How electronic football can be competitive again, and bigger than ever

Madden. Say the name around a group of electronic gamers, and you're likely to get a number of very strong reactions. You might hear talk about how the electronic game series is the most prolific and most popular franchise in its genre. You might hear of innovations over the years, and how involving the gameplay is, or how so much money is invested into improving and updating the game, year after year after year. You might also hear about Electronic Arts, perhaps in comparison to Big Brother of George Orwell's 1984, the Galactic Empire of Star Wars, or any number of other villainous organizations. Perhaps you would hear of the injustice of their exclusivity deal with the National Football League, which will now exist through the 2013 Super Bowl. Other franchises, especially the NFL2K series, may well come up, brought up as examples of superior gameplay that was crushed by the evil giant.

All of the above responses can only lead to one conclusion: for better or worse, electronic NFL football, and, by extension, electronic football in general, means "Madden". But must this be so?

Before that question can even be approached, it must be understood why this is true in the first place. Since the National Football League agreed to an exclusive licensing deal with EA Sports in late 2004, only two games have been released by other companies to directly challenge Madden's market. The first was Midway's Blitz: The League, which took a different approach to making a football game, not only by offering a more arcade-style brand of play, but by presenting its single-player experience as a story-based campaign, not unlike an RPG. The other was 2K Sports' All-Pro Football 2K8, which required users to create their own team made up of former NFL standouts that were no longer represented by the NFL Player's Association. The game offered a traditional single-player campaign, but one devoid of polish and features, obviously focusing on the user's online experience. Although Blitz: The League met with some amount of success, no original game has been released since the first one over two years ago, and although All-Pro Football was well reviewed, the game was not at all successful in retail.

So why is it that these two games did not succeed (or, in Blitz's case, did not succeed enough to see another iteration), whereas Madden continues to be a best-selling franchise, despite criticism that it is largely the same game, year-in and year-out? Although there may be a number of factors that contribute to Madden's success over its rivals, certainly the biggest reason must be that it alone carries the NFL license - if this were not the case, EA Sports would not have spent years' worth of effort lobbying for such a deal before actually acquiring it. But why does that make such a difference? Because playing Madden provides a link to something that is outside of the game world, current, and popular, evoking a sense of history with long-standing rivalries and former dynasties, and a sense of loyalty, playing as one's chosen team and leading them to a championship that, for fans of 31 out of 32 teams, will not materialize in reality.

This, obviously, is a huge advantage for Madden and EA Sports, and a huge obstacle for any other franchise looking to enter the market. So how can this obstacle be overcome? Judging by the examples of Blitz: The League and All-Pro Football, the merits of over-the-top sensationalism and historic, classic players facing off are not sufficient to create an identity that will pose a consistent challenge to the Madden juggernaut. It would seem that without the attachment to real-world competition, no foothold can be gained with which to advance in the genre. And certainly there is no game developer who would want to invest the time and capital to build up a real-world league to compete with the NFL, and for good reason - such a move would be foolhardy at best, just ask Vince McMahon.

However, this is the dawn of the era of Major League Gaming, where electronic entertainment as a whole is no longer being dismissed as a fad or as necessarily juvenile, but as a staple of mainstream entertainment, and a new, lucrative avenue for marketing. These are the days of Halo-branded Mountain Dew, of ESPN-covered gaming competitions, of electronic gaming rivaling motion pictures for entertainment dollars.

It is in this light that I put forth the following proposal: the Virtual Football League. With this venue, a non-EA game developer could generate an experience that exists outside of the game itself, something that their desired userbase can experience first as spectators, watching epic competitions on their televisions or computer monitors, then as fantasy participants, reliving the last season or anticipating the current one, controllers in hand. The League itself would consist of a certain number of game players - perhaps one per team, acting as a coach; perhaps a few per team, acting as teammates; perhaps one for every position on the field, or every position in the game - who play through a season against each other, with their games being covered by enthusiast media (SportsGamer, 1UP, IGN, etc.) and, to a lesser degree, sports media (ESPN, Fox Sports, CNNSI). After the brand has established itself in gamers' minds, the same effect that the NFL has on Madden, the VFL can have (though likely to a far lesser degree, especially at first) on the new gaming franchise. An additional benefit would be that being skilled at Madden will make you no more likely (considerably less likely, in fact) to score an NFL contract, whereas the exact opposite would be true for the VFL.

Naturally, this would be an extremely risky venture, and a long period of evaluation and refining details would need to be accomplished before this idea could come to anything like fruition. However, this is an idea that is worth exploring if any game developer is serious about not letting the grand and mighty Madden NFL Football sit as the grand, unchallenged emperor of electronic football entertainment.