Ian Cummings Talks Madden 11, Real-Time Physics and More

The much-awaited Madden 11 is now only a few weeks away, so we thought it fitting to sit down with Creative Director Ian Cummings for some thoughts on this season’s Madden NFL, whether or not real-time physics could ever play a role and even a few buzz questions from members of our community.

The Quick Pass

If you’re not familiar with Ian Cummings, you should be. When he’s not teasing fans on his Twitter, he can be found working at EA Tiburon as Creative Director of Madden NFL. There are few better people to talk to about the upcoming Madden 11, and there’s no better place to stay up-to-date than GoMadden. It’s like LeBron James joining up with D-Wade, except no one is burning our jerseys.*

*Mostly because we don’t have any jerseys.

Talking with Ian Cummings

1.) Why was it important for the team to slow down development of Franchise and Superstar modes this year? What kind of hurdles had to be overcome that were different from previous seasons?

In simple terms, what we have learned by listening to our community is that people are getting bored. The data backs this up in the fact that less than 10% of our Franchise gamers even make it past year 2, and less than 3% of our Superstar users make it past year 2. As the previous design teams rushed to get Madden NFL 06 and Madden NFL 07 to market, they were forced to make the decision of using rather old technology from PS2-days to create Franchise and Superstar. So as a design team we made the decision to not make any major upgrades to this very fragile (and difficult to update) system and instead focus more on online and gameplay and dedicate people towards planning and working for the future. We have already built one of the deepest console career modes in history with NFL Head Coach 09, and we learned a lot of lessons from that product, so moving forward I am really excited with what we can accomplish once we get a solid foundation and better architecture in place.

2.) NBA Elite 11 will feature a physics-based engine, and all the speculation is that if all goes well, the Madden franchise will adopt it in the future. Is it safe to say this is something the team has looked very closely at, or are you content with the new locomotion system and building improvements upon that for several more years?

We are obviously keeping a close eye on the physics systems being integrated into NBA Elite 11 and NHL 11. Physics in a football game is on a much larger scale because of the actual real possibility of 22 players colliding all at the same time in a big pile. The hardware currently would have real problems with this amount of calculation, but we definitely all agree that physics is a core part of football and we will not ignore this aspect of the game. Locomotion, ball physics, artificial intelligence, and general animation quality in general are all also major pieces of the puzzle too – it isn’t wise to try to build a game solely around physics. All of the fundamentals are just as important and we won’t lose sight of that as we push to create the ultimate NFL simulation.

3.) Is a feature like Live Broadcast (in EA SPORTS MMA) something you feel could work in the Madden franchise?

Live Broadcast is definitely a cool feature and something that could work in the Madden franchise, but we always try to use data to help us make our decisions. If Live Broadcasts are received well and also used often, that may affect the priority of when we would want to implement something similar in Madden.

4.) Madden Ultimate Team was a very successful addition to Madden NFL 10 late last season. What would you say is the biggest change to Madden Ultimate Team, what is going to keep gamers playing this year?

The biggest change was to get Madden Ultimate Team integrated on to the disc. We wanted to get MUT into as many people’s hands as possible so they could enjoy the mode right from the get-go. We have made a multitude of changes, including ‘collections’ which are yet another way to build your ultimate team and gain an advantage over your friends. We are looking to expand the mode even more throughout the season but we haven’t finalized our plans yet. Rest assured Madden Ultimate Team is definitely a focus for us for this year and for the future.

5.) With Madden NFL 11′s new “blink” trailer introduced at E3, has more consideration been put into possibly introducing a first-person camera view in the future? I think everyone can agree that the trailer represents the type of hyper-realistic football game everyone would like to see imitated to some degree. Certainly the “God view” of Madden has been very successful, and provides much more control of the game and a lot more strategic opportunities. But could we not see a first-person view as an option in the future?

The ‘blink’ trailer was definitely cool, and it really opened a lot of people’s eyes to how impactful that first-person presentation can be. That being said, there are TONS of challenges with actually playing the game that way and to most folks it’s more of a gimmick than anything else. I think the presentation aspect was really compelling though and it’s definitely something we’ll mull over as we plan for future products.

6.) Community member Dylan5412 asks: “As you might know, fellow game NCAA Football 11 removed “rocket catching” last season, and then again in this year’s final build, actively referring to it as an exploit. What is Madden’s take on rocket catching? Do you consider it an exploit, and if so, can we expect the team to try and minimize its appearance in Madden 11 and onward?”

Rocket catching is something of an enigma to us. On the one hand, we want people with great stick skills to be able to have responsive user-catching. We also want players that are good in real life at going up for jump balls (like Larry Fitzgerald) to be accurately represented in the game. On the other hand, we don’t want anything to be “money” where people can build an offense around something that can’t be stopped. Our approach is typically to try to balance user-catching with better defense and higher knockout chances for the players that know what they are doing on defense.

7.) Community member MikeGzYaDig asks: “With gamers becoming more and more interested in online play, do you think there is anything that can be done to revive franchise mode to its glory days? And if less and less people are playing it, could there be a risk of losing it altogether?”

Referring back to the first question, Franchise mode is still very important to us. We have done a lot of research on our consumer base and who buys and plays Madden, and a good Franchise mode is extremely vital for building a well-rounded product, and just as important as online feature-set in general. Though more and more consumers are connecting their broadband consoles online, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are online gamers. There is still a huge group of people that like to control their team (or multiple teams) and progress through multiple seasons and live out that fantasy of being a coach, GM, owner, or what have you. We want to bring something really special to the table for this group of people so we’re going to make sure we work to create something that will stand the test of time for the long-term future of Madden NFL.

We would like to thank Ian Cummings for taking the time to answer just a few of our questions, and giving our community an opportunity to have their voices heard. Remember to stay tuned to GoMadden.com as the season approaches for all the latest news, tips and community opinion.