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Minds behind 'Madden NFL 26' pushing for lifelike football realism -- and thinking bigger than gaming

ORLANDO, Florida -- The production director of a video game often gets to play in fictional realms and fantastical worlds, unbound by the restrictions of reality.

Clint Oldenburg does not have that luxury. The former NFL lineman leads EA Sports' American football department, which works with (and creates digital versions of) on-field stars at both the collegiate and professional levels. Oldenburg and his EA Sports colleagues must operate within the confines of human limitation and, ultimately, realism.

And yet, the pursuit of a truly lifelike NFL experience seems to have opened their minds to a new level of potential.

"Gosh, the possibilities are endless," Oldenburg said, when contemplating the future of the Madden NFL video game series.

On Aug. 14, the latest iteration of the title, Madden NFL 26, will be released, and the world will get to see how close Oldenburg and Co. have come to replicating flesh-and-blood football, fulfilling a long-held goal to create the best sports simulation ever -- and further unlocking what Madden might become.

In many ways, Madden can be likened to a fine wine, made incrementally truer by the passage of time -- even if the process produces an occasional off note.

Consider the efforts to perfect play in the trenches, which, as with real football, is where everything starts in Madden. When game designer and former NFL defensive lineman Kenneth Boatright joined the Madden team roughly two years ago, he first worked on Madden NFL 24, leading the creation of a revamped blocking system that promised to bring the running game closer to what fans see on TV every Sunday. And while the results weren't perfect, the changes laid a foundation of intent, further reinforced by annual upgrades and refinements.

Now, the team has again rebuilt blocking around the premise established by Boatright's earlier adjustments, strengthening targeting and logic while blending improved physics. The resulting run-blocking system in Madden NFL 26 was well-received by attendees at a preview event in May and, based on personal experience, plays like the best in the series' history. The average fan might not notice at first, but when their ball-carrier hits a hole on time and in the right direction, they'll realize running the ball has never been more satisfying on the virtual gridiron.

Similar moves were made to boost pass-blocking. Linemen drop in pass sets and keep their heads on a swivel when handling stunts (another new deployable defensive addition to Madden), matching what occurs on actual NFL fields; they make proper rusher pass-offs and, when overmatched by superior defenders, commit devastating mistakes that lead to pressures and sacks.

These improvements produce realistic pockets, creating an environment that should feel familiar to football fans who now have control of the quarterback -- and, thus, the entire offense -- in their hands. On the defensive side, players can be more strategic than ever, empowered with the ability to fine-tune safety alignment, dial up stunts whenever they'd like and customize zone coverage before every snap.

The pursuit of perfection hasn't always paid off. A focus on physics-based collisions produced noticeable changes in Madden NFL 25, but these collisions sometimes pulled the playing experience further away from fidelity to the actual on-field game; developers allowed for a wide range of outcomes when two players made contact, resulting in some awkward, occasionally unrealistic moments. So the Madden team called an audible, reducing the range of possible outcomes so that impact plays are much closer to real life than they were last year.

"Jeez, that started a year prior to last year," executive producer Mike Mahar told me in May, when explaining the process behind improving the collisions. "And when we implemented it last year, it was only a few tackle scenarios with hundreds of different animation outcomes. So you start down that path, and then this year, you'll see that not only has that physics tackling, collision interaction stuff improved in quality, but it's in way more places in the game. And you have way more control over players in a bunch of different situations, whereas last year, it might have only been in one or two spots.

"I'm not trying to dunk on last year's game, but sometimes features like that take multiple years to fine tune."

Quarterbacks in *Madden NFL 26* will play with a style that matches their real-life selves. (Courtesy EA Sports.)
Quarterbacks in *Madden NFL 26* will play with a style that matches their real-life selves. (Courtesy EA Sports.)

The same can be said about player speed. Consumers complained that in Madden NFL 25, the game moved too slowly. Luckily, the size of the American football division meant the Madden team could lean on its collegiate counterpart to find a sweet spot between College Football's game speed and Madden's, creating a more realistic experience with Madden NFL 26. As advertised, when someone runs with 4.2 speed, it feels like they are running with 4.2 speed.

One key difference: where a college game must cover a vast landscape of schools and coaches, an NFL title must stay true to what fans of the pro game expect from their favorite teams (and their most despised rivals). If a player of Madden NFL 26 is facing Dan Campbell's Detroit Lions, they should rightfully expect Campbell to be aggressive on fourth down. And if they're trying to prevent Lamar Jackson from shredding their defense, they should prepare for Jackson to produce some electrifying plays that, while frustrating, are admittedly authentic.

Enter QB DNA and Coach DNA, Madden's attempt to make every game feel different by incorporating what they call the signature styles of each quarterback and every coach. Backed by machine learning and years of extensive real-world NFL data, coaches will operate closer to their real-life counterparts than ever before, and they will direct teams led by quarterbacks equipped with an entirely reimagined set of abilities intended to reflect their real-world traits. Jackson floats outside the pocket before firing cross-body passes for touchdowns. Kyler Murray evades would-be tacklers with squirrel-like quickness. Matthew Stafford throws no-look bullets with incredible precision.

Ultimately, EA is focusing on incorporating both the deep, nitty-gritty of real-world football strategy and the individual flair of the living, breathing people who define the league.

"When 'Boat' was explaining how the line was moving, I get halfway through that and it can almost feel like you're in second-year calculus," Mahar said. "But it's the NFL at its best: super deep, super strategic, leverage, angles, even the most imperceptible things on the line that matter, but at the end of the day, it all adds up to now just being more authentic -- it's more fun.

"It's more fun to play a super aggressive Dan Campbell type. Or a scrambling quarterback. It's more fun to play against these teams and these players, regardless of the data and technology, it's just more realistic but more fun when it's really different and challenging and you have to stay on your toes."

As Oldenburg sees it, these changes are merely the first step toward one day expanding signature styles to every player on the field.

"We want your edge rushers to feel like themselves, the (Joey and Nick) Bosas, the (Khalil) Macks of the world," Oldenburg said. "So when you play and see those guys on the field, you're like, 'Yep, that's Bosa.' It's not just a guy with a 97 on. Running backs; how can we take the Lions -- Jahmyr Gibbs and (David) Montgomery -- how can we feel on the sticks how Gibbs is so slippery and shifty and fast -- Montgomery is a little bit heavier -- and feel that on the sticks? We're not there yet. That's the biggest opportunity for us. And quarterback is representative of that."

Some fans might understandably approach Madden NFL 26 with skepticism. It was only five years ago that Oldenburg led a presentation posted to social media that detailed how the implementation of Next Gen Stats would result in a more realistic on-field experience in Madden.

In the end, the game never properly tracked Next Gen Stats metrics, and the only legitimate impact appeared in route-running, which differed by player based on NGS tracking data. But even though the attempted innovation didn't work as hoped, that experience informed Oldenburg, who now sees it as an experiment that gave him and his team the confidence to push boundaries further.

"That was kind of like, 'Ooh, what can we do?' " Oldenburg recalled. "Like they say: If you don't use A.I., it's going to use you. Now we're in the age of A.I. We want to use A.I. in the right ways, and I think there's a lot of really cool opportunities out in front of us to do that.

"In the play-call menu (in Madden NFL 26), you see the confidence bar. That's us saying our model has this much confidence that it picked the right play based on all of the filters. Can you imagine a world -- if we keep going down this path -- in two or three years where we're getting 90 to 95 percent confidence level on those play calls? Would people use Madden as a game-planning tool?"

If on-field upgrades were the only improvements, reviewers might pass off Madden NFL 26 as a marginally changed title. But the folks at EA are baking multiple cakes in Orlando.

After years of players complaining about Franchise Mode, which were met with well-intentioned (but ultimately incomplete) efforts to fix the mode, the Madden team took a sledgehammer to the existing concept and rebuilt it around one ambitious target: Giving players the ability to write their own coaching narrative by dropping them into an environment filled with personalities reflecting the current NFL landscape.

It's a starting point. From there, the player charts their own course, upgrading their coach with a new ability system designed to empower players to craft their staff (including coordinators and even a team trainer) around their vision of an NFL coaching career, complete with play-calling options unique to each staff member.

All of this exists in a world that features more variety than ever, thanks to the implementation of the aforementioned QB DNA and Coach DNA signature styles.

One change coming to 'Madden NFL 26' is the improvement of extreme weather conditions. (Courtesy EA Sports)
One change coming to 'Madden NFL 26' is the improvement of extreme weather conditions. (Courtesy EA Sports)

Many of the improvements and enhancements revealed by the Madden team during May's preview event -- an extensive presentation delivered to an assembly of content creators and media members -- address requests made by the Madden community of players. These include multiple broadcast packages for prime-time games, improved extreme weather conditions that stretch far beyond visual impression and the long-awaited debut of a halftime show that features in-game highlights from around the league. The return of the latter -- a defining feature of a long-dormant competitor, ESPN NFL 2K5 -- to the video-game space is a sign that those who make Madden are indeed listening to their players.

In total, EA Sports is delivering what it hopes will be the deepest, most complete Madden game launched on this generation of consoles (which will also include its debut on the Nintendo Switch 2). The effort is remarkably ambitious, folding in a seemingly endless list of improvements and enhancements -- including the remaking of Superstar mode into a football role-playing game, complete with a set of characters who can enter the experience and impact a character's NFL journey. This added complexity leaves the game vulnerable to potential pitfalls. But coming off a wildly successful year, thanks to the revival of the College Football series, the American football team at EA is visibly energized.

"We made a lot of progress. We're not yet satisfied," Oldenburg said, touting the decision to bring Samson Brown, who served as the defensive backs coach for the Denver Broncos in their Super Bowl-winning 2015 season, as -- along with the addition of Boatright -- part of the push for football realism. "We're going to continue getting more football people involved to continue pushing that authenticity."

This authenticity is the baseline for what Oldenburg believes could elevate Madden beyond mere entertainment. If EA Sports is able to replicate all of the intricacies and uniqueness of the ever-evolving NFL landscape from a strategic and personality perspective, Madden just might become a tool, too.

"I think we're just starting to scratch the surface on it as a teaching tool in Coach Madden's vision of making his video game on-boarding kids, people into the sport of football," Oldenburg told me. "You and I both know that the time spent on the field is getting less and less every year. Injuries, player health are real things. People are using VR to take digital reps; (Commanders quarterback) Jayden Daniels is doing that, right?

"Why can't Madden be used in the same vein? I think it can. I think we need to explore how to take it there."

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