Madden Mobile: Can EA Update Its Classic Playbook?
The Madden football games have evolved into one of the premiere video game franchises today, selling more than 100 million copies over the past 20 years. My last experience with Madden was on the PlayStation 2, with Eddie George gracing the cover of Madden 2001 and musician Xzibit’s heavy bass tracks pulsating on the game’s soundtrack. It was a showcase of the PS2’s pixel-popping muscle, with striking, smooth 3D player models that made the game feel vibrant and real.
Graphics aside, Madden was a delight then because it was a sports game where the strategy of play (playcalling via the playbook) was equally as important as the athleticism and abilities of the team’s players. The Madden name has now become synonymous with football, and EA has created a sports brand that can stand toe-to-toe with any other sports brand in the world – and not just in video games.
Translating that brand into an engaging mobile experience is a tremendous challenge, but EA has been tinkering with its console formulas for a couple years now, trying to figure out free-to-play mobile. They are finally on the right track; EA ended last year on a high note with the one-two punch of
Madden Mobile
and
SimCity: Build It
(the latter’s deconstruction by our very own Joe Traverso can be
).
Madden Mobile
was released in August of last year, and has since consistently stayed in the top 40 grossing apps worldwide. What’s the formula behind their current success, and do they have the right stuff to make it last? Let’s take a look.
GAMEPLAY
Before dissecting all of
Madden Mobile
’s features / game modes, let’s talk about what’s at the heart of the game: playing football. The first “season” of the game consists of one minute quarters, a drastic departure from typical 5 to 9 minute quarters on console Madden. T
his is a necessary adjustment that EA has made to cater to the casual mobile audience and it works well – while on console you might be looking for a 30-minute play session on your couch, your typical mobile user is looking for a 5-10 minute game session that feels complete.
Madden Mobile
delivers on this.
For the football illiterate, here’s a quick crash course on game basics – players take turns playing offense and defense, with the goal of the offense being to advance the ball to the other side of the field (field length is 100 yards). Offense employs a variety of strategies (or “plays”) to move the ball forward, which fall into the categories of running or passing. Defense tries to prevent the offense from moving forward, and also employs plays to shut down the offense.
If you’ve ever played Madden before, you’re familiar with the basic formula: each play starts with offense and defense deciding what kind of play to run. Plays in Madden are pre-determined – you can’t write your own plays, but instead choose from a playbook that contains some 20 to 30 options.
The Madden Mobile playbook provides both offensive and defensive plays for you to choose from. New plays are earned as rewards for leveling up with more experience.
On offense, you are in charge of an 11-man squad, and in typical Madden fashion you are in control of your quarterback, wide receiver and running back players to manage pass and run plays. Offense begins all plays with a tap action, and then depending on what play you have called you are either controlling your quarterback and picking which receiver gets passed the ball, or handling your running back to weave your way through an opponent’s defense.
On offense, you start passing plays by controlling your quarterback. Hmm ... which receiver should I pass to?
Playing defense has always been a tricky one in Madden – outside of calling the play before the ball is snapped, there is no easy way to control all 11 of your defensive players on the field in real-time. Just as in console,
Madden Mobile
provides you the option of toggling to any defensive player on the field, at any moment in a play – whether that’s to blitz a quarterback, tackle a receiver, or intercept a ball – that’s totally your call.
Tied games get taken to overtime, and in special cases like head-to-head play with friends there are extra rules (e.g. there is no double overtime – if neither person scores in overtime, the player with the most number of overtime yards wins).
Game Modes
Madden takes this core game of football and has created several distinct modes of play to give players variety and prevent boredom.
- Season Mode: Your team competes in 16-game seasons against other NFL teams (AI opponents), followed by 3 playoff games, making for a total of 19 games. In season mode, you play a full, four-quarter game with 1-minute quarters. As you complete seasons, quarter lengths get longer (first to 1.5-minute quarters, then 2-minute quarters).
- Head-to-Head: Challenge other Madden Mobile players in asynchronous matches. Games here are divided into “drives” (there are no quarters) – whoever initiates a match starts with an offensive drive. The drive, and your turn, is over when you either fail to score (turn the ball over on downs) or when you get a field goal or a touchdown. Head-to-head mode allows you to only control your offense in live play; when your opponent is playing offense, your team’s defense is manned by AI.
- Live Events: Live events are Madden’s version of a timed job board or order board – they are refreshed daily and allow players to attempt interesting challenges that are often tied to real NFL history. For example, a challenge might be to overcome a 4-point deficit in the 4th quarter and win the game, or something as simple as complete 4 passes in 5 attempts. Live events are against AI.
- Leagues: Leagues are Madden’s version of guilds or communities. Up to 30 people can join a league, and you can challenge other members of your league in climb the leaderboard. Leagues also have an innovative mode of clan battles called “League vs. League”. In this mode, one league is matched against one other league for a period of 24 hours. In this time, individuals of one league can challenge the individuals from the other, up to 3 times. Scoring in these individual matches gets aggregated to an overall league score. (e.g. if I score 7 points in my game, it adds 7 points to my overall league’s score of 150, notching it up to 157)
Performance & Controls
I primarily tested
Madden Mobile
on a first-generation iPad Air, which is about a year and a half old now, and the game runs very smoothly on it. It seems to hold up equally well on a Samsung S4 phone, but I will caveat that by saying that I’ve only played a handful of sessions on this device. Madden takes up 339 MB on my iPad (hefty, but nothing compared to the 967 MB of
Family Guy: QFS
) and 157 MB on my S4.
My primary frustration with my game experience has been with connecting to Maddens servers – I’ve been stuck on loading screens and booted from the auction house (more on that feature later) way too many times to chalk this up to unexpected spikes in user traffic or a poor WiFi signal. On average, I experience network issues with Madden once every four sessions.
Console versions of Madden can be a steep learning curve in learning all the controls – your brain is taxed to learn an array of inputs, as virtually every button of the controller is mapped to the game. Not only that – but once you have learned offense, you need to remaster the controls for defense.
Madden Mobile
strips down the user interface to basic arcade-style controls: analog stick and action button. The action button is context sensitive; before a play starts it can be used to examine the field overlayed with your selected play (screenshot below), and during the play it can be used to do a variety of things, like putting up a stiff arm while running the ball.
A running play on offense - take control of your running back, and use the action button (bottom left hand corner) to perform a "skill move".
The control scheme largely succeeds for a touch-based interface; while the virtual stick has nowhere near the tactile feeling of the real thing, it’s the best option for its platform.
Core Loop
Playing football is just half of
Madden Mobile
’s “Build and Battle” core loop. Let’s take a look at the core loop, after which I’ll talk about Build and Battle:
A simplified look at Madden Mobile's core loop
Pretty simple, right? Playing and winning games (“battle”) reward players with coins and XP. Playing games will cost players “stamina”, which is Madden’s energy mechanic. The energy mechanic provides players a window of gameplay, after which they are time-gated and thus blocked from playing until the stamina refills.
Coins allow gamers to buy more “player packs” from the Madden Store, which allow you to upgrade your team with better players (“build”) and dump the crummier ones. Here’s where EA chooses to be more like Hearthstone than Pokémon– game experience doesn’t give your players XP to upgrade them. Progression is about collecting better players to build your best “deck”.
XP is gained by interacting with any of the game’s features, and leveling up unlocks new plays, more stamina (and a 100% stamina refill), and a little bit of extra coinage. Slowly unlocking plays through experience is an interesting method of building player progression, and feels rewarding. New plays also keeps the game fresh, as new plays gives players more meaningful choices to strategize offensive and defensive maneuvers.
Leveling up is a rewarding moment for players, and feeds into the core loop
Core Loop, Expanded
The core loop stays intact with the various game modes that Madden offers, but adds depth with new elements. Head-to-head matches uses a meter called “fans”, which is a progressive measure of how well you compete against other Madden players. The idea is to build your fan base so that you move up divisions (e.g. build your fan base to 10,000 to get to Pro Level III), which rewards players with more coin output in head-to-head matches. You can both win and lose fans through head-to-head matches.
Divisions are a way for players to play the status game, and show off their winnings
The second element that makes the expanded core loop are the “collectible cards”. At this point it’s worth talking in a little more depth about how football players are represented in this game: they are visualized as trading cards.
Player attributes aggregate into an overall player score, which allows you to easily compare players who play different positions (e.g. a quarterback and a safety)
All player cards have an overall rating in the form of a rating (out of 100) as well as an overall status: Bronze, Silver, Gold or Elite. Elite players typically score between 90 and 100; for example, Elite quarterback Aaron Rodgers is a 94 score. When you start the game, you begin with a Bronze or Silver rated quarterback, but with coins you can upgrade to Elite players Tom Brady or a Joe Flacco. Better players means a stronger team in games, which increases your chances of winning against tough opponents.
Collectible cards can be used to create sets, which can be exchanged for various things, like better players. For instance, you can collect 10 Elite trophy cards and exchange it for one Elite player. Bronze, Silver, Gold and Elite trophy cards are earned when players unlock achievements – the better the achievement, the better the trophy. But trophies can also be built in sets – let’s say you have 9 Elite trophies, and need just one more to get that Elite player. You can exchange 5 Gold trophies for 1 Elite trophy. Ta-da! You’ve earned the Elite player.
If you’ve never played a sports game in your life, yet all this sounds very familiar, it’s not just you –
Madden Mobile
has cleverly integrated collections and crafting mechanics into a football game! Not only is Madden using crafting; it’s using
nested
crafting (more than one layer of crafting). In
Hay Day
, an example of a nested crafting activity is making brown sugar; you need to plant and harvest cane sugar (crafting layer 1), and then take the raw cane sugar and grind it in a sugar mill (crafting layer 2) to get brown sugar. Using Gold trophies to create an Elite trophy (crafting layer 1), to then use to create an Elite player (crafting layer 2) is the same thing.
Madden uses collectibles quite effectively, and in a variety of ways to unlock new players and coins. More on that shortly.
RETENTION: THE GAME GETS REALLY ADDICTING, REALLY FAST
Good mobile games retain players by giving them things to do for short, medium and long game sessions. But the most important thing for retention on mobile is to give a player a reason to come back (“the hook”). This is the equivalent of the cliffhanger of a television show pilot: give users a compelling appetizer of an episode, but leave them wanting more.
A mobile game’s first play session absolutely needs to end with a hook, and so does every subsequent play session. Here are the key methods that Madden uses to bring back players for more:
Progression Journey – Building the Best Team.
The overall goal in Madden is about team management, and you’re acting as General Manager. You build the best team by playing games to win coins, as described in the Core Loop section. Your journey is about building a 100-rated team – you start out as a 60 or 65 rated team, but by upgrading individual players you upgrade your offense / defense / special teams’ ratings, which aggregate into your overall team rating. This system of “team rating” is built into the player journey from when you are a new player to an elder player, so there is a consistent message as to what you are working on.
Your team separated into offense, defense and special teams. Player ratings aggregate into team rating, which can be seen in the upper right-hand corner in this screen.
Progression feels rewarding not simply because your team gets a better number – upgrading your player makes you powerful. In the first game of my second season, my AI opponents crushed my offensive line and repeatedly sacked my quarterback (at this moment of time, Tom Brady). As soon as I upgraded my offensive line with better rated players, Brady breathed a sigh of relief – he had time to survey the field and find a receiver. That was a key moment for me in the game: it felt great to upgrade! By investing in the building activity, players are compelled to come back for more sessions and enjoy the power of their investment.
Collections to Unlock Rewards.
The collections game motivates players to complete “sets” to unlock rewards such as trophies and players. At the core of collections are achievements – as I described earlier, trophy cards (e.g. elite trophy) are awarded for achievements, which can then be used in collection sets. Madden rewards players for continued play with achievements, which can then be used for collections.
Collections are a key part of the progression journey described above; once you start a collection, you are working towards something that makes your team better, like an elite, 94-rated Taylor Mays from the Combine collection (see screenshot below). When you start a new collection, Madden compels you to come back for more game sessions to complete what you have started.
The Taylor Mays "Combine Collection"; in this particular collection, I'm missing three cards to unlock elite, 94-rated safety Taylor Mays
Live Events Stream Fresh Content and Keep You Coming Back.
Part of almost every free-to-play mobile game these days are live events – the promise of “fresh new content” is supposed to entice players to keep coming back to games they thought they were done playing. Madden is no different, and uses live events to give players something new to work towards.
Where I find Madden refreshingly different from farm-building or city-building games is the duration and diversity of events. At any given time, there can be 2 to 4 live events available for play, which are available for short bursts of time (a recent event was live for 2 hours) before they go away. Madden has a huge advantage over other genre games when it comes to these events – they cut out a small portion of the regular game, and turn them into challenges. As mentioned in the Gameplay section, a challenge can be something as simple as completing four out of five passes. This provides their team a huge advantage in terms of engineering effort for new events – most of the development work is already built into the core game!
Madden doesn’t stop there – live events primarily rely on collectibles as rewards, but uses a chance mechanic to keep the player coming back. To re-use the example above, I might be playing the Taylor Mays Live Event to build the Combine collection, but I have no idea which one of the 10 I will get. As seen in the screen grab (above, again), I have played the game at least 10 times, but I haven’t completed it because I have duplicates of some. Argh!
This is a totally addictive mechanic, melding collections and chance: I keep coming back to find when the event will resume, so I can finish this collection. To paraphrase EA Sports’ tagline: it keeps me in the game.
SOCIAL: BRAVO, MADDEN, FOR MAKING SOCIAL FEEL NATURAL
Madden on the console was a lot of fun when you played against your friends, and you played each other in real-time, offense pitted against defense, to outmaneuver each other. If someone told me just two months ago that there could be a workable version of player vs. player on Madden that was asynchronous, I would have had very serious doubts.
But Madden has made social fun and invigorating with their Head-to-Head system that is built on asynchronous play. I can play with my friends at my time and convenience, without worrying about scheduling a calendar time. I can even enjoy a “turn” (think
Words with Friends
) playing a friend, and never complete the match – and feel like it was a worthwhile experience.
A Head-to-Head opportunity with a fellow Madden Mobile player. This menu allows you to size up your opponent based on their Level, Division status and Team Rating
On the surface this may not seem like that big of an achievement, but it’s a great innovation on Madden that makes it feel natural to how we have become accustomed to player vs. player interactions on mobile. Madden takes this Head-to-Head mechanic and makes it the engine that powers Leagues.
Madden’s “fans” system is its way of distinguishing player status: fans are something to be won and lost through Head-to-Head matches, and it measures both your dominance of your social opponents, as well as your overall game engagement (e.g. if players initiate matches with you, and you don’t log in – your fan count will start to deplete). Maintaining your engagement in the game is thus important if status is important to you; this mechanism reminded me a lot of
Clash of Clans
and the weariness with which people watched over the villages to make sure their resources weren’t constantly depleted by others’ attacks.
MONETIZATION: BUYING CARD PACKS IS ALL THE RAGE AGAIN (BUT AUCTIONS THREATEN TO COLLAPSE THIS HOUSE OF CARDS)
Madden monetizes through its energy system, “stamina”, and by selling you card packs. Madden makes card packs work exactly the same way as the real-deal card packs that you used to buy from the store – there was a small chance of really good cards (rookie Michael Jordan!), but you usually ended up a set of pretty mediocre ones.
Based on my own gameplay habits, I would imagine that Madden doesn’t monetize well on stamina for newer players. In my early gameplay, stamina was never a constraint; I put down the device before I ran out of energy. My money is on Madden monetizing on newer players by selling them card packs – that’s both literally and figuratively (I paid about $20 for card packs in the first week of gameplay).
But something happens after the first 5 to 10 levels of gameplay that makes you realize that the store isn’t really all that necessary: you discover the power of the auction house. Auctions are a large part of Madden that I haven’t mentioned up until this point, and have done so intentionally. It’s a huge topic in of itself (and almost a game in itself), one that could easily translate into its own article. I’ll spare you from that level of detail, only to say that Auctions breaks Madden’s coin economy.
Social Marketplaces always create this problem –
Hay Day
suffers from the same coin economy problems precisely because of this feature. But in Madden, the Auction system has no constraints – you can buy and sell cards at any price, and it’s totally dependent on the free market to eventually come to an equilibrium about what’s a reasonable price to pay for cards. In this way, Madden is different from
Hay Day
because there is no ceiling price on commodities (e.g. the maximum I can sell an apple for in
Hay Day
is 39 coins).
The Madden team must be grappling with this issue to figure out how to best resolve it: on the one hand, they have tuned the coin economy very tightly by limiting coin rewards in all game play modes; on the other hand, Auctions are an easy way to quickly rack up coins. I decided to test how much I could bend the game to my advantage by using Auctions. With just a little bit of YouTube and Reddit research, I found a few cards that were easy to buy low and sell
really
high. Within 96 hours, I had transformed 30,000 coins into half a million – enough to buy my fair share of Elite players without having to buy a single card pack (and hope for a chance at a good card) from the Madden store with real money.
Madden's Store interface - card packs are available for soft currency (coins), premium currency (Madden cash), or both.
MADDEN MOBILE BUILDS A COMPELLING PLAYBOOK FOR EA TO EXECUTE ON
There is a lot to like here in Madden Mobile, and it’s good to see EA put the pieces of the puzzle together, using proven mechanics from farming, PVP action strategy and card-battling genres and actually building a cohesive sports experience. I highly doubt EA will sit on their laurels with this one, and will continue to iterate on Madden and its other franchises as they slowly start to debut on mobile.
There parts of the game that need work – the UI is often confusing (too many times have I searched through levels of menus to find card collection sets) and the League experience falls apart quickly when there are inactive players. But Madden Mobile does enough things right to overlook these minuses and make for a fun and addictive experience.
