Madden NFL 12 Said to Include Concussions to Present a Safety Message
 
Remarkably, Madden NFL 12 will depict players suffering concussions, according to the president of the NFL Players' Association, but apparently in a manner that reinforces the seriousness of the injury and the message that playing through one is not a good idea.
 
In a tweet first reported on by Gamasutra, George Atallah, a senior official with the NFLPA, praised EA Sports for the injury's inclusion. "Good for EA Sports. Concussed players in NFL Madden prevented from returning to play," Atallah wrote. "Culture change is important."
 
Evidently that means players will be shown being taken from the field, unable to return. Past versions of Madden have included a coaching decision to re-insert players who have suffered certain injuries that the game considers playable. Concussions won't be one, reinforcing the message, especially to younger players, that it is a serious injury and not a time to be a hero playing through it.
 
The NFL instituted rules in 2009 that prevent players from re-entering a game if they've suffered a concussion, responding to a mounting controversy over the long-term effects of repeated concussions and the league's posture toward player safety.
 
Big-hitting action has been a touchy subject in NFL-licensed video games, especially since 2006 when Midway walked away from its NFL Blitz license after the league became concerned about the over-the-top hitting presented in the game. EA Sports is said to own the Blitz license now.
 
Kotaku has contacted EA Tiburon, the studio that makes Madden, for comment or confirmation. This post will be updated with any reply.
 
http://uk.kotaku.com/5787414/madde [...] ty-message

Why Line Play Will Never Be Realistic in Football Games  
Submitted on: 03/31/2011 by Jayson Young  
 
With video game baseball season underway, it's the perfect time to make this analogy What realistic hitting would be to baseball games, realistic line play would be to football games -- unplayable for 95 percent of gamers.
 
To put things in perspective, a hitter at the MLB level has less than .25 seconds to judge a pitch's speed, location and decide whether or not to swing.
 
Hitting major league pitching is so difficult, that succeeding 30 percent of the time is considered successful enough to earn a multi-million dollar contract.
 
NFL quarterbacks have more time to make decisions than MLB hitters, but with so much more data to take in, a NFL quarterback’s job is arguably the toughest in pro sports.
 
What Constitutes a "Realistic" Pass Rush?
 
The average NFL play lasts five seconds from snap to whistle.  
 
A NFL quarterback is trained to get the ball out in less than three seconds -- 2.7 seconds, to be exact -- according to USA Today's study of the St. Louis Rams rookie quarterback, Sam Bradford.
 
Why three seconds? In a Sports Science test, Steelers outside linebacker LaMarr Woodley was able to break through two layers of pass protection in 2.6 seconds.
 
In another Sports Science video, Chargers defensive end Luis Castillo reached Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in 1.3 seconds when coming unblocked off the edge -- just a few hundredths of a second before Roethlishberger could complete a five-step drop and get the ball out of his hand.
 
Are these just lab numbers unrelated to what happens on a real football field?  
 
An analysis of Dwight Freeney's 25 sacks from 2009 and 2010 suggests that Sports Science's pass rush numbers are spot-on. According to ESPN Stats & Information, 2.5 seconds was the average time from snap to Freeney making contact with the quarterback.
 
Removing one sack from the sample pool that took 5.8 seconds (on this play, the QB rolled out to the sideline opposite Freeney), the time it took for each of Dwight Freeney's remaining sacks was an astonishing 2.1 seconds.
 
A "Realistic" Pass Rush Would Frustrate Most Gamers
 
Could gamers handle having only one to three seconds to make their reads and get the ball out before getting crushed by a realistic pass rush?
 
I believe 95 percent of gamers would be begging for a patch within a week of the game's release to fix the game's "broken" pass protection.
 
A similar reaction occurred with a recent football game -- a game that, before the pass protection was "fixed," had the most realistic line play of any football game to date: Natural Motion's Backbreaker.
 
When a bad offensive line goes against a good defensive line in Backbreaker, the results are ugly. A team can run the ball 30 times and end up with negative yardage at the end of the game. Quarterbacks can end up taking double-digit sacks.
 
(...)
 
Video Game Pass Rush Is Neutered To Satisfy Gaming Majority
 
Attempting to play as the video game equivalent of great 4-3 defenses like the Giants, Lions, Titans or Rams is an exercise in frustration.
 
Defensive ends do not get upfield, defensive tackles do not push the pocket back, and neither position seems to explode off the ball with the sub-five second 40-yard dash speed that today's NFL defensive linemen display.
 
In Madden and NCAA Football, defensive linemen get sucked into vacuum blocks, fail to use line moves properly, and don’t use the sprint button when pursuing the QB -- core issues that have gone unfixed in EA's football games for years. Even in All Pro Football 2K8, feared defensive linemen like Reggie White can be easily handled by a generic offensive line that is set to “pass block.”
 
Why are video game developers keeping the four-man pass rush from being the game-changing entity that it can be in real life?
 
To put it simply, because the people buying football video games are not NFL quarterbacks.
 
http://www.operationsports.com/fea [...] all-games/

[Update]: New Football Game One of Three New EA Sports Franchises Coming
News by Matthew Kato on April 12, 2011 at 06:00 PM 4,752 Views 21  
 
[Update]: New EA Sports football czar Cam Weber confirmed that one of the three new EA Sports titles coming is a new football game that's "fundamentally different" than the core Madden/NCAA titles. Weber made the comment when I asked him if EA Sports was still committed to things like Arena Football, Head Coach, or Street football. However, he didn't specify, however, if this new football title would be a new series or a redesign of an old football offshoot.
 
[Original Story] At the EA Season Opener event in San Francisco, EA Sports' Andrew Wilson talked about three brand new franchises coming from the publisher.
 
Talking about the need to create new experiences and tap new audiences, Wilson teased that the publisher had three new franchises in the works, but he added that they wouldn't be revealed at the event. Although EA Sports is traditionally know for sim-based sports like football and soccer, the games could be slightly outside the normal sports sphere like SSX is. Or perhaps they will be more worldwide sports like Cricket or Rugby. Who knows.
 
Either way, we look forward to what EA Sports is planning, and hope to hear about it soon.
 
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news [...] oming.aspx