The Madden Monopoly

Madden 18. NHL 18. NBA 18. FIFA 18. UFC 2. These are household names, sport gaming franchises that define and are defined by pop culture. But if we look past the rosters, past the jerseys, past the jukes and hurdles, what are these games defined by? What do they do right? And perhaps more importantly, what do they do wrong? First off, I want to preface this by saying that the fact that these games are an economic success is irrefutable. In the fiscal year of 2017, EA reported a massive net $4.8 billion dollars, and most of that is coming in from popular sports titles like Madden and FIFA. EA, while dubious at best when it comes to ethicality and openness to the gaming community, is at the very least a financial superpower. That's not what I'm questioning. What I'm questioning is what these massive sport titles really have to offer.

EA makes so much money because it owns rights. EA, and its subordinates like 2K, have a monopoly on the sport gaming industry thanks to licensing deals with the NBA, NFL, NHL and FIFA. This means that they are the only publishers and producers that are making major sport games. And that has a major harm that isn't necessarily apparent just by playing these games. That harm is a lack of incentive to innovate. EA does not have to innovate to sell titles. This is such a unique situation, that it is hard to describe. Think of your favorite game and what makes you come back to it time and time again. Maybe it's Fortnite's fast paced action, or Rainbow Six Siege's map destructibility, or Battlefield 1's 64 player servers, or PUBG's simulations-style realism. Whatever game it is, there are features that other games have that makes them preferable. Now think about Madden. What are its unique features? Well, everything. There is no other modern football game, so everything about Madden is unique. This is where the problem lies. All Madden has to do is be a football game, and it's unique. It's desirable just by existing. And that means that there is little to no incentive to innovate. Why do more people play Fortnite than PUBG? Because Fortnite has features that people prefer over PUBG's features. But why do these features exist? Because Epic Games wisely realized that if it wanted to sell a Battle Royale game next to PUBG, it had to innovate. Queue the fast-paced action, smaller map, building, simple cartoonish graphics, and you have a game that is widely considered "better" than PUBG (at least based off of sale numbers). Madden, and all these sports games, have become stagnant roster updates, with little features added in here and there. With no incentive, Madden will not develop nearly as fast as it would with competition. And this is why an end to EA's monopoly would be wonderful for the gaming world. Imagine what kind of sport-gaming innovation we could have if Madden was developing side by side by, say, an Ubisoft developed NFL game.

I see two potential solutions to this problem. The first one is for EA to simply stop making exclusive licensing deals with sport leagues. While this would be quite wonderful for Madden and other sport games, this is so unlikely as to be basically impossible. As I stated early on, EA makes a ton of money off of these games, and there is no way that any company, let alone EA, would give that up. The second solution is to make oster/graphic updates free. So you buy Madden 19, and when late 2019 rolls around, you get a free roster update and some graphics tweaking. Then, when madden 20 comes out, the only thing that makes you want to buy it is new features. The reason this would help is that now that roster updates are free, the only way for EA to make money is off of micro-transactions, as well as content updates. And now, EA has incentive. They're competing with themselves, as to sell the next copy they're not just selling a $60 roster update, but rather an actually new game. And unless EA makes some huge innovations, I don't think these new installations in the Madden franchise should be $60. Somewhere around $20-$30 is more appropriate. Again, this situation is highly unlikely. EA is widely known as a very greedy company, and their sports games are the height of income.

The only way for this to happen is a massive scale boycott. As in, at least 40-50% of the sports gaming playerbase. And the chances of this happening, without EA making a disastrous mistake, is next to nothing. Too many people enjoy