Maddeness: EA To Let Fans Guide Rookie Ratings?

We’re all for community involvement here on GoMadden, and that’s why when EA decided to let fans decide which teams will duke it out in the official Madden 11 demo, we couldn’t wait to let everyone know. After all, democracy always the best thing, right? A lot of the times it is, but sometimes it’s just Maddeness.

Today the President of EA Sports, Peter Moore, detailed in his blog the ways in which EA is improving their game by using fan feedback. That was all well and good, until this part:

Peter Moore: “Another first for EA SPORTS during the NFL Draft will be the ability for fans to influence rookie ratings in Madden NFL 11. On draft day, ratings guru Donny Moore will post what he thinks the rookie ratings should be. Fans can then go to the Madden NFL website and enter their own ratings for each rookie. Donny will use the fan average as the player rating baseline for when training camp and pre-season begins. This is a great way for fans to become more involved in what is always one of the most hotly debated subjects each year when Madden is released.”

Did we read that right? Are fans really going to help dictate rookie ratings? In a perfect world, it’s a great idea; more input means better output. Practically speaking, however, it just seems like EA is going down treacherous waters. As Pastapadre has noted, this opens the door for teams to hype up their own rookies to improve their teams, or downgrade others to diminish their rivals.

While any outlier ratings will find themselves auto-corrected by Donny Moore and the Madden ratings gurus as the season moves on, we still think letting the fans decide what the “baseline” will be for rookies is a bit dangerous, if not a little lazy. While we do think the fan voting is a good idea, and could be a lot of fun for fans on draft day, we think EA would be wiser to simply use fan votes in the same way NFL coaches use the scouting combine — as a safety net.

If the ratings team has a rookie rated dreadfully low, and fans have him rated ridiculously high, then that should serve as a notice to EA that perhaps they should go back and re-evaluate that player, and see what it is they might of missed. This is a very different process than allowing fan ratings to actually translate into in-game prowess, and would serve as a better method than what we’ve come to understand as EA’s latest community venture.