"And all I could come up with was Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits man!"

by Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net

6-23-08

George Carlin 1937-2008

A legend has passed, and has gone on to be interviewed by Tim Russert on that great big "Meet the Press" show in the sky. My wife still can't believe it and a sense of sadness has come over her because she would always listen to George Carlin with her late mother, and in a way this is another reminder that her mother is no longer with us. But as for me I will always remember George Carlin with a smile because he managed to put a new spin on what a "Fussy Eater" was in my family, and he reminded me that my house in California was just a temporary "Place for my Stuff." 

I will remember him as the counter-culture icon who taught us all about language...

...and I will always remember him as the voice of the VW Bus in our favorite Disney/Pixar movie, "Cars."

Goodnight Al Sleet, you will be missed. 

Sorry about that!

by Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net

6-10-08

We apologize if any of you were inconvenienced by the down time, the problem was with our host. Apparently they had a major network hub failure due to a brownout in their area. Hardware has been replaced, and we are now back up and running.

We have files for Madden 08!

by Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net

5-21-08

Well, the community at MVPMods.com breathed new life into MVP Baseball, 2005, perhaps we will all be able to do the same with Madden NFL '08.

BigDaddyCool has been gathering some files that he believes will make Madden '08 playable for a long time now. He's gathered some utilities and created some files of his own that he hopes will add to your gaming enjoyment.

He's also waiting on some modders to give him permission to post their files here as well regarding NCAA teams in Madden. Once he gets their permission then he will post those files here.

Well that's one way to break "The Curse"...

by Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net

5-3-08

Just put a retired player on the cover so that he can't get hurt.

Not that it matters to us because we STILL GOT HOSED BY PETER F'ING MOORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A petition to EASports to get Madden back for the PC

by Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net

4-7-08

I've started a petition to get EASports to reconsider their decision to not put out Madden for the PC. Although there have been some efforts in the past few days to begin modding Madden '08 over at football-freaks, we still need to convince EASports that there is a market for Madden for the PC. After all, I don't think we want them telling us that there is no market for Madden like they've been telling us that there's no market for NCAA Football for all these years, now do we?

Please visit the petition and sign it. It will be forwarded to Peter Moore on August 15th, 2008

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Madden_for_PC/

A special commentary by BigDaddyCool

by Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net

4-2-08

We gather here today to say goodbye to an old friend, and if I may paraphrase William Shakespeare for a moment: “I come not to praise Madden NFL ’09, I come to bury it.”

The announcement has been made by EA Sports and it is official – there will be no PC version of Madden NFL ’09 released this year – or for the foreseeable future.

Needless to say the reaction from the PC community has been one of outrage, disbelief, and yes even sadness. It doesn’t matter if you go to Football-Freaks, BlindSideBlitz, MaddenPlanet or DigitalSportsMania the reaction from the PC gamers is the same. I myself have been struggling to find the words to express my disappointment that the most successful football series for the PC since FBPro in the mid-90’s has now gone the way of the DoDo.

Just how did this happen, and is there anyway to change this? Well it didn’t happen overnight. It has been a long slow progression since the release of Madden NFL ’06 for the PC. Since that version was released it was as if EA Sports wasn’t trying to put out a good product. That all they had to do was coast along, update the rosters every year and give us another new gadget to use and everything would be fine and we wouldn’t notice that the running game hadn’t been improved. Well trust me fellas, we noticed.

Some of us had heard the negative reviews that were being given out and decided to wait until next year’s release before investing more time and effort into the game. Well next year became the next, and the next until finally, there is no next year.

In writing this commentary I am tempted to make a comparison between the demise of Madden for the PC to the FBPro fiasco of the late 90’s. Many of you still remember, as I do, that Football Pro ’99 was a bug-riddled mess, that had two patches released for it by Sierra (one of which made the situation worse) before the game was recalled by then Sierra President, David Grenewetzki. Mr. Grenewetzki said that they were going straight to work on FBPro 2000, and that the FBPro community was invited to help develop and in some cases work on this project in conjunction with Sierra. Two weeks later we all had the rug pulled out from under our feet, the door slammed in our faces, and the hounds set loose upon our heels when Mr.Grenewetzki announced that he had changed his mind. There would be no FBPro 2000, and he wanted all copies of the game back to destroy the evidence. Not only would they not support the game, but all questions about it would go unanswered and all inquiries made in Sierra’s forum boards about it would be deleted.

Thankfully that is not the case here as Peter Moore, the President of EA Sports, has not asked for all of our copies of Madden 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 06, 07 and 08 to be returned to EA Sports. Nor has he said that no further questions about past titles would go unanswered, at least not yet. Nor has he shut down the Tiburon Studios in Orlando , Florida and put hundreds of people out of work at a moments’ notice like Mr.Grenewetzki did with Dynamix Studios. No, Mr. Moore has not gone that far.

But what he has done has struck a serious blow to the prospects of the PC to be taken seriously by the gaming companies as a legitimate fourth gaming platform. For so many years we have heard the chants coming from our console brethren that theirs is the superior gaming platform and that they, by extension, were the superior gamers and thus deserving of the industries love and affection. While we, the lowly PC gamer, whose image is that of the loner, alone in some dark, cold and wet parent’s basement were left to toil in squalor and misery, while our console-playing cousins button-mashed to their hearts’ content upstairs in the living room where it was warm, dry, and not lacking for human companionship. It is a sad and lonely image that the PC gamer has compared to those who choose to game on a PlayStation or an Xbox. For they get all of the good sports titles while we, the PC gamer have to deal with last year’s leftovers that have been ported and had this year’s label slapped on the front.

But I do have to take issue with some of the things that Mr. Moore has written in some of his blogs of late. As part of his entry of March 3, 2008 he wrote the following in regards to PC games at EA Sports:

PC Games – While we’re committed to the PC as a sports game platform, it’s certainly not a platform without its business challenges due in large part because so many of you have migrated to the console as your primary platform. I think on-line will give us some innovative new ways to re-vitalize the PC sports business again, and we’ ll keep pushing from our end to make that happen. But in the meantime, understand that while we have a limited lineup of EA SPORTS games coming this summer and fall to the PC, we do continue to weigh our options on PC.

At the time we all thought that everything would remain status quo and that even though no new titles would be released for the PC, (NCAA FB, NASCAR, etc.) we would still see Madden, NHL and FIFA at our local Best Buy. Then came the entry of April 1, 2008, and all hope was lost:

I know what some of you might be thinking, that the announcement coming on April 1st has to be a joke and that Madden really is coming out for the PC this year. So far this does not appear to be a joke, and if it is, it is a sad one. Sad because we as PC gamers have been abandoned by so many companies in the past and have been told that our business is no longer welcome by the likes of Sierra, Konomi, Take-Two, Microsoft, and now finally, EA Sports.

There are a couple of silver linings to this however. First off is that Maximum Football now becomes the #1 football game for the PC. Now is the time to get behind Winter Valley Software and give them all of the support we can, financially and otherwise. Second, it is good news for Grey Dog Software who is developing their own pro football game to go along with Bowl Bound College Football. Now that they don't have to worry about competing with Madden anymore they can breathe a little easier. And yet there is still a third option which we can all look forward to. That being the development of Draft Day Sports: Pro Football over at Wolverine Studios which is being headed up by Gary Gorski.

Not only are there other games out there that we can turn to, but now the mod community itself should be able to get to work on the games that they have. Look at what the mod community has done for MVP Baseball 2005. They have released several mods which enable you to play in new stadiums, play entire past years of baseball, play classic teams against one another, and they have come out with updates for current rosters every year that enable you to have a new game without the expense.

If only the programmers at Tiburon could have left the code as open as the developers did for MVPBB. If they had done that then maybe the mod community would have been able to make the games more enjoyable for the rest of us. Maybe we would not have been left with creating new rosters and uniforms as the only way we could change the game. Maybe if they had made the game so that different overlays could be used to simulate the game being played on different TV networks. Maybe if they had made the game so that new stadiums could be made and played in, instead of the cookie cutter stadiums that we have to build that show no imagination or character. Trying to re-create the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with no paristyle end is highly unsatisfying. I however, do not have that limitation in MVPBB, as I can have the Dodgers play a home game in the Coliseum any time I wish. 

We might not have Madden to kick around anymore, but if any of you have held onto your past copies of the game as I have, then you and I will still have plenty of opportunity to play, tweak and mod these games without any time constraints. With no new games coming out since '05 the MVP Baseball community has exploded with several add-ons and mods for that game that keeps it fresh year after year after year. Now that Madden is going the same way for the PC I would hope that the boys and girls at EAMods.com will now take up the mantle for the Madden series in the same way that MVPMods.com has done for the MVP Baseball series.

Surely there must be some enterprising amateur programmer out there who has the wherewithal to be able to crack the Madden code and make it possible to mod the game in the way they mod MVPBB. Imagine if we were able to add new portraits to drafted players, if we could play in new stadiums, if we could have graphics that were updated to look like we were playing on “Football Night in America ” instead of a bland EASports scoreboard. Surely there must be someone out there willing to take on this challenge, and might I suggest they might want to start with the game that is still the best and most playable version of Madden out there? That being Madden 2005?

I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking that no one is going to want to play a game from four years ago when they could have a more up-to-date version of the game to mod. No one is going to want to mod an older title. Oh really? Then why is it that over at Blackhole Motorsports there are, at this writing, 1,650 files available for download for NASCAR SimRacing? A game that was released in February of 2005 and is still being played today by thousands of people, including yours truly? How is it that a game that was released a few months after Madden that year can still resonate with people?

The answer my friend is not blowing in the wind, but in the draft, at Daytona and Talledega. The answer is that the game can be more easily modified then can Madden. New cars, new drivers and yes even new tracks have been created, as well as a mod to add the Car of Tomorrow to the game. People who play NSR are constantly trying new things out to make the game more playable offline, but they get their real joy by playing it online against their fellow drivers. Sadly that has become more difficult as Gamespy no longer supports online play of NSR, so gamers have to get together on specific servers to race.

If fact a lesson on what should be the future of the Madden series should be visited on Mr Moore in the form of “look at what the MVP and MSR communities have done for those games. The Madden community could do the same thing…”

…that is if the code wasn’t so damn unbreakable.

I'm trying to look at this not as an end, but a new beginning for the mod community. A beginning that hopefully will be able to show EA Sports what they are missing out on. Mr. Moore you are missing out on a fantastic opportunity here. If you want to know in what direction to take the platform in order to revitalize it then what you have to do is very, very simple:

Ask the people who play the games!!! Have them tell you want they want!!!

And do all of us a favor don’t farm it out to your market research staff, because if they were the ones who recommended that the PC be dropped from the Madden rotation then they definitely dropped the ball on this one. This is something that you need to do yourself sir, as the President of EASports “the buck stops here,” and any decision that the company makes as it relates to the PC market is going to reflect on you.

But if you take my advice sir then I suggest you do it quickly. I suggest you do it before there is so much resentment built up against your company that it is not only the PC Footballer who will suffer. The Hockeyer, the basketballer, the golfer and the soccer gamer might suffer as well, for Madden is the keystone for those PC gamers. Now that Madden has fallen it might only be a matter of time before the building falls down on all of those gamers as well, and then they too will be deprived of playing their favorite sport on their favorite platform.

And I suggest you do it quickly before other companies decide to take this opportunity to try to cut your legs out from underneath you sir. Winter Valley Software, Grey Dog Software and now Wolverine Studios will be getting a lot more business, business which you sir have just turned away! I suggest that you take an affirmative course of action to let all of us PC Sports Gamers know that this is just a temporary setback, that this is not permanent, that you have not abandoned the PC Sports Gamer forever. And I implore you sir – do it now!!! Do it before the reputation of EA Sports as regards to the PC Sports Gamer is so damaged that there is no going back, that there is no way to repair the relationship, that you will have earned a place right beside David Grenewetzki in the PC Sports Hall of Shame. Do it before EA Sports becomes another Sierra in the eyes of PC Sports Gamers.

There are many of us out here sir and we wish to be treated with respect. You may not have intended it but this decision has shown a tremendous amount of disrespect for the very customer base that helped make Madden what it is. When the game first came out there was no PlayStation or Wii and the Xbox wasn’t even a twinkle in Bill Gates’ eye. No it came out for the Apple II – a computer. Soon after it came out for the PC, and then thereafter the console market. We are original players sir, do not shut us out like this. Many of us are angry enough to take our business elsewhere, and in some cases, angry enough to take it elsewhere and never come back even if you do re-introduce Madden for the PC.

This is a very critical juncture in your tenure as president sir. It is a moment that will decide how you are remembered, the choice is yours. Do you wish to be remembered as the man who made EA Sports better not only for it’s stockholders but also for it’s customers, or do you wish to be remembered as the man who cost his company not only it’s reputation, but it’s customer base and it’s standing within the gaming industry as well? If you wish to avoid the latter then what you need to do is to bring back the PC Sports Gamer to the fold. Because a lot of these gamers also have consoles or knows someone who does. And remember, a happy customer will tell one person about a company, an unhappy customer will tell ten. And if you don’t make your customers happy for a long enough period of time, then I am sure your board of directors at Electronic Arts will find someone who will make us happy. Don’t think it can happen? Ask David Grenewetzki, he’ll tell you it can.

Take my advice sir, reach out to those you have just disenfranchised and drink the PC Sports Gamers Kool-Aid. Because if you don’t, you might just turn around one day and find that someone else has just drunk your milkshake.

Until next time…

Latest News

We're switching up our color scheme again. This time it's the colors of the Fiesta Bowl Champion Boise State Broncos.

The new Instigator season is underway! Check out the re-caps in the forums.

We have new rules and a mission statement posted for you to read. Check out the Forum Rules page.