Guess what the best selling game of 2006 was (or probably was)? Why am I even giving you guys a guess; its Madden 07 of course!
Like a lot of gamers, I guess you could say that Madden is wearing a little thin on me. I understand why it sells so well; the NFL has such a huge fanbase that even if a few disgruntled gamers decide to stop buying it, there’s an army’s worth to fill in the gap. I also understand the desire to play a good simulation of America’s most popular sport (I’m a diehard football fan myself). Despite this, I have no desire to play the game, and a lot of that has to do with what I call the “Madden Cycle”. Here’s how it goes:
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1) EB/Gamestop employees remind me that Madden is coming out. I better preorder it, since every store in the area will be getting boxes of copies, and I don’t want to miss out
2) Every sportscast on TV reminds me again – Madden is coming out soon.
3) Madden is finally out, and for three weeks some of my best friends can do nothing but discuss the arbitrary stats given to each player and team, failing to realize that each season the cover athlete is unfairly good. Maybe if they disagree with the stats so much every year, they should stop buying the game and stick with the year they like the most.
4) A new item on the list: A blitz of reports about how the next-gen versions are buggy and in dire need of patching. EA takes a century to provide a fix.
5) Tournaments and competitions spring up everywhere. Anyone and everyone who has ever picked up a controller to play even three minutes of Madden will tell you the same thing – they will totally kick your ass at the game, because they’re the fucking bomb at Madden. I’ve even done this to people for fun, despite being horrible at the game.
6) Somewhere and at sometime, I either watch or play the new game. I remember just how much I dislike John Madden and his asinine comments, which are actually worse in game than in real life.
7) By sometime in the spring the most hardcore players have uncovered the gamebreaking bugs that make it all but impossible to lose to the CPU, and sometimes even to your friends. Somehow this still does not discourage fans or reviewers when step 1 comes around again.
I hate how that Madden selling the most for every year is a given. Are they gamers or Maddeners, these crazy American capitalists?
i have a friend who immediately buys 2 copies of madden, one for his apartment and one for his parents house, and then proceeds to be frustrated by the fact that none of his current friends (including myself) play the game. he then makes the trek to his parents house, so his brother and people from his old neighborhood will play with him. i would say there are about 7 days a year in which he actually gets to play, but this never makes him hesitate when it comes to purchasing it.