For years me and my buddy Ted have built glorious dynasties in NCAA and Madden. We take a crappy school/team and play co-op (Him on QB/RB, me on WR/FB) vs. the computer and, let's just say, we have logged significant time doing this. When the next-gen (PS3, Xbox 360) came out with their new versions, we were appalled to find that you simply COULD NOT play co-op. For the last few YEARS we have fumed over how stupid these programmers must be to remove this feature. What benefit could there possibly be? After all, we weren't asking for anything new, just for them to stop eliminating already existing features. Other notable deductions were Franchise mode, Superstar mode, and the original Madden for Xbox 360 didn't even have the John Madden commentary. Even the gameplay sucked, which contradicts the porting argument (see below).

Fast forward to this past weekend, post-draft, I'm at the bar ordering a drink and catch a glimpse of the guy next to me's credit card, which proudly featured the EA Sports logo. I casually asked him if that's what it was, to which he smiled and said that it was. Now, at this point, this guy (who was on what looked like a first date) thought it was a good thing I recognized it. How wrong this poor fella was. After he admitted that he worked on BOTH Madden and NCAA, I proceeded to cross-examine him for the next 10 minutes about my many issues with the "new and improved" versions of both games. He gave some half-assed responses about porting the game to a new language, but this was not satisfactory. When I complained that you could not play two guys on the same team, he asked, "Why do you care?" Are the people at EA that out of touch with their original fan base? Have years of appealing to the lowest common denominator eliminated any thinking outside the box? Clearly this guy knew nothing more than the style of play that goes: "Fire up the Xbox, you take the Cowboys, I'll take the Pats and we'll trade 80 yard bombs to T.O. and Randy Moss."

Anyway, at some point I realized that 1) he had essentially stopped responding and was simply nodding and smiling in fear, and 2) I was simply lambasting this guy and not really asking questions. I let him go on his way, not really getting any good answers, but feeling better about airing my grievances. At least somebody over at EA knows that some die hard original Maddenites hate their new product and that they've lost us as consumers because they couldn't keep a simple thing like co-op play.

The one thing that saved this guy's life is that I am somewhat over the EA Sports demise due to the resurrection of the 2k Sports football game: All-Pro Football 2k8. The gameplay is far superior to Madden (once you get the feel for it) and the fact that you play with NFL legends gives the game a great wrinkle to distinguish it from Madden. Once they figure out how to implement a Franchise mode, it will be far superior to anything EA has produced.

So, to the random EA programmer for whom I most likely ruined a date: Next time, before you flash your EA Sports credit card in public, make sure the guy next to you isn't an obsessive video football gamer harboring a 3 year grudge against your company.