Focus Put on Defense for Madden NFL 13

In an interview with Game Informer the chief creative officer at EA, Richard Hilleman, exclaims that a concentrate is being put on defense with Madden NFL 13 although also going into some thoughts on the shift in improvement team leadership and philosophies.

“They are doing huge issues this year,” he stated. “They’re creating massive modifications. Those are huge changes that are going to break a lot of stuff, and they know that. What we’re after is a better defense that is a lot more entertaining to play.”

Statements like these although carry really small weight at this stage. What a “focus” indicates could be just about anything and how a lot in the way of improvements or new features are implemented on defense could range from minimal to extensive. Every single year EA claims a focus is becoming placed on diverse elements of the game and consistency of delivering on the lofty expectations basically hasn’t been there.

While Madden NFL 12 was pretty nicely balanced between offense and defense elements such as defensive back/wide receiver interaction were sorely lacking. Of course even a “focus” on defense wouldn’t mean offense or special teams (which has been long neglected) would be overlooked but the notion that they want to make defense more entertaining and engaging is some thing that led to attributes like the “hit stick” in the past.

It is most likely a very good sign that the improvement team desires to better represent defense and offer far more realism on that side of the ball – and that its what comes up in February rather than one thing about producing the game a lot more accessible – but that talk matters small appropriate now. They’ll have to prove what they’ve done is worthwhile and advantageous from a sim standpoint rather than lacking true influence or becoming gimmicky in nature.