No Stopping EA

EA and NFL Ink Exclusive Licensing Agreement

Electronic Arts has signed the biggest sports free-agent on the market. In a devastating blow to competitors--and in a deal sure to reshape sports gaming--the software giant signed an exclusive agreement with the National Football League and the NFL Players Inc., a subsidiary of the NFL Players Association.

The deal, one EA admits to having lobbied for over the past few years, is an exclusive five-year licensing deal granting EA the sole rights to the NFL's teams, stadiums, and players.

The arrangement encompasses action simulation, arcade style, and manager games made for PCs, consoles, and handhelds (both the DS and PSP, included), giving EA a firm hold on the football gaming market. The deal does not include titles for mobile phones or internet-based games, but does include online features of consoles. With next-generation consoles scheduled for release next holiday season, EA looks to handily dominate the professional football market for the duration of the license.

This is probably the smartest move EA has ever made, and if you're a follower of the game industry, you know they've made quite a few good ones over the years. Just think about it: they don't have to worry about other football series chipping away at their marketshare (ESPN Football primarily), they don't have to concern themselves with Madden's sales being affected by the massive upcoming MS/Sony/Nintendo battle in the next console generation, and they basically have creative control over the development of football games for the next five years (since people won't buy anything else).

While I don't necessarily hate EA and I don't subscribe to the belief that the Madden series is the same game in a shiny new package every single year, the devs do tend to get complacent at times. They really had to get their act together during the PS1 days when NFL Gameday came on the scene and this gen with ESPN Football making great strides, particularly this year with its budget pricing and Xbox-exclusive features. I don't hold a grudge against EA for the popularity of the Madden franchise, but it does annoy me that people still buy the newest installment even in "off years."

This phenomenon was already a problem before, but now with this announcement, people are going to be even less-inclined to evaluate each year's football games on their own individual merits.

The big questions I have are why didn't we hear about anyone else making a bid for the exclusivity rights, and why didn't one of the "Big 3" go after the rights as well? Hell, Microsoft could have paid out the ass for exclusivity and then basically told EA, "Here's the deal: we'll let you use the NFLPA license, provided that it's only incorporated into the Xbox Next version of Madden. If we see a single NFL player name in a Playstation 3 game, we're completely taking away your use of the license and giving it to Sega and Visual Concepts to use as they please. Or using it for our NFL Fever series."

Of course, Sony or Nintendo could have employed the same strategy as well to try to get the upperhand on Microsoft, unless there are some unknown licensing issues I am unaware of that would prohibit such a strategy, but you get the point. If one of the Big Three somehow managed to obtain this NFL license and subsequently "coerce" EA into their corner for the next generation, they'd already be at a massive advantage.

It's plainly evident that EA felt threatened by the recent success of the Take Two/Sega/Visual Concepts ESPN Sports titles and responded with a “preemptive strike” so to speak, like an emperor sending an army of 10,000 troops to quash an uprising of a few hundred people - to ensure that a small skirmish does not eventually lead to a full-scale rebellion.

As a businessman, I must tip my hat to EA. However, as a gamer, I am simultaneously infuriated, disgusted, and dejected.

Chicago Bears Sign Quarterback Jeff George

Yet another chapter in this sad, sad saga for the Chicago Bears organization and its fans...

Somedays I wonder why I continue to put up with this franchise. This past Thanksgiving was one of those days, as I watched the Bears put together one of the most all-around awful performances I've ever seen on a professional football field, getting dominated by the hapless Dallas Cowboys 21-7. It was just an absolutely brutal game to sit and watch, and it looks like management finally realized that something had to be done.

Jeff George is different from past Bears quarterbacks. He's got all the talent in the world; he just hasn't been able to bring it all together to become the franchise QB that so many other teams thought he would. He has been labeled a "locker room cancer" more than once in his career, but when your favorite team's only alternatives are the consistently terrible Jonathan Quinn and the unproven Chad Hutchinson, I can only be grateful that they're trying something to spark the offense. I drafted the following letter to Bears' Offensive Coordinator Terry Shea not long after the disaster that was Thursday's game:

Dear Terry Shea,

Where do I start? News flash, Terry! Screen passes don't work when you run one on every other fucking down. A good screen pass uses the element of surprise and has to be set up beforehand by good playcalling, but apparently an "offensive guru" like yourself can't even understand basic fundamentals such as that. Maybe you were so successful running an offense back in KC, because...oh, I don't know...you had Trent Green throwing screen passes to Priest Holmes, who would then proceed to follow the blocks of the best offensive line in all of football? Just a hunch! What's even worse is that you're more afraid than ever to throw the ball deep and stretch the field, which absolutely kills any semblance of a running game. Should Bears fans just start calling you John Shoop Jr? Quinn can't even throw a five yard pass without being picked off, so you may as well let him throw a few downfield, since he's going to get intercepted anyway. Oh, and the fact that Jonathan Quinn was hand-picked by you as a capable backup is probably the single biggest failure I've ever seen in terms of personnel evaluation in all my years of watching football. And as a Bears fan, I've seen about a million of those blunders. So fuck you, Terry Shea. Get your act together or get the fuck out.

Love,
Me

I am betting we get two games with Hutchinson running the offense before George comes in and starts against the Houston Texans on December 19th.

Bear Down Chicago Bears - Ushering In the Craig Krenzel Era

Living in the Chicago area all of my life has opened me up to some of life's cruel and unfortunate truths, especially when it comes to sports. For such a great city with such storied franchises, Chicago sports fans have been wallowing in mediocrity for almost a decade now, and even then, those six Bulls championships, which were beacons of light in Chicago's cave of mediocrity, were not the same.

The Bears, White Sox, Cubs, and Blackhawks are original franchises. They each have a laundry list of legendary players and a fan base as devout as sports fans get. Unfortunately, ownership has used and abused the fans of these franchises for far too long, and it's something that wears on the city year in and year out. The Bulls were great, but even with the greatest basketball player of all time running the show, the Bulls never resonated with fans the way beloved Bears/Hawks/Cubs/Sox teams do. There's just no real history there, for lack of a better way to put it.

At the start of the season, Bears had new hope for the first time in years. With Lovie Smith running things and a potential franchise quarterback looking to have his breakout year, there was actually a reason to be optimistic about this team. Then the injuries started coming...and coming...and coming. The Bears entire starting secondary was out with injuries by the time Week 4 came around. Then their quarterback, Rex Grossman, went down for the entire season without even being hit. And we were fucked.

Now with Grossman injured and the Bears backup quarterback situation in turmoil, a Superman has emerged from the shadows, or more accurately the third spot on the QB depth chart, to right the Bears' nearly capsized ship - Ohio State alum Craig "Kreggers" Krenzel. This past Sunday night against the woeful San Francisco 49ers was Krenzel's first chance to start a game, and for better or for worse, I think Bears fans got exactly what they expected from him.

Perhaps I am delusional, but I believe Krenzel's got some potential. The TD pass to Berrian last Sunday night was great, and it set the tone for the whole game. He had to hit one of those deep routes, so the 49ers defense couldn’t stack the line and focus on Thomas Jones. Of course, Jones ended up getting injured on the first play of the game anyway. The A-Train did an adequate job filling in, but losing Jones was still a big blow to the offense. Krenzel emerged with the victory though, buoyed mostly by the great play on defense and special teams, but this was his first start and there is potential for improvement.

Really, the only time Krenzel looked bad was when he got blitzed and had no time at all to get rid of the ball. On his big fumble, he was basically mauled by 3 different 49ers at the same time, and it doesn’t seem like offensive coordinator Terry Shea is calling plays with hot route options or backs running routes to the flat (unless it’s a designed screen) to help avoid the blitzes. The pass blocking has been horrible too. Krenzel’s biggest problem is still confidence though; he’s still too afraid to tuck the ball away and run. Even though I hated him for it, at Ohio State that fucker could scramble as if his life depended on it. Seriously, people always talk about OSU running back Maurice Clarett, but almost every play that really mattered that year was made by Krenzel, more often than not with his legs. In Sunday’s game he forced two throws on the run that should have been intercepted, but he easily could have scrambled for solid gains on those plays had he just decided to run with it.

Baby steps, Kreggers. No one's going to tear you a new asshole so long as you continue to show a modicum of improvement, and if you somehow make a pact another with the devil (seriously, how else did you lead that terrible Ohio State team to a National Championship?) and turn into the Bears' version of Tom Brady, I will be able to die a happy man. The Giants are due for a brainfart game, so maybe the Bears can get an upset in New York. Krenzel makes the games exciting to watch at least, and that's something Bears fans haven't had since their fluke 13-3 season in 2000.

The Sweet Siren Song of San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has consumed the majority of my gaming time as of late, and with good reason. It's almost bittersweet really, seeing and playing a game of such quality while at the same time realizing that the GTA series has essentially run its course on the PS2 console. Don't get me wrong. My Playstation 2 has provided me with hours and hours of entertainment, but the fact of the matter is that the developers at Rockstar are clearly being handicapped by the constraints of Sony's hardware.

Here's the thing though: San Andreas is amazing. It is designed with such polish and with such an immense scope in mind that it's difficult to even to classify it in the same category as other titles. We all know the GTA series has become the champion of non-linear game design in recent years, but San Andreas takes this aspect of the series to another level by removing some of the boundaries that artificially keep players within the limitations of the game's exploratory experience. First and foremost, is the newly added ability of your character to scale walls, fences, and other things within the city, which makes traversing the unique cities feel virtually seamless. Second, is the ability to swim through water, and not instantly die the second you stumble into a puddle of H2O. Not only were these limitations to the design of previous GTA games, but they also detracted from the feeling of immersion that players experience when playing the game.

It's difficult to realize how small additions such as these can make the GTA experience feel almost new again, that is, until after you pop the game in and three or four hours of wonderous exploration and blissful killing rampages ensue - before you even attempt the first mission. I'm sure I'll be posting more thoughts and impressions regarding GTA: San Andreas very soon. After all, it's only appropriate. It seems to be slowly but surely consuming my life, and there's much more to say about it.

Testing

First post test. Thanks to Jack Handey for the placeholder.

"Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling."

"If when you die you get a choice between pie heaven and regular heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if not, mmmboy."

"At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw fuck you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill."

"To me, it's always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?," you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks."

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."