Happy Madden Day! Did you pick-up your long-awaited copy of Madden 16 at your local Babbages Funco Boutique Buy Mart? Good. I’m gonna get mine tonight and then I’m gonna play me some video game football till I pass out. Then, I’m going to sit down and work in the morning and I’m going to forget about Madden until the weekend. For a few weeks, me and Madden 16 will be weekend buddies, but over time, the hours of obsessive play will dwindle and then, one fine Saturday in late September, I’ll go garage sale hunting or maybe I’ll go to a movie, and I’ll forget all about this game that I am about to spend $60 on.
I get that Madden is an obsession for a lot of people. It’s even a career for some pro gamers, but in that North American productivity craters around the end of August every year, I’m prepared to guess that most Madden buyers are like me — casual gamers whose interest starts to flicker a month or two after they unwrap the game.
Is that the game’s fault? Eh. How can I blame EA for what they put into their product when I am about to buy that product absent any idea about the new features that will be included this year? Is the hit stick still a thing? Dan Seitz mentioned first person play to me. Is this new?
I bought last year’s version, played it for a few weeks and wound up trading it in a couple of months later. Then I inexplicably bought it again at the height of Super Bowl mania and traded that copy in shortly thereafter. Madden isn’t my video game wife, it’s my video game mistress, and all I take away from our tawdry little affair is a vague recollection of me mindlessly mashing buttons at one in the morning And yet, here I go again. And here you probably go again. But why?
Part of it is because of EA’s brilliant move to plow the field back in 2004, killing the beloved Visual Concepts 2K series while make their product the only real option for football fans. The other part is that it’s just a habit at this point, right? Just like football, itself.
Football has a hold on people. We watch it with friends, we play a slower, more muscle-pull-laden, less tackle-intensive version on holidays, and obsess over our fantasy football teams while at work. This despite the many controversies. This despite the fact that game can often feel like a collection of strictly (STRICTLY) controlled chaos flare-ups in the midst of ceaseless commercials, timeouts, penalties, little measuring chains, huddles, and meandering linemen who take forever to get into position.
We are happy in the grasp of football, and when we start to hear pads smashing against one another on SportsCenter in mid-August, the want to simulate the experience of watching football and playing football is strong, and Madden is there for many of us with that taste.
Despite its reputation as an annual roster update and its sometimes middling critical reception, Madden never fails in its effort to allow gamers to be a part of the last great (eh, maybe good) gladiatorial sport, even though it’s pure fantasy and ever so brief. Perhaps it’s that communal joy that football fans feel on Madden Day that makes this less a habit and more a tradition. Something to be celebrated, not regretted.
So go get that copy of Madden and clutch it tight, because before long, it’ll be just another video game you don’t have time to play. But you’ll be right back there to buy it again next year, and that’s the way it should be.
