by Joe Gandolfo- jgand@pcfootball.net
07-01-02

Well apparently we have some answers. Just not the answers that we would like. 

By now most if not all of you have read the e-mail interview that all-madden.net’s Bill Walsh had with EA’s Jeremy Strauser. I read the interview last Thursday (June 27) on MM, and I came away with a few more questions then Jeremy answered. On the other hand I also came away with some reasons to be excited by the new release. Allow me to take some of these issues one at a time. 

• Mini-Camp games – If it were a mini-camp in the sense that you could take your franchise team to a mini-camp to practice and look at some new talent like they do in real life then I could get behind it. But, if it is just an add-on diversion that you could play at an arcade or a console, then what is the point? Personally, I can’t get too excited about what they did with this feature.
   

• Audio & Graphics – It sounds good in theory, game play will be another matter. The idea of having new animations like sidearm QB’s and cheerleaders on the sidelines sounds great. But a concern that I have is this: will my 64 mb GEForce 2 400MX Video Card be able to support the new graphics, or will I have to upgrade and at what cost? Will my Cmedia soundcard be able to support the new game or will I have to shell out for the latest SoundBlaster card, which I probably can’t afford right now?
   

• New Game Mechanics – I hope to God this means we don’t have to play around with sliders for a month to see what settings produce the most accurate stats in game play. But I hope that they still put the sliders in the game just in case.
   

• Franchise Mode – The pre-season games will be a welcome addition. But, will the rosters be limited to a certain number at all times or will we have the opportunity to have over 53 players signed and then have to trim the rosters on cut down days like we did in FBPro’99?
   

• Player Mode – Nice. Good to see that Coach Mode will be staying on as well.

As to the online features that he mentioned – I’m not really interested in winning tokens, creating an online hero, or 2-minute drill tournaments. Let the console fanatics play those games, I’ll stick to my offline Instigator franchise thank you. 

I’m glad to hear that there will still be stat logs in this game, but I honestly doubt that we will see and updated roster for 2002 from EA. They haven’t done this for their other sports games have they? Or am I wrong? Most of the updated rosters I have ever seen have been made by game players, not game programmers. And when EA has put out expansion disks or updates, it’s been for games in their other departments like “The Sims”. I’ll just wait and see if this pans out. 

Now, as to the subject of online franchises I, as well as many of you, have to take issue with what Jeremy had to say on the subject. I have never owned an online franchise, I am not interested in the feature unlike many of you are, but even I have to take issue with what he had to say. 

How extensive was his research and where did he go to get his less than 1% figure? Did he go to MM, PM, all-madden or any other site to see how many leagues were hosted there? If he did, how did he arrive at that figure? Did he take the total number of owners in the online franchises and divide them with the total number of posters registered on the board to get the less than 1%? If he did then the figure is grossly inaccurate because if you’ll notice, many people are registered with more than one board. So that artificially inflates the difference between registered posters who use the feature and those who don’t. For example, I am registered at MM, PM, this site, and say for the sake of argument I am registered at all-madden. That makes four different memberships for one person. If I am an owner of only one franchise on MM, I am not counted as one person; I am being counted as four distinct people, only one of which owns an online franchise. See how that works to throw the percentage off? 

I think EA needs to re-do their research and take this occurrence into account. If they didn’t than they are really doing their customers a disservice and they are severely underestimating the PC market. 

Another thing, he said that the PC market was not huge to begin with. Bret has said this before that he wanted to see numbers broken down between the console platforms and the PC gamers to see who buys how many units of whatever version they happen to play. That way we would be able to see how many PS, Xbox, Gamecube and PC versions of the game were sold to see where the main thrust of the customer base is. Well now I am throwing down the gauntlet Jeremy. To coin a phrase: SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!! I want to see these numbers as well so that I can see where us PC gamers stand in EA’s overall picture. 

But there was one thing that Jeremy said that set off some warning bells for me. I remember back in 1998 when FBPro’99 came out that it was being touted as a complete re-build from the ground up of that game. The game itself was a disaster and it was put to sleep soon after its release killing that franchise. I quote Jeremy: “we have a full team on PC, some of our best programmers and artists and treated 2003 as a major over-haul” 

WEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! WEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! WEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! WEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! WEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! WEEEEEEEEPPPPP!!!!! WARNING!!!!!! WARNING!!!!!! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!!! WARNING!!!!! 

I will be buying the game so that I can play it and review it for all involved. I hope that it will install smoothly, without problems, and that it will play smoothly. I can only hope that EA has lived up to their promises of giving us the best PC Football game ever. 

If they don’t, I hope for their sake that they are wearing a cup. They might need it. 

Until next time…