One of the few broadcast features in Madden NFL 12 that I didn’t punch away with a quick button press was the official league bumper video at the end. You know, when the smooth narrator puffs up and says “This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL” and lays down the law of the league’s expressed written consent.
Career modes in sports video games do a superb job of helping you create the story of a single team or a player. Where even the best ones fall short is in making you feel part of something larger. Players are forced to hunt through menus for results and standings, and even then, it’s hard to tell who is overachieving and who is having a disappointing year.
Going from the person most co-workers know as a man to one they will know as a woman is a challenge most people won’t ever have to face. Doing it in the sports division of a video game company probably adds a ridiculous degree of difficulty.
In a series of revelatory tweets spotted by Operation Sports yesterday, Hal Chapman Wingo III, better known as “Trey”, the host of ESPN’s NFL Live studio show, said he would be appearing in Madden NFL 13.
The NBA Live development team runs a weekly game of basketball at a rec centre across the street from EA Sports’ studio in Orlando, Florida. When I visited a couple of weeks ago, I was invited to join them. Absolutely, I replied, but deep down I was still a little hesitant.
By the end of October 2010, everyone knew NBA Elite 11 was doomed. Though officially “delayed” that September, one week before the game was due to release, no one really expected it ever to ship, even internally. The ambitious makeover of the NBA Live franchise simply had too many problems to be published. That last Friday of the month, word spread from EA Sports’ operations in California and Canada to Florida. NBA Elite would be canceled outright.
Though I wish I could say I was smart enough to think up this ruse in advance, I really did forget my backpack somewhere inside EA Sports’ Tiburon studio during a recent visit. This became an opportunity to roam all of its upper four floors of development, though not unescorted.
