'Madden 12' scores visual touchdown
April, 28, 2011
By Jon Robinson
 
Cheerleaders. Mascots. Team-specific entrances. Grass stains. Flak jackets.
 
Turn on "Madden NFL 12" for the first time and you'll be stunned by the massive visual upgrade that includes everything from how the lighting on the field makes every uniform pop (and brings out the exact colors) to the way the ball is finally authentically scaled to the player bodies and no longer looks like Drew Brees is throwing a loaf of bread 50-yards downfield.
 
"When people turn on the game for the first time, I want them to be like, 'Wow, I've never seen that before.," says Mike Young, "Madden NFL 12's" art director. "What we really went for this year was all the stuff everybody has been asking for but had never seen in 'Madden' before. Whether it's the green dot on the quarterback's helmet or the mascots running out onto the field, I think everybody is going to have their own 'wow' moment when they play the game."
 
First things gamers will see this year are the unique run-out animations for every team.
 
"For the Seahawks we show everything from the 12th Man flag to the hawk coming out," says Young. "For the Bears, we even have it where the last player out has the flag and runs out into the whole team. The whole thing feels like 'Braveheart' to me how he charges into battle. Then for the Rams, it's cool because Steve Spagnuolo leads his team onto the field. No matter who your favorite team is, we've captured everything just like you see it on Sunday."
 
And when you're watching the animations play out, from the run-outs to the random shots on the sidelines, you'll instantly realize that the camera work on the field is drastically different than any sports game you've ever seen before. That's because EA Sports hired the actual camera operators from NFL Films to shoot every shot.
 
But how do real cameramen shoot virtual athletes? It's all thanks to a unique rig EA used where the cameramen ran around the motion-capture studio looking into their lenses and were able to see the virtual athletes running around them.
 
"This is not only the first EA Sports game to use this technology, but the first for any sports video game," explains Young. "I think only 'Resident Evil 4' and 'Halo: Reach' had ever used anything like this where they are actually filming virtual scenes using real people and having that 1:1 camera movement.
 
"This is the first time where we could take an expert from NFL Films and actually put his work into our game. He wasn't just consulting and telling us where we should point our cameras. We took what he shot and put it directly into our game. These guys are camera artists and every scene we brought up, they've had years of experience shooting and knew exactly what lens to use. We've never had anyone been able to nail camerawork like this for us before. It's difficult to comprehend how it works, but it's a physical guy looking through this panel and seeing the virtual world. It's amazing."
 
Adds producer Phil Frazier: "It's real NFL Films cameramen using real NFL Films camera rigs to shoot virtual cameras in 'Madden' and the actual results of that shooting is in our game."
 
And from what I've played of "Madden 12" so far, the difference this new camerawork makes really is remarkable.
 
Also new this year are the authentic broadcast camera locations for every team in the game.
 
"If you're playing in Seattle, the camera locations for the Seahawks game will be exactly as you'd see during a game on Sunday," says Frazier. "We have every single camera location for every single team and it really gives you a more authentic feel. On top of that, we've also done a lot with the broadcast camera logic to make sure we're looking at the right stuff. We're not just showing the receiver who made the catch, we want to make sure we're capturing the whole story. We want you to see the receiver, the defender who should've been in position to stop it, then we'll show the quarterback. We worked with CBS in order to give us the best logic system for what it shown. I think it's incredibly realistic."
 
Throw in details like new helmets (Schutt Ion 4d, Shutt Air XP, Xenith X1, and the Rawlings NRG Quantum), new gloves (Vapor Trail,Mayhem,Fade,Vapor Jet), new facemasks (RevoSpeed 3 Bar LB, RevoSpeed 3 Bar Single, RevoSpeed 2 bar, RevoSpeed 2 bar single, Revolution 3 bar LB, Ion 4d robot, Ion 4d robot rb, Ion 4d 2 bar, Ion 4d full cage, Ion 4d full cage 2), dynamic sun and lens flare, realistic helmet and uniform degradation, blimp shots, and interactive field particles that include everything from divots to grass blades and pellets, and you have a "Madden" that looks shockingly better than anything I've seen in franchise history.
 
"Now when you run out of the pocket as Michael Vick and you slide for the first down in the snow, you'll actually kick up some snow," adds Young. "All of these little details just make the world feel so much more dynamic and brings a lot more life to every game."

'Madden NFL 12' Gameplay Q&A
April 27, 2011
 
Watch a beast like Ndamukong Suh burst through a blocker and attack the ball carrier with no regards for humanity, and you're witnessing one of the most heart-racing plays the NFL has to offer. Watch the same sequence play out in a game of "Madden," though, and you're more likely to see a bunch of polygonal bodies standing around and rubbing up against each other than anything close to the electrifying smackdown Suh makes in real life. But thanks to the new tackling system being introduced in "Madden NFL 12," everything from the way a defensive player battles through blockers to the devastating impact made on collision has seen a serious upgrade.
 
The biggest difference gamers will notice right away, however, is the increased violence of every hit. With the old Pro-Tak tackling system, the game turned into gang tackles where groups of players ended up huddled together pushing a pile one way or another. But now that the new tackling system has more to do with momentum and point of impact, instead of watching a pile moving in boring fashion, now one defender might grab the ball carrier while the second defender charges in and cleans the pile out.
 
To accomplish this, gamers will hit a new tackle button (works like "NCAA Football 12" ). In the old days, this was simply the dive button, but now if you hold the button down, defenders will bow-up and attack the ball carrier. And now that the hits are momentum based, the outcomes aren't played out in animations that instantly warp your players into proper wrap position. Now you hit them as you see them, and what you'll find is a much more natural-looking and impactful hit.
 
But the new tackling system isn't the only enhancement being made to the game this year. I had the chance to sit down with "Madden 12" producers Phil Frazier and Mike Scantlebury to find out some of the latest gameplay wrinkles they've added to the best-selling franchise.  
 
Jon Robinson: What's the first thing people are going to notice about the new tackling system in the game?
 
Phil Frazier: First thing people notice when they pickup "Madden" or "NCAA" this year is that our hits have visual impacts. It's because you see our players carry their speed through the point of contact. In past games, once they were two-to-three yards away from contact, you would literally get sucked into a tackle animation and that tackle animation was at a speed that was recorded in our motion-capture studio, and sometimes that speed was slower than what your guy on the field was running. Then on the defensive side, one of my personal frustrations has always been trying to rush as a defensive end. I always felt like I had to run away from a blocker if I didn't want to get caught in an animation. Now I feel like I can take a better angle if I'm taking an outside rush, and I don't feel like I'm just going to get sucked into a block. This enables me to take more realistic angles and gives me a better shot at getting to the quarterback.
 
Mike Scantlebury: We also now have different tackles for different situations and they're contact dependant. You'll see hurdle tackles, you'll see tackles where a guy dives and the defender grabs you and takes you to the ground. We have some great variety. The dive button has also changed this year. In previous years, you'd dive at someone but it would be very difficult to pinpoint and hit a ball carrier with the dive mechanic. But this year, we actually have a tackle button, and if you're too far away, you lunge in the direction of the ball carrier. So instead of the dive where you stretch out and it was hit or miss, this is a much more useful feature where you lunge toward the ball carrier in attempts to wrap him up.
 
Jon Robinson: How does this change gang tackles? How many players can be involved in the same tackle in "Madden 12"?
 
Mike Scantlebury: Instead of having tackles where guys are stood up and other defenders are adding on just for the sake of the gang tackle, now we have a much stronger, much more powerful impact that knocks the ball carrier down almost immediately.
 
Phil Frazier: A lot of what we have right now are consecutive impact tackles. While we don't have eight or nine guys in a big scrum like Pro-Tak, what we have now is much faster. You'll have one guy who is actively in a tackle animation with the ball carrier, then another guy will come in and clean up the hit. A third guy can still come in and knock that pile to the side or knock it back, but it really just depends on how many guys come in contact with the tackle from the point of collision to the point they hit the ground. There's no more stand up where you have eight or nine guys chopping away.
 
Mike Scantlebury: What we lost with Pro-Tak was the controlled impact of the collision. We got that back. You won't see guys just staggering around as the pile stacks up anymore.
 
Jon Robinson: How does this new collision system also change how blocking is handled in the game?
 
Mike Scantlebury: The biggest complaint people had playing defense is that they felt like they were being sucked into blocks and you could see noticeable warping. But now, every block actually triggers their own collision. You'll see players hands start to come up as they're about to collide and now they engage in blocks from a realistic distance without being warped together. This really opens things up in regards to the running game because before, people would get frustrated by the linemen sliding into you during their blocks as you were trying to run the ball, but now the lanes open up better because we've removed the warping in both the blocking and the tackling. We also improved the logic for pulling guards on plays like the Power O in order to make sure they run out when pulling so they can get out and get in proper position in time.
 
Jon Robinson: Now that warping is gone, does this also change how receivers magically warp dive for a ball across the middle?
 
Mike Scantlebury: We've removed as much warp catching as possible, and to be able to do that, we added a bunch of new dive animations to take their place that look a lot more realistic. We've also added some sprint catches because some of the catches we had on deep balls traveled the appropriate distance, but it just looked slow because of how they were captured, so we replaced those animations as well in order to fill some of those holes.
 
Jon Robinson: I know you guys have also been working on improving zone coverage. What type of impact will this have on the game?
 
Mike Scantlebury: The impact of zone coverage will be dramatic. This is the most improved aspect of defense. When you play "Madden 11", a lot of patterns are wide open in different coverages. For example, a curl flat pattern versus a Cover-2 would see your outside linebacker in the zone never getting over to get underneath that hook route, but now he gets over and takes that route away. Same thing with the flats. The zones never played the flats very aggressively, but now the defense will play aggressive and get to their spots quicker. And now if you're playing Cover-3 and your opponent goes with four verticals, you'll see that safety run up and snatch those seam routes if they don't throw it early enough. We also worked on Cover-4 so that the safeties accurately read the field now. If a guy on the outside is running deep and they don't have anyone in their quadrant, they will go and double. Or if a post route is coming from the outside, they will go and double as long as they don't have another threat coming from their quadrant. It's really dynamic reaction on the part of the defenders.
 
Jon Robinson: Zone coverage has been busted in the game for years. Why did it take so long to fix?
 
Mike Scantlebury: I was in the right position this year to make it a priority, sir.
 
Jon Robinson: Wow, I didn't think I'd ever get to the point where a game producer called me sir. I'm old.
 
Phil Frazier: [laughs] It's something that Mike has been a big advocate of for years. There's a laundry list of things we'd love to get to every year, and in the past, we looked at other items like Pro-Tak that we felt were just more messed up than zone. I think we're getting to a point now where we're hitting defense in a major way. We've been hearing from people how the defense in the game just isn't good enough, the AI isn't good enough, so we really wanted to make a big impact on that side of the ball.
 
Jon Robinson: Custom playbooks have also finally been added to the game this year. How big can my playbook get?
 
Phil Frazier: You can have up to 400 plays and up to 75 individual sets in your custom playbook. You can also have up to eight custom playbooks saved. And with 400 plays, I don't think our fans and our community are going to have any problem filling out a playbook.
 
Jon Robinson: What's the coolest playbook you've created so far?
 
Phil Frazier: I'm a Redskins guy who has always been intrigued by the Wildcat. So I built a Wildcat playbook for the Redskins and tried it out. It didn't really work with their personnel, but it was still a lot of fun to give it a try. Mike is more of a competitive "Madden" gamer, so he is more likely to choose three or four plays for his playbook and call them all game long. He is that kind of guy.
 
Mike Scantlebury: I wouldn't say that I only run three or four plays the whole game. I'm more of a formation guy. I'm a 5-wide bunch guy and a guy who likes to have Full House in the same playbook. Usually you don't find those two formations in the same playbook. A lot of those teams who have multiple receiver shotgun formations are limited when it comes to running formations. So if I can create a playbook that has some strong running formations and pair them with some exotic 5-wide sets, that's awesome for me.
 
Jon Robinson: Again, though, this is something people have wanted for years. Why did it take so long to implement?
 
Phil Frazier: One of the important things to know is that when you're creating your custom playbook, you can pick literally any play in the game. Historically, we couldn't load up every play like that due to memory restrictions. So when you start to scroll through the playbooks and you start scrolling through the formations, you have every single play, every single formation from every single playbook in the game, and that's really what makes this feature a success.
 
Jon Robinson: Are there any smaller gameplay mechanics that fans of the franchise should look out for?
 
Mike Scantlebury: We added a new pump fake mechanic where you can actually pump fake towards a specific receiver. We think this is something the hardcore will utilize as it really ups the value of our double moves. Now you actually have a reason to call some of these double move routes like the post corner because when you pump fake towards a specific receiver, the defensive back is more likely to bite.
 
Phil Frazier: The way it worked before was more of a generic pump fake, but now you can actually direct where you're faking to throw the ball. So now you can pump fake one direction, then throw the ball to the other side of the field.
 
Another thing we added this year is the ability to adjust the shading of your defensive backs on receivers. Now you can play press on an individual receiver on a play as opposed to playing press on everybody. You can also have a defender shade inside or outside of the receiver depending on whether you press shade left or shade right. Or you can just back one guy off and give him extra space. We give you a lot of options, and while some of these might sound like small features, with our goal to be true to the game and true to the NFL, we want to make sure we're giving our "Madden" fans ultra-fine control over our defense this year. It has been a while since some of these features have been in our game and we're glad to finally have them back.