Moore’s job has morphed from a behind-the-scenes technician to a sort of celebrity - and villain - in gaming circles. But when it comes to the task of managing a database of more than 100,000 player attributes, one of the best-selling sports franchises in gaming history largely leaves matters up to one man. He’s assisted by a former Madden tester who oversees players’ cosmetic details 4 and the usual barrage of (ever-civil) feedback on Twitter. Yet for all of EA’s resources, Moore performs his czar duties in surprising solitude. The franchise has generated more than $4 billion in revenue since its debut in 1988. Moore’s employer, Electronic Arts, is the world’s fifth-biggest game publisher by revenue, and Madden is among its most popular titles. In the next madden game Tom Brady's rating is going to be 100- Zachary Olds February 2, 2015 Yet for all EA’s resources, Moore performs his czar duties in surprising solitude. Madden has generated more than $4 billion in revenue over its 26-year lifetime. But in a sport where objective measurements are often inadequate, subjective numbers - like those generated by Moore - take on greater currency.Īll these factors put more pressure on Moore to produce ratings of ever-increasing accuracy even as they highlight the fundamental paradox limiting Madden’s realism: It’s nearly impossible to accurately simulate some players as long as a gamer must assume control of the athlete’s brain.
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It would be strange for a baseball player to complain about his ratings in MLB: The Show, for instance, because a realistic baseball simulator (by necessity) has ratings grounded in actual statistics. The allure of the Madden rating might also speak to the relative lack of meaningful statistics in football itself. Good, a writer for the video-game news site Polygon, told me. “It’s important to these guys that they be rated 99 in speed it’s important to somebody that he have the best arm in the game,” Owen S.
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The ratings are a de facto time capsule from the year they were produced, a digital archive that offers players some measure of immortality in a sport where the average career lasts only a shade over three years. It is all good marketing for EA Sports but also speaks to the sway Madden holds. In fact, an entire culture has grown up around Madden and its attempts to distill human athleticism into numbers. A decade after signing a controversial exclusivity deal with the league and the players union, Madden 3 is still the only licensed NFL game in town.
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Moore’s process has largely been a black box, and yet it shapes how more than 5 million gamers simulate pro football - particularly because there’s no official alternative to his numbers. In that role, Moore is tasked with assigning more than 40 numerical grades to each of the NFL’s roughly 2,600 players, 2 evaluating them in categories ranging from passing accuracy to tackling ability. Such is the power afforded Moore, a hyperactive Floridian who works as the official Ratings Czar 1 for EA Sports’ Madden NFL video-game franchise. “Yeah,” Moore said as Newton hobbled toward him, “let’s talk about your speed.”Įventually, Newton was pleading with Moore to not make him slower. But as Moore wheeled around from his den of screens, he was confronted by not only Newton, but also an enormous boot on Newton’s foot, the result of recent ankle surgery.
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“I want to talk about my speed,” Moore remembers Newton saying as he clambered into Moore’s cubicle last April.ĭespite leading all NFL quarterbacks in rushing yards in 2013, Newton ranked as only the ninth-fastest QB in the league, according to Moore - hence Newton’s unhappiness. And the stars of America’s most popular sport aren’t always delighted by his judgments.Ĭarolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, for instance, was upset. Its players throw as hard as Moore wants. Hunched over a keyboard, surrounded by computer monitors, Donny Moore, 37, controls the fate of the National Football League. How Madden Ratings Are Made The Secret Process That Turns NFL Players Into Digital Gods by Neil Paine graphics by Reuben Fischer-Baum illustration by Mike McQuade