When something happens in real life sports, my first instinct is to see if I can replicate it in a video game. It’s partly why they exist, after all. But the New Orleans Saints’ infamous “bounty” system, which paid premiums to players who delivered devastating hits, would seem to be beyond the means of a game like Madden NFL 12.
Looking over the field of candidates for the Madden NFL 13 cover, I’m thinking of what William Munny said before he shot Little Bill in Unforgiven: Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.
In past years I’ve used the Saturday before the Super Bowl to handicap the field for the next cover of Madden NFL. Since the last time I did that, EA Sports put the honours up to a fan-voted, 32-player tournament in 2011, and on Thursday announced it was doubling that field to 64 for 2012.
Considering the source, it’s an unlikely statement. When Oregon was marching to a #1 ranking and a berth in the national championship game last year, Richard Hofmeier was running an art gallery in Eugene’s funky Whiteaker neighbourhood. Where nearly every video game treats all-star status and on-field glory as the player’s birthright, Hofmeier built one to put you in the shoes of a guy selling hot dogs, far away from the lights and the stadium.
Of all ironies, it’s Electronic Arts now asking a judge to rule that some video game depictions of real-life names and symbols and products don’t need a licence.
I’ve tried to be open-minded about what constitutes a sports video game, largely because the genre has so few new titles or competing products in a given year. Pinball FX 2, one of my favourite games of 2011, has struck me as a quasi-sports video game for a while, I just couldn’t really articulate why.
Looking back on the list of video games I finished in 2011, it’s an embarrassingly thin roster. It may be my least productive year ever, in terms of what I finished, what I was expected to play and what I spent most of my time doing. It’s not a resume that really speaks of a professional video game writer.
