EA Has A New Plan For Madden, And It Leans Into Everything The Company Gets Wrong

Electronic Arts is developing an American football experience unlike anything it's made before, the company said in a memo shared publicly after closing BioWare and laying off 400 people across the company. In trying to spin the news positively and toward the future, the memo's attributed writers, chief studios officer Cam Weber and chief operating officer David Tinson, spoke about several of the publishing giant's upcoming games, including something EA is calling Project Gridiron. What is Project Gridiron? The memo's exact phrasing calls it a "social-first open-world experience for our American Football team." In other words, EA is getting closer to something I've been writing about for years: Madden (and possibly College Football) heavily cribbing from NBA 2K's The City mode and giving football fans a virtual social space of their own. The memo speaks of Project Gridiron as a glimmering future prospect, ignoring--or perhaps unaware of--the fact that such a mode requires EA to be a totally different company than it has proven to be. A mode like The City demands three things the EA Sports brand has historically lacked: patience, an authentic voice, and community goodwill. In NBA 2…

≈