
When Madden NFL Killed NFL 2K - vezycash
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-moment-madden-nfl-killed-nfl-2k-forever
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slg
The shock waves of this deal basically killed all competition in sport video
games. When I was a kid there were usually 3 or 4 games in each of the big pro
sports. Today there is really only one viable franchise per sport (even though
I believe all the exclusive licenses have since expired). The market for these
games is bigger than ever with EA bringing in almost $1 billion per year from
their Madden and FIFA franchises. However the cost of licensing and the threat
of another exclusivity bidding war means the barrier to entry and long term
risk of creating a new franchise is sadly too high to get any serious
competition.

~~~
emodendroket
Isn't Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer still kicking around? You're
essentially right otherwise though.

~~~
modeless
Not for long: [https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/16/pes-2019-champions-
leagu...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/16/pes-2019-champions-league-fifa-
heartbreak/)

~~~
mnm1
PES / WE has never had official licenses except for a few clubs here and there
that change every season and no one cares because it's simply superior to FIFA
in every other way. People have been playing this game for over two decades
without official licenses. Losing the CL license will not affect the game
much.

EDIT: Also, there are community patches with all the kits, at least for PS4 /
PC.

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bobbles
Pretty telling excerpt of the business BS going on from Wikipedia:

ESPN NFL 2K5 was the first in the 2K series priced at $19.99 the day it
shipped, much lower than market leader Madden NFL at $49.99. This greatly
reduced Madden sales that year; one EA Sports developer recalled that "[i]t
scared the hell out of us".[1] EA reduced Madden NFL 2005's price to $29.95.
In December 2004 EA Sports acquired an exclusive rights agreement with the NFL
and NFLPA to be the sole creator of NFL video games.[2] The deal terminated 2K
Sports production of any further NFL games. The ensuing season, Madden 2006,
saw pricing returned to the $49.99 MSRP.

In December 2010, a U.S. district court judge certified a class action anti-
trust lawsuit against Electronic Arts for anti-competitive practices to
proceed.[3] Electronic Arts settled the class action suit in July 2012 for $27
million, and retained its exclusive NFL license.[4][5]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN_NFL_2K5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN_NFL_2K5)

~~~
anoncoward111
I remember when this happened when I was just a kid of maybe 10 or 11. Around
the time this was happening, you still had NFL blitz, street, fever, QB club,
etc all duking it out for king of the sports games, especially.

It was a time before social media, so we only really heard rumors about what
happened. We all began to hate EA, even back then. We knew it was about money.
2k6 wasnt perfect and it was clunky at times, but it was way more cost
effective to play, considering how much you had to pay for a new roster every
year

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nkozyra
Madden is fascinating to me because despite widespread user dissatisfaction
with the game year-in, year-out, its users treat it like a necessity. I guess
that's a monopoly in action.

There is space for a competitive product, but it would need to be completely
unlicensed. Without licensing, you'd need a simple way to customize rules,
teams, players, etc. EAs NCAA series got around player issues in a similar
way.

If that customization were fostered, you could have a football game that with
a few clicks was a better Madden and/or NCAA series. You'd just need to trade
your licensing budget for a legal one.

~~~
slg
You might notice that the NCAA series doesn't exist anymore and that is partly
because that plausible deniability of using the community to circumvent
licensing rules can only go so far.

~~~
nkozyra
I think that's (a small) part of it. The surface reason is that EA did the
same thing for a long time, creating players that looked like their real life
counterparts with their real life attributes and real life numbers, etc.

That's what bit them. You're really going to be hamstrung fighting an open-
world, modifiable game unless you're showing obvious negligence in policing
it.

~~~
slg
There would be numerous problems with 100% made up teams and players that
would make it too risky for any big developer to attempt.

1\. It would be hard to market without a single recognizable face or team.

2\. It would be hostile to casual/novice users who couldn't play the game at
its full potential out of the box.

3\. It would be hard to create the online and esport modes that other sports
games thrive on as you couldn't allow those custom rosters in competitive
modes.

~~~
nkozyra
1\. Absolutely. It would require some sort of viral approach. You won't win
with traditional advertising.

2\. Maybe. To be fair, I think the approach from point #1 would always come
with an implicit :wink wink, nudge nudge:.

3\. I'm not sure you _couldn 't_ allow it so much as you would be expected to
respond to DMCA/etc in reasonable fashion.

~~~
slg
That :wink wink, nudge nudge: was exactly what I was talking about in my first
post that EA had to eventually give up on.

In order to have any competitive online mode, you need to have have player
attributes that are in some way restricted so you can't just max out the
attributes for your custom team. That would be in direct conflict with
recreating teams realistically because real life teams can have huge
disparities of talent between them.

And just to be clear, I am not saying that this can't be done. Just that the
obstacles in the way make this such a risky undertaking that no established
developer would take on a project like this.

~~~
nkozyra
> That :wink wink, nudge nudge: was exactly what I was talking about in my
> first post that EA had to eventually give up on.

It isn't, though. They had to give up because they did the job themselves, not
because they had an open and accessible customization system. Had they never
themselves created approximations of real players, it would have been a harder
legal battle.

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Yhippa
NFL 2K was the last big step change in football video games. You could put me
on a desert island and I wouldn't miss Madden '18 one bit.

Actually I bought Madden '18 which is the first time I've bought a football
game in a long time. Madden Ultimate Team is pushed so hard in that game. It's
terrible. And people who dump a ton of money into it...you can't even take it
into the next season with you.

One genre I'll really miss which will never come back are the NCAA Football
and Basketball games. Understandably so.

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mozumder
NFL2K was easily the best football game. The controls were so much better than
Madden. Something about Sega games that made them so easy to get into. I could
never get into Madden.

On the Dreamcast where it launched, you could pick plays on your controller's
LCD display, making sure your opponent never saw what play you picked. So
good..

~~~
godzillabrennus
NFL Blitz was also a fantastic game of that era.

It’s a shame that sports games all basically are strangled into a mold these
days.

~~~
camhenlin
Yeah, totally agreed. Blitz was great because it didn’t try to be too
realistic and had a lot of silly and ridiculous stuff, which made it a lot of
fun. I don’t like or watch sports, but I did have fun playing Blitz on the N64
with my friends. Games like Madden take themselves too seriously and (IMO of
course) only seem to be good for actual sports fans

~~~
bena
Blitz knew exactly what it wanted to be: arcade football. A sort of spiritual
successor to games like Mutant League.

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b3b0p
This reminds me, I actually still play Tecmo Super Bowl and actually prefer it
over Madden. There is a large fan community and they put out a ROM patch with
updated rosters every year [0]. The same for NHL Hockey '94 [1].

[0] [http://tecmobowl.org/files/file/550-tecmo-super-
bowl-2018-pr...](http://tecmobowl.org/files/file/550-tecmo-super-
bowl-2018-presented-by-tecmobowlorg/)

[1] [http://www.nhl94.com](http://www.nhl94.com)

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segmondy
This can be broken, make a customizable game. Players can name their teams,
name the players, name the city, load custom jerseys, load different
faces/skin. Let the underground and players build their own player. Make the
game player much better.

~~~
bena
This could work provided there was a dedicated enough userbase in the early
adopters who had the drive and dedication to create the current league. Then
when/if the game gets popular enough, there should be enough people to make
keeping up trivial.

~~~
segmondy
You can fake the userbase. ;-)

~~~
bena
I mean, you could do all the work yourself

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jdhn
Reading this thread is such a trip down nostalgia lane. NFL 2K (or maybe 2K1)
was my first football game ever, and I have such good memories of playing it
with my friends. Pity it had to die an early death, just like the Dreamcast.

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pdwetz
I still miss Front Page Sports Football from the 90s. While we owned a couple
of different versions, the early one that had the most play time for us was
completely unlicensed, so we made up names for all of the teams. It was a
really nice balance of sim, play designer, and arcade football. My brother and
I each had a team and played through multiple seasons. If memory serves, I
tanked the end of one season to ensure the #1 overall pick in the next draft.
Unfortunately, with our setup only one person could play at a time so we had
to sim any games our teams played each other (including a championship game or
two).

~~~
ydt
I was just talking about this with a friend the other day. We both agreed that
to date, it was the most fun either of us have had with a computer football
game. Watching your fictional players develop,get hurt etc added an rpg-like
element that was addictive. I am surprised and disappointed no one has made a
comparable modern version.

~~~
danbolt
I bet the next developer that makes a sports game with a Fire-Emblem spin
(character relationship elements, individual personalities) will make a solid
amount of money.

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danso
The source podcast ("Madden's Game, by 30 for 30) is itself very interesting
for covering the development of the Madden games. Gets into great technical
detail, such as how Madden refused to put his name on the game until
developers could figure out how to make the game (in the 80s) have 11 vs. 11
players, as opposed to 7 vs. 7. Development stretched past 4 years and
Madden's first game was predicted to be a financial failure.

[https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/maddens-
game/](https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/maddens-game/)

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rc_mob
Yeah this ended any competition in NFL video games. Madden got a monopoly
basically.

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hatchoo
I am not American but I gained an appreciation for American Football when I
started playing NFL 2k when it came out for the Dreamcast. I continued buying
the game when it was out for the PS2 and was sad when that exclusive license
thing was announced. I was looking forward to the day when the license expired
but sadly that day never came.

One thing I also miss is the 2k College Hoops game. It was like playing NBA
2kx except that the rosters didn't matter because they were all randomly
generated.

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RickJWagner
Last season should have been a good one for me-- I'm a Vikings fan.

But since the NFL became embroiled in politics, I quit watching-- and found I
was fine without it. I look forward to more free time again this year.

I see where soccer (football to a lot of the world) is picking up a little
more interest in the US. Maybe that'll be a better way to get my sporting fix.

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spiritcat
:shakes fist vigorously:

