Americans love football. ESPN finds new and creative ways to talk about the NFL every single offseason, and EA Sports’ long-running Madden NFL series is routinely one of the best-selling games of the year. EA Tiburon, the long-time developer of Madden, has been able to make the series more and more realistic through the last and current console generations, to the point where understanding the Madden games helps you understand football better.

The problem there, though, is the learning curve involved with football strategy. Unlike basketball, soccer, or hockey, there’s more to a football game than just learning how to control a player. Football is more like a game of chess — to succeed against the AI or a real player, you need to understand how offenses and defenses are run, and what plays to call at what times and how to execute them. As a website like Smart Football proves, there is plenty of depth and strategy to football play-calling.

This is why, in my Beginner’s Guide to Sports Games in June 2009, I suggested avoiding NFL or college football games as your first experience. Even as a diehard football fan, I was struggling three and four years ago to become better at the NCAA Football series of games because I hadn’t learned enough about the sport. Thankfully, the new GameFlow system in Madden 11 helps to rectify that problem.

EA Sports’ football games have had “suggest-a-play” options for a long time — offered up as Ask Madden in the Madden series and Ask Corso in the NCAA Football games. However, GameFlow takes this a few steps further by essentially offering the player an AI offensive and defensive coordinator to help manage the game for them — just as a quarterback would have in a real football game.

Pre-snap, GameFlow provides what to look for from the play.

As the first image of the article shows, after every play you can choose GameFlow or to go into the full playbook (which provides the traditional play-calling options). If you choose GameFlow, the above image shows what you will see and hear from the offensive coordinator. The play’s design is overlaid on the field, the receiver the play is designed for is shown in red, and the coordinator provides a quick explanation for what to look for. Suddenly, calling plays goes from reading and deciphering a foreign language to following instructions and using terms that even casual football fans understand; more people know and understand having the quarterback in the shotgun, but fewer people know mesh plays, drive routes, or stick routes. The same is true on defense: select GameFlow, receive instructions, look at the play art, and follow your orders. In Madden and NCAA Football 11, you’re now given the option to hold down one button (A on 360, X on PS3) to have your player perform the route or coverage they were assigned in the play, which is great for learning where to go on defense.

The intermediary step between relying on GameFlow and calling your own plays is customizing your own GameFlow playbook, tailored to your preferences.

It’s also possible for beginners to move up from learning the basics and relying on GameFlow entirely to adjusting calls. With GameFlow on, you can still choose to go into the full playbook — an option I would use when I know, in a certain situation, exactly the play I want to call. Outside of the gridiron in the options menus for Madden 11 is the ability to manage your offensive and defensive GameFlow gameplans. The secret to GameFlow is it’s broken down the game of football into numerous scenarios — 1st and 10, 3rd and long, passing on the goal line, etc. Again, casual football fans understand this terminology and these situations. In GameFlow, there are 10-15 plays per scenario, and how often they’re used is weighted; moreover, this is all customizable in the game. Players can tweak how often plays come up, add new ones that they know would work in certain scenarios, and remove plays that just aren’t working. For beginners who’ve learned on GameFlow and veterans alike, this is a powerful tool.

With a little help from GameFlow, you too can run like Chris Johnson.

Soccer and basketball may be games of individual brilliance and skill, but football is all about execution. Teams in the NFL are stacked with amazing athletes; it’s the teams that execute the plays well that win. Learning what plays to call and how to execute them has been the biggest barrier to new players in the Madden and NCAA Football series for years, but GameFlow helps rectify that. Moreover, because you’re not spending 20-30 seconds calling plays, it helps cut game lengths — EA Sports claims games can be done in half the time now.

I’ve been playing football games since the Genesis, and only recently started to learn how to play these games well — and the difference has been in play-calling. However, if I’m playing against the AI on a single-player career, I don’t always want to invest my time in calling every play. Even just playing the Madden demo, I can tell GameFlow is something I would use a lot of the time — especially on defense, because I hate having to mix up my defenses. This is a great way to make football games accessible to more people who want to play them and, incredibly, a great way to learn about football.

It's summertime in the Northwest, which means it's time to come out from under cover and enjoy the scenery, like Crater Lake (photo by D. Bonham).

Much like a bad sunburn, we’re back after a little mid-summer hibernation. Aaron is still out in the Oregon woods getting his camp counselor act on, but Nick and Doug have been snug in civilization and playing games. Doug, now properly equipped with a TV from the 21st century, has been building cities and breaking tackles, while Nick has been matching three, hitting apexes and staring down a worthy opponent. All very thrilling.

But enough of that, let’s get on to the gaming.

Perfection is the goal/and I'm heading for the pylon. NCAA Football is back.

Doug

It’s been such a long time…apologies. But in that time, I’ve gotten completely hooked on a game, re-addicted to another, paid the annual EA Sports Tax, and added a new piece of electronics to my repertoire.

First, the biggest news: I finally have a proper, working HDTV. The Worst Projection TV Ever has finally been dragged out to the great electronics store in the sky and in its place I have a high-quality 1080p, 120hz product of the Republic of Korea. Needless to say, I’ve been going through some of my older games just to see what they look like on a “real” TV — and wow. Games like Mass Effect 2 and Forza 3 really come to life when you can actually see what you’re doing. Perhaps strangely, my PES 2010 game has suffered — however, when you go from 4:3 to widescreen, that can definitely alter your techniques.

I’ve helped re-energize interest in Words with Friends recently. Many of my friends in grad school also have iPhones, and when I discovered one of them had discovered our favorite Scrabble substitute, it was on. Word quickly spread, and I now have 10 games active. It’s almost overkill. It’s also really funny to see when people wake up in the morning, based on when they play turns that were left overnight.

I feel really late to the party, but I’ve also been hooked to Civilization: Revolution in the last few weeks. I remember hearing all the acclaim for CivRev when it was released a few years ago, but hadn’t given the game a shot. After mulling it over, I downloaded the trial version on my 360…then turned around and snapped it up immediately. What a brilliant, addictive game. It’s amazing what you discover about yourself in CivRev — I prefer to develop my internal resources and cities first, developing them into bastions of technology and culture, before breaking out the guns of war.

Lastly, this week I paid the piper and picked up NCAA Football 11. I know it’s a yearly annualized sequel, and I get it because I Always Buy It, but in this case it’s really paid off. Not much in terms of menus or back-end of the game has changed, but a lot of the presentation and — crucially — the gameplay has been evolved in very good ways. More thoughts and comments regarding the game in the future, for sure, but right now it’s looking like a worthy purchase.

A wild Dragon Quest appears! Uh-oh.

Nick

It’s been hard for me to find something worth writing about when it comes to games lately. That’s got nothing to do with either my interest in writing or in games, both of which have been going strong in the past few months. Instead, I feel like a couple of things have happened: I’ve grown more critical of games as my expectations have rise, and as a result of not wanting to sound like a constant pessimist, I’ve decided to just keep quiet.

But in the interest of trying to come up with something useful, here are a few games I’ve been playing that I’d recommend.

Despite some glaring omissions cut from the original game, LucasArts’ remake of the second Monkey Island has made a strong first impression. The series’ trademark voice actors are back once again to lend it the right sort of humor, and the character art has seen a significant improvement.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is the original match-’n-slash puzzle-RPG hybrid, and even though it’s been three years since it came out, it’s still got some serious chops in terms of how obscenely addictive the experience can be. I bought the game on Xbox Live when I had my wisdom teeth out, and between the painkillers I was taking and the ridiculous amount of things to do within Puzzle Quest’s zen-like “match-three-shapes” gameplay, I was pretty blissed out for a couple of days immediately after the surgery. It wasn’t until the last week or so that I finally dug back in and tackled the final two-thirds of the game. Sure, the writing is bad, the artwork is hackneyed and the whole Puzzle Quest universe feels like a lazy cliche, but the game itself is so strangely compelling that it’s hard not to fall in love with it. The sequel was recently released to strong reviews, but if you haven’t played the first it’s still well worth the price of admission.

I’m also well into season four of six in Forza Motorsport 3. Although I’d spent a couple hours with the game before we deliberated on our top ten games of last year, I didn’t immerse myself in the game until recently. I’m not a huge racing sim devotee (Gran Turismo 3 was the last one that I really “finished”), but Forza 3′s great event structure and pacing, believably tactile racing and buckets of shiny, beautiful car porn have already given me more than my money’s worth. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is racing online, but I’m pretty sure I’d just end up getting totally smoked.

And last, but not least: I’ve dipped my toes into Dragon Quest IX. Remember what Nietzsche said about the abyss? Yeah.

Once the millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of labor hours have resulted in a finished, big-name console video game, how do publishers and developers earn their money back? From gamers like us buying titles at a store.

However, not all purchases are created equal. This is why Electronic Arts announced on Monday the continuation of its value-added online program, now called the EA Sports Online Pass. It appears to be much like programs in Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Mass Effect 2′s Cerberus Network, for instance, grants access to free add-on downloads, including weapons, armor, and short missions. This is a project that is reportedly referred to within EA as Project Ten Dollar. Gamers who purchase one of EA Sports’ catalog of games this summer receive a code in the package which, after being inputted into the game, allows you access to bonus features. Since the code is only good for one use (and one PSN or Xbox Live account), if you don’t buy the game new, you have to pay $10 for a pass of your own.

Or, at least, that’s what it looks like on paper. While the Cerberus Network in Mass Effect 2 really does provide extra content on top of what you pay $60 for, the catch to the EA Sports Online Pass is in the fine print: “bonus features” that your code unlocks in EA Sports’ 2010 games include basic online and online dynasty modes previously available for free in all EA Sports games. For NCAA Football 11, for example, your Online Pass helps unlock “Online Multiplayer Modes such as Online Play Now, Head-to-Head, Online Dynasty, and More.” The same goes for EA Sports’ Madden, NHL, NBA Live, and Tiger Woods franchises; other games still have details to be announced.

Keep in mind that this is, for Xbox 360 owners, on top of the yearly Xbox Live Gold account fees that you would need to be able to play online in the first place.

This is a continuation of a policy from last year where codes packed in with new copies of games provided access to advanced online multiplayer modes; for NCAA Football and Madden, for example, these were the online dynasty modes. If you didn’t buy your copy new, you had to stump up $10 for a code.

Electronic Arts is, essentially, adding a major incentive to buying a game brand new for $60. Don’t buy it brand new? You can’t play online. You need to either pay $10 for a pass, or make use of a single 7-day free trial available for your Xbox Live or PSN account for each title.

The repercussions of Project Ten Dollar will be felt by more than just sports gamers

Why does this matter? If you’re reading Silicon Sasquatch, I’d imagine you may care far less about sports games than your humble author does. You might have never purchased or played an EA Sports title before in your life. But you do care about rising costs in games and, I would imagine, how to prevent them. Madden has traditionally been one of the top-selling games in the United States, and the FIFA Soccer franchise is one of the best-selling games throughout the rest of the world, especially in Europe.

The major reason EA is looking at this as an alternative way to make money? For the quarter ending December 31, 2009, EA lost $110 million on total net sales of $1.24 billion. They sold more than a billion dollars worth of games, but still lost over one hundred million dollars. That’s in just one quarter last year.

Though EA would never come straight out and say it, a leading reason why they’re doing this is GameStop. While EA lost $110 million in one quarter last year, GameStop made just over $9 billion in sales for their whole year. While this doesn’t take into account things like paying employees, taxes, or other liabilities, that’s still a lot of video game sales. Dig into the numbers a bit more, and you’ll find that, despite used video game sales being only 26% of the total for GameStop, they represented almost half of GameStop’s profits — $1.12 billion.

That’s a lot of money made by selling used games. Those “used” games sitting right next to newly-released titles, but priced roughly $5 less, represent a huge area of profit for GameStop, but just as large a drain on publishers like Electronic Arts. While new games made up the largest amount of GameStop’s revenue, the money they kept on those sales was only 20% — roughly half — what they keep on used-game sales.

I am at kind of a loss as to how to react to this move by EA. As a gamer, it’s a little upsetting: EA is essentially holding a key feature of their games for ransom, and while it may not effect my buying habits (as I tend to buy EA Sports titles brand new), it will definitely affect others I know. I sense that a lot of people may not know enough about the fine print to realize they’re getting a raw deal if they do go into GameStop and buy the cheaper used version for $5 less. For gamers who buy new copies of EA Sports titles, whether from Best Buy, Amazon, Wal-Mart, or GameStop, all that changes is having to input another code; however, it’s a potential deal-breaker for more casual gamers looking for a good deal.

However, as a business student, I understand EA’s dilemma. They’re hemorrhaging money, despite good sales and high-profile titles, and they need to find a new way to make sure they don’t continually lose money. This is a way to receive at least a small kick-back from used-game sales, and encourage $60 new-title sales. It’s also a shot across the bow of GameStop, who have to know the jig is up when it comes to their high-profit-margin used game market.

If EA sees this program as successful this year — and I would define “success” as anything but a sharp reduction in sales — then expect to see other publishers, namely Ubisoft and Activision, start to try and implement similar plans into their own games. And that could spread a problem that may haunt more than just sports gamers.

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Right before tearing the shrink wrap off NCAA Football 10, I had a thought: “Why do I do this every year?” This is the third year in a row I’ve bought EA Sports’ NCAA Football game, and on previous console generations I purchased multiple copies as well. The problem is I’m getting strict visions of déjà vu. It is, clearly, an annual thing for me — all within the same repetitive cycle of pre-release excitement, post-release honeymoon, and over-analysis of missing features that need to be in next year’s version. Rinse, wash, repeat.

So let’s take a look at how NCAA 10 fits into this cycle — because, despite tweaks and improvements that fans have clamored for, there are a few minor steps backwards and features that have been given little more than a fresh coat of paint.

The tackling technology in NCAA 10 has been rebuilt, allowing strong runners (like Florida's esteemed starting quarterback) to drag defenders for extra yardage, or even break free.

To preface: I’ve played far too much NCAA 09, sinking probably 120 hours into last year’s edition. With college football season rapidly approaching (just over two weeks now!) I’ve picked NCAA 09 up again and poured more hours into a couple of offline, single-player dynasties. I get killed by a few of my friends but they’re also insanely good at football games.

That said, the basic on-the-field impressions after play of NCAA 10 are very, very positive compared to its predecessor. The graphics and on-field presentation have improved, and the speed of play in the game is slowed down and feels much better balanced. Speed has been nerfed a lot — it still pays to have super-fast wide receivers for deep home-run passes, but breakaway speed is handled much more realistically. Wide receivers find passes more realistically, and good quarterbacks can thread the ball through the eye of a needle just like in real life. It’s subtle compared to NCAA 08 and 09, but important.

The running game has been improved to feel a lot more hard-hitting — powerful running backs who run over defenders can be just as successful as quick quarkbacks who avoid defenders altogether. That goes for powerful quarterbacks, too — Tim Tebow feels like a killdozer, but even lesser QBs can successfully pull off designed QB keeper runs. It’s now possible for power runners to really push a defender away with a stiff-arm, truck right through a cornerback, or shrug through contact at the line, and it’s all the more satisfying for it.

Defense is a bit looser than last year — I’ve been whiffing open-field tackles left and right. New for this year is the capability pre-snap to guess what type of play the offense is going to call, and sell-out for that — so if you think they’re running up the middle, defenders will crash in on the line of scrimmage. It’s a cool risk/reward setup, but DEFINITELY can burn you if you’re not careful. Actually playing a game of football with NCAA 10 feels much, much better than NCAA 09 — in that way, it does what a yearly franchise update should.

New risk-reward defensive play guessing adjustments allowed skilled players to gamble pre-play. Guess right and you'll stop the offense dead in its tracks; guess wrong…and you'll be hearing the band play.

A quick moment on the graphics: NCAA 09 animated well and had good textures, but Madden 09 was clearly a step ahead. Now, though, it looks like NCAA 10 is sporting that technology — the uniforms are insanely detailed, players look great, and the animation has been improved. The only creepy thing is all the player faces in the recruiting and roster screens — it works better in a game where the art team puts effort into making the players’ faces look realistic, but is just weird in NCAA 10.

Unfortunately, off the field, NCAA 10 feels like it has just a fresh coat of paint as opposed to major revolutionary changes. Okay, so there is one huge addition: The ability to create your own team has been added in (for the first time in HD-generation NCAA games), and is now available through EA Sports’ easportsworld.com Web site. This is an anticipated return because the creation tool is incredibly powerful, and being able to play with it through a Web browser instead of clunky console menus is welcomed.

However, everything from the single-player Dynasty mode to the Road to Glory RPG-style experience feels identical. The menus have changed (and Road to Glory gets a new dorm room-style interface and some more ESPN college football talent to flesh out the mode — namely sideline reporter Erin Andrews), but almost nothing beneath that has — or, at least, it doesn’t feel like anything has changed.

There are so many opportunities to improve on the game. Road to Glory could be much more of an RPG and have a true storyline to it, as opposed to staying stagnant. Season Showdown could be a cool addition…if it weren’t for the fact that most players taking advantage of it are using the best team in the game, the Florida Gators.

A minor but useful addition is the ability to choose helmets, jerseys, and pants independently before each game. It's definitely useful for Oregon Duck fans.

Most importantly — and related to what I wrote about in the Beginner’s Guide to Sports Games a month or so ago — they could have added in a tutorial to teach newcomers and interested parties both how to play the game and how to watch the sport. Even somebody like me, who has watched football as long as I can remember, has struggled at playing football video games not because it’s hard to run the ball or pass it, but because it’s incredibly hard to decide what plays to call when — especially against a human opponent. Tutorials to instruct about basic and advanced offensive and defensive schemes, strategies and techniques would both teach players not just the difference between a Cover 1 and a Zone Blitz defensive play, but also how to make use of the convoluted control schemes football games are known for. Teaching piece by piece would allow new players to eventually put it all together in the form of playing a full game on offense and defense, and then go from there.

Imagine: if the game could teach players new and old to the degree where they could decide “you know, I’m tired of this West Coast offense, I’ll switch to an Air Raid playbook on offense, and try out the 3-4 on defense this game,” and it all makes sense….the game will be worth the platitudes it currently receives.

This sense of sameness I’m getting from NCAA 10 must be what it feels like to be a Japanese RPG fan. Japanese RPGs fall into very set formats as a matter of course — the gamers want very specific things from those games, and get frustrated with deviations. Combat systems are all very familiar, the narrative structure is very familiar, the mixing of story-driven areas and finding places to grind is very, very familiar. Sports gamers crave that amount of familiarity from year-to-year, too — there were revolts when EA Sports tried to change up how you passed the ball in Madden a couple of years ago.

Instead of just relying on a receiver with a speed rating of 95 or higher (out of 100), the deep pass in NCAA 10 requires strategy — making it a satisfying prospect.

Yet here I am, eagerly anticipating free time to tear through the game some more. Despite that feeling of same-ness, it’s still incredibly fun. Is it the buzz of months of build-up to the new product, combined with “new car smell” from working the fanbase (including my friends) into a lather? Is it that the new features are enough to satiate my want and need for the year, $60 price tag be damned? Are EA Sports the bad guys for not adding more, or are sports gamers (kind of like JRPG fans) not too hard to please — more of the usual, please and thank you.

What it comes down to is more of the same…but in a good way. Yes, there is new material here for experienced armchair quarterbacks, but nothing revolutionary off the field of play. This is easily the best of the current-gen NCAA Football games, but that applied to NCAA 09 this time last year. Some issues were addressed in NCAA 10, but still more remain. It may not be a case of “two steps forward, one step back,” but more “two steps forward when three were needed.”

That said, I tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, pick up my controller and play…just like yesterday. Then I pray I don’t get fooled again next year.

NCAA 10 is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable. The reviewer played games in Dynasty, Road to Glory, and Quick Play modes, as well as online games both ranked and unranked, with a variety of teams.

Recommended for:

• Diehard football game fans, who will find plenty of positive tweaks in this year’s edition.
• Motivated newcomers to the NCAA 10 series — this year’s version is appreciably better than NCAA 09 for non-fans.

Not Recommended for:

• Non-football fans who aren’t terribly interested — unlike games like FIFA 09 or NHL 09, this isn’t friendly enough to make non-believers into fans of either the series or the sport.
• Football fans expecting more than a fresh coat of paint for the Dynasty or Road to Glory modes, or any other true feature innovations for the series.