Madden NFL‘s delightful ersatz Twitter feed, which debuted with Skip Bayless haranguing your created pro, in perfect character, will return to the game’s career mode next year. We know that because of a most unusual addition to the roll-up: Paul Lukas, the aesthete of athletes who operates the Uni Watch blog and writes for ESPN.
“One of the higher-ups from EA Sports, who says he’s a big Uni Watch fan, got in touch with me about 10 days ago and invited me to participate,” Lukas wrote on Thursday. “It sounded like fun, so I said yes.”
Intriguingly, Lukas has asked for — and apparently received — a more hands-on role in how his tweets will be written. Last year, it was the work of one man, Todd Zuniga (the feed had a scripting function where certain players could be subbed in and out of certain situations too), and the celebrities he impersonated signed off on whatever was said in their name. “I wasn’t sure I wanted someone else putting words in my mouth, even if it was only faux Twitter words in my faux mouth — so I asked if I could have a more active role in the writing of my tweets,” Lukas said. “They said that would be fine. None of this work has taken place yet though.”
I’ll be curious to read what Lukas has to say in the faux feed, and not just because I enjoy his work in real life too. Lukas’s job is to criticise, and if he doesn’t like the look of something, he’ll say so. There’s a slight difference between fake Skip Bayless saying a representation of an NFL player is playing like a dog (especially if he is), and a guy straight up calling a 49ers uniform feature “a disaster.” Wonder what he thinks of the Wendy’s drive-thru getups worn by the Canton Greats (above).
So it will be interesting to see how far he can go with this. And if my created pro plays with no facemask again, I hope Faux Lukas points out how I am sacrificing my face for the ultimate throwback look.
A Madden-ing Situation [Uni Watch]
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