If you grow up with big dreams of becoming a pro football player, there are other bucket list items you want to cross off. Perhaps at the top: being in a Madden NFL video game. With billions of dollars in sales, the popular franchise changed the industry with players and fans anxiously awaiting its latest release every year.
However, success came after serious obstacles and growing pains. From landing on the one-yard line as a computer game on the Apple II to becoming a runaway hit for the Sega Genesis and beyond is told in the upcoming Amazon Prime docuseries It’s in the Game: Madden NFL.
The four-parter digs into EA Sports’ vault to find rare and never-been-seen footage. Through these clips, it’s clear John Madden wasn’t interested in just sitting on the sidelines and collecting a paycheck. The legendary coach was very much hands-on, which helped elevate the final product to a more realistic presentation. One that catapulted Madden from a simple game to cultural touchstone.
Along with the trip down memory lane of the past, the episodes also follow the current team as they provide unprecedented access to the making of the next installment of the game. Richard Hilleman, former EA producer and creative director, was among those who were there during those humble beginnings. He from a technical and design standpoint helped shape what Madden would become.
Here Hilleman reminisces and opens up about the game’s legacy.
What was your first impression when you found out there would be this four-part docuseries chronicling Madden’s evolution?
Richard Hilleman: I have been amazed at the endurance of that franchise, which is well beyond any expectation anybody could have for anything. Every year it exists, and in every way, it impacts popular culture. I’m amazed by it. This is yet another form of amazement.
You were with EA for more than 30 years. How was it revisiting these moments in time within the game’s early development? Were there any aha moments?
One was that I was never in touch with the perception other people had about how important my vision was for the product. I never thought of it that way. For the documentary, someone asked me a straight question about my vision for the product. I said, “Look, the three previous people who did this job got fired. I was just trying to get to the finish line.” It was so much about the competitive circumstance. The difficulty in shipping that product, the competitive circumstance of Joe Montana Football being out there to compete with, and the circumstance of running on the Genesis as essentially a renegade publisher on that platform. All of it kept me so busy I did not perceive what we were doing had any real consequence until after the fact. Probably, when we were making NHL I had more of a sense of that than when we were making Madden. That was because when Madden came out I could see what could happen.
A difference-maker for the game’s success was also arguably having John Madden’s buy-in to making this an authentic product. How do you look back on having him to answer to?
I think for the window of time I spent working on the project a couple of years before the title. We’re talking about where I had some impact on it and the four or five years where I ran the franchise. Actually, my personal involvement with John was not a lot. When I showed up, John had been involved with the project for more than a year. He and his management were just waiting for it to ship. When we started to make the Sega version, that was of course a whole other product. When the time came to have to ship that product, we had to show it again to John and his agent at the time.
John was optimistic about what would happen with it. My interactions with him were pretty limited. I would say the one I was a part of was the first year we did the project we asked for more of John’s help in rating the players. He didn’t have a lot of time for us that year. As a result, he had several players ask him about ratings. When we came back and explained to him that’s why we asked for his help, he was very clear he would be involved from that point on. I think John and Electronic Arts were really learning what the public cared about. It was new ground for all of us. Our priorities reflected that afterward.
LAS VEGAS, NV – FEBRUARY 06: Video game producer Richard Hilleman arrives at the 17th Annual D.I.C.E awards at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on February 6, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagic)
What was the moment you realized that you and the team had made something special and would be successful?
You have to understand sports video games in the panoply of designers in the video game business, sports game designers probably have the lowest status of all. As a result, we weren’t taken terribly seriously. I worked on lots of other types of games at the time. As a result, I had an entree with people who were very good game makers. All of them who played the game had a great time playing the game, and it didn’t matter it was football. Meaning to them it was a great video game that happened to be about football.
I think the second one I need to share. It was in the 1998 to 2000 range, I’m watching a preseason football game. I only remember one of the teams. It was thh Denver Broncos. A player had intercepted a ball very deep in his territory. He ran it back almost 80 yards at the very end of a half. The other team, because it was a preseason game, was choosing not to chase him. When he arrived at the endzone, he stopped and turned right. He ran over and stood by the pylon and waited for them to come.
Now if you looked at the clock, what he was doing was burning the rest of the half. That way his team wouldn’t have to play defense. It took the ball away from that other team for that period of time. This is something we had been doing with John Madden Football since 1991 because the quickest way to lose is to give the other guy the ball. So you don’t want to ever give him the ball, so you’re burning time off and doing ridiculous stunts all the time. When I saw someone do that in real life, I thought, “Uh Oh. We’ve done it now.”
(Credit: ©Fox / courtesy Everett Collection)
Players were starting to learn strategy from the game. Incredible.
We permeated into the real sport. I’d also say within the last 10 years or so the quality of rookie NFL quarterbacks at reading defenses is nearly unbelievable. This used to take five years for an NFL quarterback to obtain the skill to effectively read defense and operate against that…If you play all the way through high school and college, a Brett Favre maybe had 250 chances to read a defense. If you play John Madden Football, you have 250 a day. As a result, I think you’ll see a lot fewer mistakes and things you haven’t seen before. I would say John Madden Football appears to have changed the culture of video games by making video games that seem to have changed the game. The way the game of football is played and who plays it.
It built this community within itself. People from all walks of life come together.
From what I can tell, the first professional esports events were John Madden Football Madden Bowls.
That became huge. Just as it became to be on the cover of this game every year.
Oh yeah. What it also does is give the player a built-in excuse why things don’t go well that season. Well, because it’s “the curse.” It has been the gift it gives to players in more than one way. I love it. I love the players care about it. When you’re making a game such as this, that’s the ultimate validation. When people really good at something understand what you tried to do and it’s appreciated. I was really involved the first four years and a lot of other great people did great work to keep it around this long. We’ve had customers who have been as loyal as any videogame customers on the planet.
And they are not afraid to give you their opinions and be very detailed about it.
Oh yes! I used to get letters. Trust me, I got letters.
Hopefully, no death threats.
Not for that game, but for some others. I was accused of being the devil once. That was good.
What does it mean to be celebrated with others who made the game through this docuseries? Seeing what goes into the process certainly gives you a deeper appreciation.
I have been different than most in the business in that if you look, you’re not going to find a crapload of interviews from me. I just didn’t do a lot. Some of it is my own personal sets of privacy is certainly different than others in the business. So that will change probably. That’s okay. What I think is true is that people who make video games are artists on some level. It is nice to have somebody care who makes the thing because it means they can start to discriminate between people who are good and great. There are a lot of great video game designers who aren’t fully appreciated. Maybe these projects will make it easier to find these people.
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Have you seen the finished product?
I haven’t seen it at all! I thought, “Should I watch this with my wife or not?” That’s as far as I’ve thought about it. I’ll sit down to watch it. From my perspective, it’s a celebration of everybody who ever worked on the project. I love the people working on the project and appreciate what I tried to do. I think that’s great. I think the endurance of the project is a legacy I didn’t expect. All of these celebrations are just frosting on the cake for me.
What do you think is the future of video games?
If you want to see the future of sports video games, in particular, motorsports is an interesting place to look. There is a Lando Norris in Formula 1 racing. He has been a very active Twitch creator and broadcaster for at least five years. He is a very high-level motor esports player. Meaning the top 100 in the world at the same time he is a Formula 1 racer. For him, that’s one world. There is no separation for him. There is no line for video games and computers. He drives the simulators more than the real car anyway. So, in this particular context, I think you will increasingly see games like John Madden Football used in a very particular way to get players ready to be good players. The difference between the entertainment that is John Madden Football and the education of John Madden Football and the performance it yields in players. If you are younger than me, you have the spectrum on these different things. I think that’s the most interesting change of all coming.
It’s in the Game: Madden NFL premiere, November 26, Amazon Prime Video
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