|
by
Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net
5-30-05
Ask
and ye shall receive…
A
couple of months ago in my last column I asked the Madden
Community for a 3rd party roster editor for Madden
2005.
Well,
I got not one but two roster editors to choose from!
Gommo
and Nza over at Football-Freaks have done what many of us have
 been
asking for for a long time. They both have roster editors that
work on files for Madden 2005, and Gommo’s editor even works
on 2004! Nza’s editor was the one that came out first, but
in my opinion, Gommo’s is the better editor. With his editor
you can edit
players by team roster whereas with Nza’s editor you have to
search through the database to get to the player you want.
Believe me it is so much easier to edit players when you can
use a filter for the team he happens to be on.
Now
I find out that he has updated his editor yet again. Version
0.9.5.0 is now out which now includes the ability to edit the
regular season schedule and he added additional filters to the
global player editor.
To
say that I am giddy right now is something of an
understatement. This means that I can finally give the classic
players in my All-Time roster the proper numbers without
having to resort to trickery. It also means that I can assign
all of the players on the Classic teams the schools they went
to. In the game their schools were locked out – not so in
Gommo’s editor.
All
of this leaves me in something of a quandary. Now I have the
ability to edit the rosters in Madden the way that I want to.
But I am also working on a similar project for MVP Baseball
2005 using MVPEdit. So now I’m having to work on both of my
projects on alternating days. Madden one day, MVP the next,
then Madden, MVP, and so on…
So
hopefully one day soon I will be able to get these projects
done. Although time is not a factor with my MVP project as
this is the last version of MVP we will see for the PC for a
long time (thanks a lot Take-Two).
Which
actually bring me to an interesting point, about how much
better the PC is as a gaming platform that any console you
care to name.
I
know, I know, that’s one hell of a segway to make, but since
Take-Two is not going to put out a PC version of MLB’06
anytime soon, I think that this is an excellent time to
re-illustrate this point.
At
e3 this year the next generation consoles were unveiled.
Sony’s PS3, Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Nintendo’s Phantom
were seen by the public for the first time. Soon we should be
reading in the platform magazines and on fan websites how much
better the platforms are for playing games, and how much
PC’s and more importantly the people who play games on them,
suck.
Yeah,
get ready for the platforms vs PC wars to start up again. We
knew this day was coming sooner or later, but guess what
people…it has now arrived.
But
this is not 2000 or 2001. This is not a PS2, XBox and Gamecube
vs whatever you could afford at the local CompUSA. The top of
the line gaming PC’s come from companies like Alienware,
Voodoo, Dell, Falcon Northwest just to name a few. Not only
that but today’s gaming PC’s are so much more powerful and
versatile than any platform, new or old, that there
shouldn’t even be any comparison between the two.
Not
only that, but there are economics to consider. Developers
have to pay royalties to Sony and Microsoft for console
licensing rights, they have to jump through hoops for console
titles, plus there aren’t too many possibilities for mass
marketing genre games in the console market. All of this means
bigger bucks for those of you who do own consoles and want the
next version of NCAA Football in your collection.
PC
gamers have it somewhat easier since there is a lower barrier
of entry for small developers, a higher profit margin on units
sold, no royalties to Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo and more
control over broadband delivery mechanisms that may eliminate
the publishing middleman altogether a la Steam and Half Life
2.
The
problem is that too many developers still consider the PC to
be “the fourth
platform” and that we still get console gamers sloppy
seconds.
Where
am I getting all of this from? The July 2005 issue of PC Gamer
Magazine of course. They had an interview in there with Greg
Costikyan who is a consultant and blogger on game development.
He pointed all of this out and them some, and you know what?
He’s right! He also pointed out that maybe PC gamers should
seek out and support smaller PC publishers.
Yeah,
like Winter Valley Software for one.
As
I have taken a step back from this site to concentrate more on
my new job I haven’t been as diligent in keeping track of
what has been going on in the world of gaming, but I am trying
to get back into the swing of things.
Maximum
Football has been in the final stages of release for months
now. A lot of us are still waiting for Matrix Games to finally
pull the trigger and make it possible for all of us to order
and then play the damn game already! I know that there are a
lot of companies that say that they will release their game
“when it’s ready”, but this isn’t the next coming of
Duke Nukem for God’s sake! Come on Matrix, give us something
else besides “Coming Soon” as a release date!
In
the PC Gamer article Greg Costikyan says: “If
we are going to create a viable independent games industry, we
not only have to solve the problems of financing,
distribution, and marketing – we need to foster a culture
that values independent vision and creativity over glitz, as
fans of independent film and music do. If “corporate rock
sucks,” perhaps corporate games do, to.”
I
don’t agree with that assessment, at least not completely. I
would say that not all corporate games suck. Certainly games
like Madden and MVP Baseball don’t suck due to the mod
community that has made them both more playable thanks to
roster editors and add-ons like cyberfaces and stadiums.
Corporate games that cater to console players exclusively
certainly do suck as they shut out an important audience for
the sake of the almighty dollar. A dollar that has to be given
back to the console companies so that they can make their
games to begin with.
That
brings me to the fact that we as PC gamers can most certainly
change things through the mod community. There is no better
example of that right now then what is going on at MVPMods. I
have heard Bret say that he wants the site to adapt a look
similar to MVPMods and I think that is great. Hopefully that
will simplify things and make it easier to update assuming
that he can pull it off. If he can, more power to him. But
what I would like to see in addition to that is if we started
acting like MVPMods in terms of making Madden more playable,
at least more so than it is now.
 Great
example: right now there is a mod available that enables you
to play in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in MVP Baseball.
There is also a mod coming up this weekend (I hope) that will
allow us to play in Ebbets Field. I just wish that there was a
way to do the same in Madden where we can play in The
Coliseum,
Metropolitan Stadium, Memorial Stadium in
Baltimore
, Yankee Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium or the Astrodome.
I
also wish that right now there was a way that instead of the
EASports logo on the scoreboard we could replace that with
Fox, ESPN or ABC like we can with the overlays in MVP
Baseball. That would not only be cool, but it would show all
of those console fanboys exactly what it is they are missing
out on.
It
might also show all of the developers that yes indeed, there
is a market out there for PC sports titles.
And
we can prove it to them by first giving them the sales numbers
they want, and then the mods to make the games more
interesting.
Now
if they would only put out NCAA Football for the PC, we would
be in business.
Until
next time…
|
