<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Madden NFL 12 will be the latest game in the John Madden football series, a series that has been going strong for nearly 25 years. Producer Phil Frazier has been with the franchise for 12 of those years and has seen the game evolve into one of the deepest, most sophisticated sports titles available on the market today. Digital Spy has been impressed by previous offerings and praised last year&amp;#039;s game for its depth and realism. We spoke to Frazier about some of the new features making their way into this year&amp;#039;s game, the challenges that come with making an annually updated title and what their plans were for Kinect and Move. Can you tell us about some of the new features that we can we expect to see in this year&amp;#039;s game? &amp;quot;This year we&amp;#039;ve literally touched every aspect of the game. From gameplay to franchise mode, online, presentation, there&amp;#039;s something new in all aspects. You know, graphically the game looks better than ever before - the lighting, the new DCAM camera system that allows us to take actual NFL filming recorded by a cinematographer and drop it directly into our game and get really amazing looking cameras. On the gameplay side we&amp;#039;ve got the brand new collision system that makes our hits feel like they have more impact, which gives you more control over the different things that are happening on the field. You&amp;#039;ve also got brand new AI defensively, so zone coverage and man coverage has been completely rewritten so that our defenders are more aware of, not only where the offensive players are on the field, but what their teammates are doing and they can use that information.&amp;quot;  Can you give us an example? &amp;quot;If I&amp;#039;m a linebacker, for example, and you&amp;#039;re behind me, I know that I have coverage or at least am supposed to have coverage behind me, so I&amp;#039;ll be more willing to let a player go around the back of me, because I know that I&amp;#039;ve got some secondary help, so it&amp;#039;s a brand new, deeper AI system.&amp;quot; How about the Franchise mode? What changes have been made to that? &amp;quot;Franchise mode literally has a list of features that&amp;#039;s more than 100 long. Things from pre-season to post-season, a new bidding system for free agents, there&amp;#039;s just a lot of content, most of which has been requested by our fans. And then there&amp;#039;s online, there are features that we&amp;#039;re not really going to talk about until sometime in July, but literally, it&amp;#039;s content spread throughout the entire game. We&amp;#039;ve also got the new Dynamic Player Performance, which allows us to model the personalities, which means that we can play as NFL athletes like never before.&amp;quot; Can you tell us a little more about Dynamic Player Performance and how it changes a game or season? &amp;quot;If you look at different players in the NFL, you may have two guys that are virtually the same, they may be the same speed and have the same attributes, but when you put them into a play situation, when there are defenders coming at them, or when there are receivers that are completely covered, they&amp;#039;re both going to react differently. One guy may decide to tuck it and run it, while the other guy may just take a sack. So what we&amp;#039;ve tried to do this year with Dynamic Player Performance is add in those tendencies, so that we can model player behaviour on top of their abilities. So, a guy like Peyton Manning, he&amp;#039;s very good at not just seeing where people are coming from, but he knows when to get rid of the ball so as he doesn&amp;#039;t take a sack, he very rarely takes a sack, we model that in our game too.  &amp;quot;Then you&amp;#039;ve got a guy like Michael Vick, who also will very rarely take a sack, because he&amp;#039;ll just take off and run at you. A lot of teams will set up their gameplay so that he has to throw the ball, because they view that as his weakness. Dynamic Player Performance allows all of that to happen, your actions dictate it. It also has a lot to do with how guys handle pressure, so if I get a few sacks on Eli Manning, I&amp;#039;m getting in his head and he&amp;#039;s going to lose his confidence. The only way out for him is to start playing better, which is the great thing about this feature. We model the essence and heart of a player, and it&amp;#039;s really quite deep as it carries over into Franchise mode as well, so if a player is rattled during one game, he&amp;#039;ll still be rattled after the second game until he finds his rhythm again.&amp;quot; How hard is it to constantly evolve and improve the game on a yearly basis? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not really difficult to improve on the past game because we get so much feedback from the fans and have a great team. I mean, we&amp;#039;re always very proud of the game we make, but, shortly after we finish we have a list of things to do that perhaps we weren&amp;#039;t able get into the previous project, so we just get right back to work. You know, as soon as we finish Madden 12 we start on Madden 13. Also, we&amp;#039;re such huge fans of football and of our game that we usually want to get right back to work and start putting in new content. Because we only have a year, there&amp;#039;s really not a lot of time to sit around.&amp;quot;  When are you unable to add new features to the finished article? &amp;quot;The game comes out in August, so we typically finish the game around late June, so from the months from March to June we are putting the finishing touches on the game, fixing the bugs, making the final tweaks, making sure that it&amp;#039;s fun, that it looks great. Up until March is when we&amp;#039;re typically adding new content and putting in the new technology; adding new cutscenes, adding new features, so, the longer we wait after a project&amp;#039;s done to start on the next one, we just lose more and more stuff, which is why we begin as soon as we can.&amp;quot; Are there any plans to implement Kinect or Move features into the upcoming Madden games? &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re interested in these technologies and are looking at what we can do with these formats. What we don&amp;#039;t want to do is force-feed that control mechanic into a Madden game. Madden has been successful for nearly 25 years because of our core experience being what it is. It&amp;#039;s authentic, it&amp;#039;s very fast, it&amp;#039;s very competitive, and so what I don&amp;#039;t want to do is take the concept of throwing a pass and requiring you to move your arm in a certain way in order to complete it, because it&amp;#039;s not as fast, not as precise. What we&amp;#039;re doing is trying to find a mechanic and build an experience that makes sense. We have a small team back at our office that is working on that problem right now. As soon as we&amp;#039;ve cracked that nut, we&amp;#039;ll definitely add it to our game.&amp;quot;  Now that the NFL has started to look abroad to increase its global popularity, have you noticed an increase in sales or awareness from the overseas markets? &amp;quot;We have seen a little increase, yes. I think the NFL continues to be an American sport, but since it has been exported to the UK and Europe we have seen a small increase in popularity, although clearly our sales are dominated by North America - 90% plus of all of our units are sold back in the US. We need to make sure that as the popularity grows in other parts of the world, we have a product that everybody can enjoy. Features like Game Flow that we introduced last year, I think are important, because as people get introduced to the concept of football, they may not know all of the micro-details and strategies. They may not understand the difference between a dime defence and a 4-3 defence; a shotgun offence versus a west coast offence. Game Flow allows you to play Madden without that level of detail and so features like that are important to help grow our audience worldwide.&amp;quot; Have you tweaked Game Flow at all this year? &amp;quot;We have, yes. We know from telemetry that it was used quite a bit last year. The bulk of our audience used Game Flow in some way, shape or form, but, if there was one theme in terms of feedback, it was that on occasion, the system would choose the wrong play for you, or a play that people didn&amp;#039;t like. We&amp;#039;ve fixed that so as these plays are no longer selected, and on top of that, if you&amp;#039;re playing by yourself, we tell you what plays are going to be called and so if you don&amp;#039;t like the play, it&amp;#039;s very easy to back out and choose one of your own.&amp;quot;  Are there any plans to add Wembley Stadium to the game, seeing as how some NFL games are played there now? &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t have Wembley Stadium in NFL 12, but you do play in the UK, so it&amp;#039;s represented in the game. We are in talks with the league about seeing what we can do to try to add to our product.&amp;quot; Finally, are you ever tempted to make the team you support a little better than they actually are? &amp;quot;Haha, no, we have a ratings guy and he works really hard to make sure that he&amp;#039;s fair with his ratings, so teams that are good are good and no teams or favourite players benefit from these artificial increases. I&amp;#039;m a Redskins fan, and I&amp;#039;ll joke with him about it, but that&amp;#039;s as far is it goes.&amp;quot; Madden NFL 12 will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Wii from August 30 in North America and September 2 in Europe. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/interviews/a324221/madden-nfl-12-interview/>