly different timing with their release, so player will have to adjust for each one. Some of these guys are outstanding outside the pocket and on the run, for example Big Ben and Tony Romo. Some QBs need to be kept in the pocket to take full advantage of their tremendous accuracy ratings- think Kurt Warner and Drew Brees.

Staying with the ratings for a bit, how dramatic is the (ratings) drop off? Was this done to help make the players stand out a bit more? And are there any new player ratings this year?

Donny: Let me answer this in reverse. We have five new ratings this year, all at the QB position. We split Throw Accuracy into three accuracy ratings: Short, Mid, and Deep. Short accuracy is used to determine passes 20 yards and under, mid accuracy is used from 21-40, and deep is used for 41+ (that’s in exact distance from the QB to his target…not from the LOS to the yard line of the WR).

We also added a Play Action rating and a Throw on the Run rating. The play action rating factors into the calculation we have currently for play action plays and their likelihood of being successful. Instead of a generic factor where a rookie 7th round QB is just as effective as Tom Brady and Peyton Manning at doing play fakes, now we have a system that favors the best play fakers in the league. This year, we also added an additional penalty to throwing while on the run. For players who are considered “elite” in this rating like Big Ben, they are not penalized much at all in the throwing accuracy ratings. Although, I wouldn’t recommend the same approach for Peyton Manning.

In terms of the ratings drop off, let’s start with some numbers: