'CFB 27' Deep Dive with EA Sports' Principal Game Designer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Split Zone Duo – 'CFB 27' Deep Dive with EA Sports' Principal Game Designer

Episode Date: July 2, 2026
Hosts: Richard Johnson, Alex Kirshner
Guest: Ben Ha Miller, Principal Game Designer for EA Sports' College Football Franchise

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Overview

This episode of Split Zone Duo features an in-depth conversation with Ben Ha Miller, the principal game designer behind EA Sports' College Football series, focusing on the upcoming "College Football 27" release. The episode explores new game features, development challenges, community feedback, and the intersection of college football culture and video gaming. Ben offers a candid look into design choices, technical advancements, and the evolving relationship between the game, the sport, and its passionate fanbase.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Return and Evolution of EA Sports College Football

• The development team, now numbering in the hundreds versus the original 25-person crew, is using a multi-year vision to build the game's foundation and introduce cornerstone features.
• Ben reflects on bringing in younger developers who grew up as fans of the game, contributing fresh perspectives (04:03–05:24).

2. Introduction of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) & Dynasty Blueprint

• NIL arrives in Dynasty Mode:
  • User controls a “dynasty budget” to spend on recruiting, player retention, facilities, and staff.
  • Avoids direct monetary contracts to maintain a college feel, but reflects real-world program inequalities and challenges (“haves and have-nots”).
  • Adds strategy—users nurturing small programs may lose stars after one year without sufficient NIL “points.”
• Ben:
  “We did not want to turn this into NFL Light…we still want to be a college game for as long as we really can be.” (07:33–10:06)

3. Yearly Development Cycle and Long-Term Vision

• Ben draws a parallel to SNL:
  “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it’s 11:30.”
• The team always “context-switches” between three games: last year’s, the current year’s, and the one for next year, aiming for meaningful new content and not just roster updates (10:34–12:19).

4. Balancing Realism with “Storybook” Possibilities

• The team prioritizes fun while offering sliders and settings to skew gameplay between “arcade” and “sim.”
• “We want it to feel different, we want it to feel unique. We’re trying to build an unsolvable puzzle.” (13:16–15:16)

5. Feature Highlights

Mascot Mode Returns

• Back by popular demand and modernized for a new generation, unlockable mascots, and trophy room integration.
• “Your kids can be attracted to seeing a tree throwing a football and getting intercepted by an orange.” (15:55–18:35)

School Engagement & Revenue Sharing

• Revenue now tied to in-game usage, smaller schools benefit more tangibly.
• Focused on preventing exploits, i.e., “botting” to inflate engagement numbers (19:15–21:54).

Enhanced Coach Mode

• A true “coach experience”—call plays, set adjustments, watch from new sideline/press box views.
• Inspired by community demand and past NFL Head Coach games.
• Camera angles now customized to each stadium’s real press box (22:41–24:27).

Future “Jim Harbaugh Mode” Concepts

• Early-stage ideas for cross-game coaching journeys (College to Madden and vice versa); no promises for immediate implementation (24:47–26:04).

New FBS Teams & Stadiums

• NDSU and Sacramento State added at the last minute, using generic stadiums for launch, with full authentic venues coming in future updates.
• Northwestern’s new stadium rendered before ever opening, with building files provided by the school.
• Uniform/title updates coordinated with real-world releases and embargoes (27:18–32:04).

Road to Glory Expansions

• New playable positions: tight end (with actual blocking), edge rusher. Kicker and offensive line considered for future.
• Tight end mode added after experimenting with new blocking mechanics.
• Road to Glory is closely intertwined with Madden’s Superstar mode for seamless player career transfers (32:41–35:27).

Generational Recruits in Dynasty

• Rare, high-impact recruits reminiscent of program-changing real players—difficult to find, variable outcomes.
• Ben:
  “Let’s have some fun here. Let’s have some people who can come in and just dominate from day one.” (36:32–38:23)

6. Gameplay & Simulation Improvements

Offense & Defense

• 'Mickey Mouse offense': All real-world offensive schemes are in, focus this year on expanding defensive playbooks (from 9 to 31), macros for quick adjustments (38:55–41:00).

Team/Player Ratings

• Ratings are data/formula-based, with weekly roster updates during the season.
  “You’re going to kind of take that leap of faith based on [a player’s] pedigree.” (41:00–43:55)

Injury System Overhaul

• Fewer “kill-the-clock” late injuries; improved long-term injury realism; more sim vs. gameplay parity.
• “There’s nothing you can tell me you don’t like that those of us who make the game don’t hate 10 times more…” (45:00–47:10)

Dynamic Attendance & Weather

• Stadiums fill based on team performance, but in-game dips during blowouts are not yet feasible.
• Dynamic, regionally accurate weather now alters in-game conditions mid-game, rooted in actual probability tables (47:27–50:34).

7. Dynasty Logic and Immersion

Coaching Carousel

• Improved logic on firings, hirings, rival moves. Added player agency to apply for specific jobs.
• Old logic produced immersion-breaking results (e.g., prestigious coaches being offered low-level coordinator spots); improvements made (52:04–53:49).

Draft Decisions & Player Movement

• Players consider both performance and ratings before declaring for the NFL draft or entering the portal. Persuasion and NIL can keep them longer (54:09–56:00).

Team Builder & Stadium Customization

• Expanded customization for community-created teams, with more modularity and features coming in future iterations (56:00–57:13).

Road to Glory Player Development

• Overhauled grading, visible ability caps, cap breakers (e.g., “Derrick Henry types”), allow much more nuanced player creation and development (57:13–58:54).

Recruit Generation Improvements

• Tuning to reduce immersion-breaking visual pairings and overpowered recruits, humor with name generator remains (58:54–60:21).

8. Platform and Modding

• PC version launches day-and-date with consoles for the first time in decades.
• Expect mods; users cautioned against monetizing mods to avoid cease-and-desist actions.
• Revamped community members now officially part of the dev team (60:21–63:17).

9. Fan Requests, Missed Features & Tiny Touches

• Commitment to replication of small real-life details (e.g., unique back plate logos, accurate equipment).
• Acknowledgement of features that couldn't make the cut this year, e.g., high-cut shorts (“bike shorts”).
• A persistent to-do list:
  “There’s always a list of 10. You kill five, that list is still 10.” (63:27–67:45)

10. AI & Fan-generated Content

• Ben expresses delight and curiosity at AI-generated “fake leaks” of gameplay, cut scenes, and campus walks on social media.
• Discusses the challenge of turning viral ideas into manageable, non-repetitive, fully authentic features:
  “You want it to look like your school, you want it to feel that immersion…” (67:45–71:56)

11. Community Inspiration

• Ben credits podcasts and the broader fan community as sources of inspiration for new features:
  “Sometimes it takes me an hour to get through a 30- or 40-minute episode because you said something that sparks an idea and my head just travels…” (72:20–73:47)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On NIL/Dynasty Changes:
  “Ultimately what we were able to do was deliver a new way of playing Dynasty… you have to manage all the aspects of your program in a different way.” (07:33–10:06, Ben Ha Miller)

• On Feature Scope:
  “Sometimes you can get a little stodgy in the ways that we’ve always done it… But is that real? We’ve seen some freshmen come in day one and be way better than that.” (36:32–38:23, Ben Ha Miller)

• On Fan Requests:
  “Nothing makes me sadder than when a fan base feels like they’re being ignored… So to be able to deliver for them was great. And so now it’s on us to keep that foot on the gas.” (65:24–67:45, Ben Ha Miller)

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Important Timestamps

• [04:03] – Growth of the dev team and multi-year planning
• [07:33] – NIL integration & Dynasty blueprint
• [15:29] – Mascot mode explained
• [22:41] – New coach mode features and camera angles
• [27:18] – New FBS teams’ inclusion, stadium updates
• [32:41] – Road to Glory: New positions & Madden crossover
• [38:55] – Expansion of defensive playbooks, macros
• [45:00] – Tuning the injury system
• [47:27] – Dynamic attendance and weather systems
• [52:04] – Coaching carousel improvements
• [60:38] – Launch on PC, modding support
• [67:45] – Handling of AI/LLM-generated “fake leaks” and community suggestions

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Takeaways

• College Football 27 aims to modernize the classic experience, stay true to the sport’s ethos, and leverage both gameplay innovation and community feedback.
• The devs are deeply engaged with both the technical and cultural aspects of college football and video gaming.
• While many requested features and real-world changes are implemented, the team is candid about technical limits, priorities, and ongoing iteration.
• The integration of NIL, dynamic weather, generational recruits, and cross-game player journeys mark major advancements from previous iterations.

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For fans and newcomers alike, this episode provides a rich, behind-the-scenes look at one of sports gaming’s most anticipated releases, blending sport, culture, and cutting-edge gaming.

Transcript

[A]

We're coming and we ain't backing down. We don't need a bunch of cats in here looking in the mirror. Everybody just do your job. You understand that? Hey, will you shut up. I'm bitterly disappointed with the officiating today. Guys being dudes and they run through our. Like through a tin horn, man.

[B]

Thank you, Lee. Richard, did I tell you my worst college football experience last year?

[C]

No, you have not.

[B]

I was the worst player by a pretty wide margin in a college football media league for the college football video game. I'm like what Vanderbilt used to be. And I ultimately left the league in shame after our friend Jason Kirk, most of the college football staff of the Athletic, several listeners to our show beat me. I didn't beat any human beings in the entire season and I had Alabama, which had been recruiting pretty well. It was terrible.

[C]

I'm honestly similar to. I was in a league with some pals and was similarly. I was the cupcake. I was the schedule voucher. I was the one everybody wanted to play. And so yes, I also. Excuse. This was the first, the first CFB game that came out that I excused myself and did not re. Participate in. I have retreated to my offline. Excuse me. I've retreated to my offline dynasty reality in which this year you will again be able to play with Split Zone Duo State. I will get that rebooted up when the game actually releases and Team Builder is available for me to play around in again and import last year's Split Zone Duo State, which many of you used.

[B]

I am much more interested in offline because in offline I am king. Nothing bad happens to me in offline, but I'm maybe I'm willing to give it another shot this year after I've taken off a couple seasons at the lake house. I'm willing to get back into business. And fortunately we have a great guest this week who is going to tell us how we can all suck a little bit less at College Football 27, which comes out July 9, though I think some players can get access to it a couple days before that via the early release situation that goes on with video games now. He is Ben Haw Miller. He is the principal game designer for EA Sports College Football and a longtime friend of this program. Ben, thank you for coming back on the show. I guess thank you for all the time that I spent playing the game last year.

[C]

Sort of.

[B]

I don't know that it amounted to the betterment of myself, but it's great

[A]

to have you back, gentlemen. Thank you so much Great to be back as always and also too welcome because the water is warm over here in the land of not getting your ass beat online by other people. As an old man, I'm washed. I do not play online against folks that I don't know because there's, there's that special point of pride about beating a dev and I don't want to give that out to any 12 year old anymore. So I have retired. Uh, there was a time when I was, you know, fairly good at the game. There's a, I love telling a fun story about beating Julio Jones back in the day when he started to talk a little trash about being able to beat a game maker. And I kind of made sure that he knew there's a difference between us. Those days are gone now, man. I'm an old man. I can make the game, I can talk about the game, I can play the game. But the competitive stuff that some of these guys can pull out now, man, that has passed me by, but that's fine.

[B]

Ben, it's really exciting to have you here for what has become an annual stopover because this video game is a real part of the culture of this sport. It is now a part of the economics of the sport. You pay players, you pay schools now based on how often they get used in the game. And my sense is that a lot of our listeners and a lot of our paying [e-mail] are pretty avid players of this thing. So who better to have on than the principal game designer who puts this thing into motion along with a very detailed team. You got what, a couple hundred people working on this thing at this point.

[A]

You know, my first ever game team I worked on was in Madden 2001. I was a designer, I was, sorry, quality insurance back then, but I came a designer and producer back on NCAA 06 was the first everyone and that team was about 25 people. Now we have like a pod that's just a presentation team that has more than 25 people in it. Yeah, there are definitely a couple hundred people that get involved in this game and touch it and you know, it's one of those things where I talked about this a couple years ago when we first came back, but it was so important to us old timers to make sure that we were starting to build this game with the right foundation and get the right people here that love this game as much as, as we did and we've able to find a lot of those people. You know, that's, that's the thing, you know, this young generation, man, there's a lot of things that I don't quite understand, but they still have that love of college football. And guys who tell me that they used to watch videos of me when they were in elementary school, which, you know, I love to hear, are now working side by side with me to help build this game. And this is kind of the. We always talked about this as a three year vision of the return of this game. And so this is that third year where we're actually able to really fulfill on some of the promises we started in that first year. And we're able to refine a little bit last year. But now, you know, you're seeing a lot of things getting added in that we've wanted to do all along, that the timing is right to get things like we'll talk about here with NAL and the blueprint for Dynasty and all those elements that really come together where you feel like, man, we've really got something special here that we can't wait to share with people.

[B]

So Ben, Richard and I have not played this game yet. We are coming into this site unseen, but we're aware of some of these new features. I want to run down with you what is new in the game this year. The stuff that EA has tipped publicly, some of the stuff that maybe you'll be able to take people into more detail than they've seen publicly. And then we've got some questions. Our subscribers have some questions. You just mentioned it. Nil or house settlement payments is actually what this sounds even a little bit more like because this is being allocated out of the school. I saw you around a year ago, it was probably on this show and you expressed that there wasn't a ton of appetite on your part to put Nil in the game because it's not, it's not. What gets me out of bed in the morning for college football is like doing player contracts. You have changed course. Tell me why and tell me what it actually looks like in the game, how the player payment ecosystem is actually going to work.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So, you know, if you go back to, you know, anytime we've talked about the return of this game, Nil has always been a thing that's a reason why we're back. The fact that we can actually pay real players to be in the game is the reason why we're here. So we knew it had to come into Dynasty at some point, but the trepidation was how does it come in? And how does it come in in a way that makes sense when you know, I remember the first time I gave a presentation about the game we did to a number of people, Andy Staples in the audience for that one. And I was like, andy, you know, as well as I know I could be talking right now, and nil rules will change. And sure enough, they had changed during the course of that meeting. So it was changing so fast that anything we built, I felt, would have been out of date the moment that we launched. And we all kind of felt that collectively that, you know, there's going to be a time where we have to do this, so let's do it the right way. And so it was kind of one of those things where maybe we waited a little too long for some folks, but ultimately what we were able to do was deliver a new way of playing Dynasty. You know, for somebody who's been on the title since going back to 06, there, you know, from a design and producer standpoint, you know, we were able to build something like in season recruiting. That year was the first time we ever had that. And it really changed how you played the dynasty.

[C]

And.

[A]

And we've added a lot of things over time, like custom conferences, online dynasty, all those different things that have impacted the way. But this is truly a fundamental change to how you run your dynasty in that you have that Nil component now as a part of the what we call dynasty blueprint. And you have these dynasty points that can be spent in a number of ways, both on your roster in recruiting, but also to player retention. And then you have the elements of building up your facilities and your support staff and all these different pieces that you can use this budget with. And so what we wanted to do was still make it a collegiate game. We all were very resident. We did not want to make these actual dollars. We didn't want to really kind of just turn this into NFL Light with contracts and things like that. Even if the real world's going that way, we still want to be a college game for as long as we really can be. And so with that, we would go through the building out of these things of how do we handle the nil in a way where, you know, we know that most, you know, a lot of school players are getting kind of cost of attendance and maybe a little nil, and some players are getting a ton of it. And so programs are really, you know, the haves and have nots, you know, we talk a lot about haves and have nots have never really been further apart. And so the game really helps reflect that in that this is A fun game for people that some people like to take Ohio State and to start with them and just be the kings. And that's great, but so many of us love that build. We love that start from the bottom and build them up. And so without that NL component, you really could find ways to, you know, I'll say, for lack of a better word, exploit the recruiting system to grab a lot of talent and, you know, use that transfer portal. And all of a sudden now you've got three guys in your, in your quarterback room that you probably shouldn't have compared to who you already had there. And so, you know, we were able to find ways to utilize the nil piece to really reflect that to where if you're a small school and you want to load up on that five star quarterback, go for it, but you're probably going to have them for one year because you're not gonna be able to pay him that second year. And, and if you start to play really well with him, his demands are going to get higher and higher to where you really have to manage all the aspects of your program in a different way. And so that was really fun for us to see come in because what we didn't want to build was just quickbooks for college football where you're just going through and just, you know, really just feeling like you're just managing more spreadsheets. Because honestly, that is what Dynasty is. And we need to do a better job about visualizing the game beyond just spreadsheets. But we want to make it not so dry. And so I think that's something that I'm really proud of the team. And then what they were able to accomplish, to come up with a way to do this to where it feels natural to the sport, but also too is still fun and not just like moving a contract number up a little bit and saying, is that good enough? You know, and so, yeah, I'm really happy with where that landed. I think we all are as a team.

[C]

Ben, obviously it's a yearly development cycle that you guys turn the game out on. But you know, you've mentioned, and you probably talked about this with, with me when we've sat down and talked about it. You've talked about having this three year. How do you release something yearly knowing that it is not the, the fullest form of what you want out in the world or what you guys have planned to be out in the world the last two years.

[A]

Yeah, you know, I'm a big Saturday Night Live fan again, old man, so I'll say that I'm a Saturday Night Live fan and Lorne Michaels has a great quote that I've always lived by that the show doesn't go on because it's ready. The show goes on because it's 11:30 on Saturday night. And so that's kind of how we have to live our life too. Of like we don't get to say, hey, you know what, can we just delay the season by a few months so we can get stuff ready? Or you know, we're all waiting for GTA 6 to come out. But that thing has been in development for a very long time and they can pick and choose when they decide to just upset the entire gaming market. But we have a time where our big thing is how do we cram 14 months of development into a 12 month schedule. And so we've already started to work on next year's game as far as concepts and ideas and thoughts and put together what that's going to be because you always have to keep things running. It's kind of. There was a documentary I saw a while back about TV showrunners and that really kind of clicked with me about how we live our lives here as game developers. That you have a game that's in the market right now that you're supporting, the game that you're currently working on that's in development, and then future plans for the next year's game that you're already starting to think about. And so you're always kind of having to context switch between the three of what you know, where's the hottest fire at the moment, what needs your most attention. But making sure that all three are moving forward so that you can do your best to give fans a reason to plunk down their hard earned cash to buy another game. Because the last thing we want to do is be that stereotype of just a roster update. And I know when you want to pick poke holes, that's the easy one to go to. But there's so much that goes into these games every year and so much that we're trying to get to and sometimes we're able to do bigger things like this year where we're very happy that this is kind of a culmination where you see the fruits of that labor and then we're going to start over again for the next one and the next one and the next one. But yeah, I mean it's, it's never ending, but it's fun.

[B]

Ben, constant conflict for you, I imagine, is that you want this game to be as realistic as possible. But I'm not sure how realistic I want it to be as a player. You mentioned you have three quarterbacks that you probably shouldn't have. Well, I want them right. Like I, I want the overpowered recruiting sometimes. Or I might want to win the national championship with Ulm and in real life, not to make you weigh in on whether a value DA sports partner could win the national championship, but, you know, I suspect probably Ulm's going to have a hard time winning a national title. I want the ability to do that in the game. How in terms of nil, this system that you set up or team ratings or portal frequency or whatever, how are you trying to balance the gamer desire for realism with the gamer desire for. Well, not realism to be able to have the storybook thing happen in the game that probably won't happen in real life?

[A]

You know, it's funny you say that because I always think back too about, you know, the old P.S. two days, right. And we always talk about those as the glory days of sports games. But those, we didn't really segment our audience back in the days. You know, it was kind of just one game that was made. There wasn't a game that was, you know, set up to. This is for the competitive folks, this is for the casual folks. We just made the game and it was kind of more arcade back then too than people realize. If you go back and play some of those, it has an arcade, more of an arcade feel than what you would expect now. But it felt very sim at the time. And so with that too, yeah, we tried to essentially make the. The game that is going to attract the largest audience out of the gate. That's kind of our. We tune it for the mass in that regard that everyone's going to have that fun time that they're playing. But then we give a lot of, you know, settings and sliders and things so that you can tune and tweak things to your liking to make it harder or make it easier. You know, last year, for example, with the transfer portal, it's very hard to nail exactly what somebody thinks the transfer portal should be like. Are there too few players? Are there too many? So we kind of gave that control to the user and said, well, you decide what do you want for your experience? And I think that's something that you're seeing us do more and more now is expose the back end in ways that users can tweak it to their own content. And so that I think is our way forward of not trying to Hit one thing for everyone, but hit what we think is going to be the right thing, but then give you the tools to adjust it, how you see fit. And so, and you start to see too, fans now are sharing what those settings are and what they feel are the best versions to do this and that. And so there's this whole community out there that's growing that I love just watching. We follow the Reddit threads and everything to see what fans are talking about. And, you know, it's just great seeing we're trying to build an unsolvable puzzle. And so what I love the most is that I can watch somebody's video about this is the ultimate way to recruit. And another person, this is the ultimate way to recruit, and they're totally different. And that's what we love, is that it's not just press button, get reward, just follow this, follow this formula. We want it to feel different, we want it to feel unique. And so that's the kind of charge every year that we go for. And, you know, hopefully we deliver.

[B]

Ben variety of other features that I want to talk about here. Mascot mode is back. This is something that people have wanted for years. How will it be same different than the mascot mode of my youth?

[A]

Yeah. And so, and this is, I think this is also a really funny one that depend, depending on your age, you have different thoughts about it. We go back in time, we were told mascot mode was a waste of time. You know, why are you doing this? This is just a waste of your resources. Because the, the older fans at the time didn't really, you know, care for that. They thought it was for kids.

[B]

I don't play it, to be honest with you. I don't play Road to. I'm a Dynasty guy. I don't play Road to core either. But, you know, you have to make the game for more than just me.

[A]

And so, yeah, and it's funny, too. You flash forward a decade, and now the ones who were kids that did play it then are like, where is it? I love that mode. And a new generation of kids that aren't experiencing it now have an opportunity. And it's one of those things where it's fun, it's light, you know. You know, your kids can be attracted to seeing a tree throwing a football and getting intercepted by an orange, and it's just kind of funny. Right? And so that's the part two, you know, streamers are going to love being able to show this content off the schools. You've already seen the schools go crazy with different Things both real world videos they've made to celebrate it, but also too, you know, just making their own versions of the videos from the, from the game itself. And so for us like it was, you know, we already have these mascots built for the most part. We built a ton of new ones this year to really flesh out this mode. But they were going to be on the sidelines for us anyway. So the mascot assets exist. So it's just a matter of putting them into the gameplay element and then adding some special pieces to it to have them do some special moves and things like that. But then really, you know, it's. There's not a big persistence in the mode. It's not like Dynasty where you're playing 30 years and doing that. What it really is for us is an avenue for the trophy room and to get people to play other teams because we want people to experience all of college football. Your college football experience shouldn't be just your school. You know, it can be a lot of your school. But we want you to experience all the traditions and all the other things that happen across the country. And so now with mascot, the mascot mode, you can unlock each team's mascot by going into just a play out. You can go play now, 1 min quarters if you're really trying to burn through this fast. And every time you win that game against that team, you'll be able to, or with that team, excuse me, you'll be able to unlock that mascot and fill out your trophy room. And so that's kind of our implementation of mascots for now. We've got some different thoughts about maybe some post release ideas of, of things there we might do or where do we build on this next year and going forward. So you know, we'll, we'll see how the fan react to it. We don't want to turn this into just a mascot game. Obviously like we are still college football heads to our core but there's always some room for levity and we want to make sure we don't lose that. You know, something like, you know, the cameos coming back too. I'll just jump in with that real quick too. That was something that was old thing that every time you boot up the game, EA Sports in the game we'd have players or coaches or fans doing those sort of things. And so that's finally back this year kind of harkering back to some of the greater days of the past. And so you're going to see those updated throughout the year as well and some new pieces coming in there. So the schools are getting involved in creating those with us. And so that's been a fun part about seeing us, you know, walking hand in hand with these schools. And it's not just a licensing agreement. They see the value of being a part with us and letting us know what's coming new with uniforms, stadium renovations, all those sort of things so that we can be updated and correct in the game because, you know, it matters to them financially as well. It's not just a video game that they just over there and license their marks to. They are part of the journey with us now, which is so great to see that.

[C]

The marketing point with the schools I think is really interesting because I was actually watching something that Chris Fowler posted on Instagram about college game day and how like college game day took off in the late 90s when the schools realized that it's actually marketing, it's just not some tv, you know what I mean? And I think that what we've seen now is that schools over the last couple years have been using that. Right. Like Missouri State, for instance. Like the reporting's out there that Missouri, Missouri State just like made all this money from your, you know, team partner program for however many people play with Missouri State in the game, for instance.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, I can never, you know, confirm or deny any sort of numbers out there. I'm not sure where, where they're pulling the numbers that come up with, not privy to those books. But what I can say is, yeah, it is an engagement based thing. The old format used to be on a previous kind of rolling top 25 performance, which worked for some schools, didn't quite work for others, but didn't really hit on the true meaning of it, which is engagement. Who's playing with my school? And I should be, you know, compensated and commiserated of how much I'm being used. And so we flip that model. And I think that's what I love about this game too, is the use of those smaller schools in dynasty mode. Like that has a tangible benefit to them now beyond just, you know, I can, oh, I'll buy a hat because I played a dynasty with them. No, you're actually helping to contribute to the amount of, you know, revenue they generate from this. Which is great because, you know, for an Ohio state of the world or a Texas of the world, they love working with us. But our check is kind of a drop in the bucket compared to other revenue streams they have. But you talk about, you know, the impact that Sacramento State or North Dakota State like this is going to be a nice little bump for them to end their move up to fbs because people are going to want to start their dynasty with them or you know, mtsu or a UMass or a Southern Miss or schools like that. You know, they are able to get a nice, you know, additional chunk that they might not have gotten in the previous version because we're all saying I want to start my dynasty with them. And that's just getting those play counts up.

[B]

Ben, are you prepared for people to make, is it possible for people to make clod bots that play games as a team as part of a scan, like kind of a scheme or a scam to juice the revenue numbers for Sacramento State football or whatever is inauthentic video game playing a thing?

[A]

Yeah, if there is a way to do something, people are going to find but we are putting a ton of logic into the protection of things like how many times is a single account reporting a result and things like that. So, you know, there are ways that we can understand who's trying to game the system, you know. So is anything ever foolproof? No, I going to openly challenge someone to try to find a way to break the system. Absolutely not. But you know, it's one of those things where, you know, we try to, to make it as equitable and honest as possible and try to make sure that there's no way for people to exploit that system for their school's financial gain. Of yeah, you open a door in some closet, you know, some closet and there's just a rack of PS5s just running on repeat. We, we're able to find ways to make sure that that stuff doesn't get tracked. So we have very smart people, way smarter than I'll ever be that can help figure those things out. And so yeah, we, we know that the, there's some, some opportunistic folks out there that might try to make their alma mater number one, but hopefully we've got the bullets in the chamber to stop those from happening.

[C]

Ben, you guys have changed something very, I think seemingly small about the in game experience that actually does appeal to me directly. So I'm excited to ask you about it. The, the sort of head coach mode, like I was a big head coach, NFL head coach, 06 head or whatever. It was the one with, I think Tony Dungy was on the COVID of that one. You guys have tweaked it this year to allow a little bit more of a coach specific experience, if that's what you want to call it. Now you could do that, but it would be like sideline camera. And that's not like the best way to like watch it and all this stuff. But you guys have changed it. And I think Kurt Signetti being on the COVID and you've sort of implemented that and sort of used that as a feature development. I just kind of explain that feature to me personally because quite frankly, I will be using it.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's one of those where, you know, you had the ability to turn auto throw on and that was kind of how our coach mode work. You'd call the plays, you'd be able to snap the ball and then auto throw would actually, you know, throw the ball for you. And if you didn't touch the ball and touch the controller on a run play, it would do those sort of things. But there were a number of pieces that wouldn't quite work the way you'd want them to do in that way. And so, you know, as local community gets louder and louder and starts to say what they want and be very clear about the things that they want. We heard from a group of folks that really wanted a coach mode experience where they were purely just a coach. They don't want to actually run the plays. I mean, we were talking earlier on about, you know, how we're a little washed from playing online. Some those don't want to do that whole experience of getting beat by the CPU either or they want to just really test their mettle as a coach and do their adjustments and but actually play the game. And so we now have that true coach mode experience where you are the coach, you call the plays, you can set your adjustments. But and then also too like as that play clock is winding down, if you don't get your play call in time, it's going to cut off because we're trying to replicate that real world of the audio device. But yeah, you truly have that sideline view as well. But we want to do is the press cam view. And so we took a page from our friends over that make an MLB game where the camera is positioned based on where the real center field camera is. So when you're playing at the different parks, you're watching what you would expect to watch in a broadcast there. You know, we kind of took that same approach here of where the press box is located, each stadium, so that we can have you from a realistic viewpoint that it's a little lower at certain stadiums, a little higher at others to really try to nail what that experience would be. Because we wanted you to Feel like you're that coach that's up there in the booth watching from that perspective. And so you can still change the different camera angles. But that was a nice part that we were able to do for that coach mode experience was really make you feel like you are that coach in that booth.

[B]

Ben, you were telling me before we went on the microphones today that you guys are considering sort of what you might call a Jim Harbaugh mode of sorts where if people play Madden, they can bounce their coach between the video games. How does that work? Tell me about that.

[A]

Yeah, you know, I say that kind of ingest at the moment of like, you know, what the thoughts of this thing could wind up being. Right. We have a long way from going, being able to actually move your character through. But that's something that, you know, people have talked about and we're listening. But for now it's really about the connection of the two games as much as possible. You're hearing that a lot from us. The, you know, the bundle was a big thing a couple years ago and continues to be a big thing of where it's, we're trying to get people to play both the college and the Madden experience and they're going to be very unique properties. They're going to have their own development teams and we're, you know, I have a college mindset. I spent a decade on Madden and I was just pining to get back to make college again. You know, I think we have folks that very much love their, their Madden experience and love their college experience, but there's that connective tissue between the two sports that we want to really enjoy and play in and see how can we blur the lines between the two and give you an experience where you feel like you are a part of both. And so we're kind of starting that experience now where there's going to be some connectivity between the two games. But that's something that we're hoping is again, like we talked about the three year vision for different things. This is hopefully the start of a nice three year vision. So we'll see where that goes. I can't really get into too much of the long term plans, but we're excited about merging those two games in ways that make sense while still keeping very unique identities with them.

[B]

Speaking of unique connections, one of the things that I have always liked about our partners at home field is the way that when our friends and sponsors are making college sports apparel, they really do make an effort to connect deeply to the history of the school. To its fan base, to its tradition. I think that this level of care shows up in everything that Home Field makes. If you are a William and Mary alum, congratulations. Your school has joined the ranks of the Home Field catalog as of this [e-mail] for most of you. For me, most of our schools are already in the Home Field catalog. But Home Field does have a serious plan of new entries to the catalog, new stuff for schools that are already [e-mail] over the balance of this summer and certainly you know it into the football season. It is not to be missed and you can make sure you don't miss it if you follow Home Field on all of your social medias or go to home field apparel.com thanks a lot to Home Field as we roll on. Ben, this year we have several new FBS teams. I know they're going to be in the game. North Dakota State, Sacramento State are going to be there. Fargodo. I'm going to be in this game. Is the new Northwestern Stadium going to be in this game? Basically. Is this new thing in college football and FBS this year going to be in this game?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That's always one of the most fun parts about this game is it never ceases to amaze me how late things happen and how quickly changes will occur. We went into this year's development plan not planning on adding anyone else, and then all of a sudden the news breaks that North Dakota State and Sacramento State are both moving up. We had already declared alpha and if for those that don't know, alpha is after we've already completed the new features for that year, there's that alpha phase where we're just really fine tuning the game. And you know, they're still adding content and adding a lot of things, but from a feature standpoint, we're basically done. We've never added schools this late. This was wild to me. I could not believe. Like, one of my favorite things about this team is the passion that they have to build the greatest college football game they can build. And that passion can be to your benefit, but sometimes also too, you can try and push too far and file too close to the sun and can be a detractor. And we had to kind of hold people back, say, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's slow down. Not just rush in. We had people the first day that was announced adding the assets to our database and things like that to try to build them. Like, let's see what we're going to do here. And so we added the schools, we had their uniforms. We have more uniform updates coming for them as well. And so we have the players signed, so we have those, we have the coaches signed, so we have those elements in. But there are pieces that we're not able to get to for that first year, like the Fargo Dome, for example, unfortunately will not be in this year. Stadiums are our biggest time consuming asset to create and we just did not have the Runway to create it. And we didn't want to kind of do a disservice of them of launching with something and then adding it later on when we could actually take time to really give them proper moment next year to have a proper full run out. And you know, the Fargo Dome. So we have a generic dome for them this year. Sacramento State has a generic stadium as well, but those will both. We're working with them closely to be able to make those stadium assets for next year's game. Their mascots unfortunately did not make it this year, but we'll work on getting those into next year's as well. So all those pieces, so, you know, is one of those things that like, you know, we kind of said to the schools, if you want to wait a year, we understand this is what we can do for you this year. And they were all on board and saying, yeah, we understand, we're just thankful that you're able to accommodate us. And they've been great partners to work with. But then too, you mentioned Ryan Field. Yeah, that's been a really fun one to watch the development go. Working with Northwestern, working with the, the group that's actually developing the stadium and they've been giving us, you know, files and Every, all the 3D models and things like that so we can build the stadium that isn't even open yet and have it in the game. And they were all very amazed at just how close it was to what it should really look like. And you know, it was really fascinating seeing some of the details of how they built and constructed the stadium where, you know, they'll, they'll tell you about, you know, the stands are kind of built more like a basketball arena where it's more vertical and not out and that gives such a better sight line. And it's going to be such a great venue that like, you know, here I am helping to build this and watching it being built by our artists and just thinking, I've got to get to a game there. I got to see this thing in real life, you know, and so I hope that's what fans see too. Is that they see this thing and say, I really want to experience what this is like because it's been so great seeing those pieces. Or you know, Illinois with their massive jumbotron, you know, adding that in and having fans get a chance to see that, you know, before they'll see it in person or you know, like those uniform updates. Right. You know, today as we're recording this, I believe we're close to. Yeah. So tomorrow is when the new deals go in for the schools that are changing apparel providers. And so we've been working with those schools to make sure that we don't leak anything early. But also too, you know, we have to ship something. So we have a basically right now a stripped down version where if you play with Tennessee right now, there's no brand on their uniform, but it's their colors. And then we'll update with their, their new uniforms once those are fully revealed. And then we have a title update that kind of goes in line as best as we can. So we've been working with everybody on, you know, what are your new uniforms. We have a whole doc of all the things that are coming and slotted them into the different TUs and working with them to make sure that, you know, before that TU locks they've had a chance to see it. Sorry, when I say to you I meant title update, I apologize. We throw vernacular around here and expect everyone else to know our own world. But title updates are the patches, right. When we make updates to the game to make it better. And so we'll have content all throughout the year. We've got, you know, going all the way through to honestly to late December right now, early December. We have some uniforms planned all the way up to then to get into the game based on the real world release. And so some schools want us to release it as soon as we can and then they'll release theirs. Some say please wait until we've done ours. And so we work with them to make sure that we're not putting something out early. Know, before we lock that title update, I'll reach out and say just want to make sure this is still good to go. Because once that update locks and it's with first party, there's that ship has sailed, it's not coming back. And so some have been like, yeah, we're ready to go. Or others like we're actually going to delay it a week so can you push to the next one? And so, you know, it's just working with our partners to make sure that, you know, we're a part of their story, but we're not taking their story.

[C]

I'm a Road to Glory guy, so I am actually excited about tight end in Road to Glory and edge rusher in Road to Glory. How was creating that mode, how was adding. So I know hopefully a kicker road to Glory will come one day, but until that day comes, how like plans to for me with the tight end especially the blocking piece is going to be fascinating. Like, I know I don't know if we'll ever get an offensive line Road to Glory, but the blocking part about the tight end Road to Glory for me is. Is one of the things that I'm looking forward to when I boot the game up for the first time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and Road to Glory is a mode near and dear to all of our hearts as well. And so with that too, it's not just a decision of one team because that is a mode that is already connected with Madden and you can take your Road to Glory character and move him onto the NFL and continuous career in superstar mode. So we have to have the handshake agreement with them that any position we add, they're going to support. And same thing, anything they support, we have to be able to support as well. Because the last thing we want to do is make a, you know, a tight end in college and all of a sudden say, well, congratulations, either your career is over or you have to be a wide receiver or convert to running back or, you know, whatever else. You know, we have to be able to have that continuity of story. And so Madden was definitely, you know, locked arms with us and said, yes, let's add these positions in to your point, going back even to every machination of it, from 06, when we did race for the Heisman, to when it became campus Legend mode, to then finally the Road to Glory mode, you know, all the different versions of it. Tight end was never a position that we offered because of what you mentioned, the blocking mechanics. We never really had a good way of putting you in as a, you know, a true blocker in the game. And so we were hesitant about it for that reason. But we know that that's something people wanted to do. So we just put it in and just tried it with the mechanics we have currently on that right stick where you press up to try to basically lay somebody out in a block. And we found that people had a great time. Like they actually enjoyed just run as a. In a running play, which if you're playing a receiver, those are the ones you'd want to just, you know, skip, because I don't want to do anything. But as a tight end now, you want to play in those running plays and just be that lead blocker going out and just trucking somebody. And so it really kind of turned into, you know, it's. It's one of those, Try it. What's the worst that can happen? You know, There. There, the. And so I think we all kind of learned that lesson here of like, well, why didn't we just try it and see what it was? And so here we are. We tried it. We loved it. And so now you have that tight end piece in there. Same thing. We knew that, you know, fans just want to have these different experiences. And so you've mentioned the kicker. We've talked about kicker as well. Is it in this year? No. Will it be in the. In the future? There are a number of people who are very much like, oh, we've got it. Just for the fun of being able to go out and have all that pressure moments of you having to make that kick. So will it be in the future? I'd like to say yes. Can't guarantee it, but, you know, ultimately I'd love to be at a spot where every position is a playable position. I think back to our friends at fc, formerly FIFA. Like, that game really took its launch when you could be a pro at every position. And so I kind of keep reminding everybody, like, tell that story because we can still do more here. And so I'd love to see that offensive line piece like you talked about or, you know, all those different elements and to that continuation into Madden. So, yeah, there's a lot of things that we still have. There's a lot of meat still on that bone, for sure.

[B]

Ben, One other feature, not to hop back to dynasty mode, but I wanted to go here before we ask some questions from our subscribers. You guys have added something this year that you are calling Generational Recruit. Richard and I have had this truism on the show for years. I think the school we've used it for is Northwestern. And we've said something to the effect of at some point, man, like, you would think that they would just get like, fucking somebody, like, who can dominate at wide receiver or running back or quarterback, but, like, they get some skill position player who would just be a program changer and, you know, not a good left tackle. No disrespect to Rashawn Slater or any of those guys, and it hasn't happened. Is this kind of your answer to that? Like, is this Your like, stick of dynamite, Cam Newton comes into the program and suddenly Auburn just wins the national championship. Like, what is the intent, the effect of getting a generational recruit? And how many of them are there going to be? Because I feel like you can't have more than by definition, you cannot have more than a few.

[A]

Well, I mean, that reminds me of the old joke, right? The game of the century, of the week, right? Yeah. How many, how many can you have and still call it that term?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so, yeah, that was one of those pieces that, you know, I'll give the guys credit for as well. Of course, you know, we. Sometimes you can get a little stodgy in the ways that we've always done it this way. And you know, a freshman has always been an 82. That's the highest they can be and you know, they got to prove it first. But is that real? You know, we've seen some freshmen come in day one and be way better than that. And, and also too, when you're going through and recruiting, you want to have it goes back to your point, right?

[C]

It's a game.

[A]

Let's have some fun here. Let's have some people who can come in and just dominate from day one. And so, yeah, they will be very rare. You'll have to scout to try to find them. You know, if you don't scout, you might just wind up having being lucky and have one land in your lap. But yeah, they will be very rare and they will have, you know, higher caps than other players will. They'll have a higher over starting overall than incoming freshmen at that level would be. And they're really those guys that were hoping to make that experience of did you get this guy or did you get that guy? Because that's one of the things I love about the system that the team has created is, you know, every season in Dynasty, a new recruiting class gets generated and there's all the machinations of how that happens, but it's not preset. Like, if you go back and I, I feel like I'm the old man going, remember back when, back when. But if you go and think about, you know, when Madden had a connected careers mode where they had almost kind of formulaic dynasty recruiting classes where you could follow a storyline, but once people knew those names, they knew exactly what that player was going to be. So we couldn't really go in that way. We have to make it dynamic. So these guys have to get interjected into the, the experience that way. And we want it to be the surprise and Delight moment, right. Of just like, oh man, this guy is great, I gotta get him. And then if he winds up going to your school, you're like, oh, cool, well, I'm gonna have fun playing against him now, you know, so it's just one of those things we wanted to add it in to really make that experience always dynamic and feel fresh every time you're playing.

[B]

Ben, we have a lot of questions from our subscribers and I want to put some of these past you. Some of them mesh with questions that Richard and I have had as well. I didn't spend a lot of time in our episode prep on gameplay because I think people just like to figure that out as they go. I noticed that this year you have a new QB sneak situation in, which makes that less of a gimme, which I think is cool. But this was a question from Patrick, a subscriber. How much do you guys make a conscious effort to preserve what Richard Johnson would call Mickey Mouse offense?

[C]

Tennessee's in the game, so.

[A]

Oh, great question. Yeah, you know, if they're running on Saturdays, we want to have it in the game. You know, there's a guy who sits near me who was one of our playbook guys and I love walking by and just seeing him just charting all these plays and he's just watching games on, breaking stuff down. And you see some really unique and, you know, pretty wild things that you see happening in the real world that we're putting into the game and having them there defensively. I think that's one of the things that I think is going to be a big piece this year, is we put a lot of effort into defense. And if you again, here we go. Hand up old man. Madden05 gets remembered as one of the greatest Maddens we ever had. But that was the year of defense because Mike Vick had broken the game the year before. And so we had to put in, you know, Ray Lewis on the COVID It was all about defense. And so you're seeing some of that same kind of thought about how do we make defense actually matter in this game? And so, you know, we used to just have some very generic playbooks, like here's your, you know, four, three base or your 335 stack, all that sort of things. So there were nine playbooks on defense previously. I think we're up to about 31 defensive playbooks now to really have a lot of differences there. But the piece that I really love are what we call the macros, where you can preset what you want, your shifts and things to be. So you don't have to sit there and try and cram in 20 different moves before the snap. You have a preset of what you want these guys to do, and you can go in and call that. We kind of equate that to like line shifts and hockey. Right. You play the old NHL games, you can call up which. Who you want in the different lines and substitute on the fly. Similar kind of thing here where you can set up an advance and be able to really try and quickly adapt to what is going on and use your presets there and your macros to. To really try and give you maybe not an edge, but at least feel like you have a way to combat what you're seeing the offense do. Because I think a lot of times our fans understandably get a little frustrated with playing defense because it's complex. People don't always know what all the different colors mean and what the different parts are and what your responsibilities are. And so they feel like playing defense is just giving up a touchdown. So they will let the CPU do it or simulate it. We want them playing that side of the ball. So we're adding those tools in to make it easier and more fun to do and so really trying to give a shine to that defensive side of the ball.

[C]

Candler asked something that's actually pretty interesting. I actually wanted to ask you this. How does rating relatively get decided? If I remember correctly, the best team is Oregon at 91, and the worst is Louisiana Monroe at at 71. Is this a conscious decision or how. Or does it just work out this way? And I've actually wondered that as someone who's taken, you know, a bad team or a team in the 60s or

[A]

whatever,

[C]

or who will in Dynasty, Cupcake Dynasty to the top. Try to get them to the top.

[A]

Yeah. So when you talk about the, you know, overall offense, defense and those numbers, those are formulas. And there's two different ones. There's one that's used for Dynasty that takes into account your entire roster's quality, and then the one that's used for, you know, play now and those other modes where it really just looks at your starters and so it's weighted based on the importance of those positions. So if you have a great quarterback but not much else, you're going to be.

[B]

Your.

[A]

Your numbers are going to be a little inflated because that quarterback is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Conversely, if your quarterback's no good, you're going to see some numbers drop there. And so really it starts with the players and the, those numbers are the byproduct of the individual player ratings. And so the team does a lot of work scouting players. You know, we've got guys on our team like Donnie Moore who have been rating players. I mean he's, the old ratings are, he's been rating players since the late 90s and so he, he knows how to do this better than anybody on the planet. And we have a bunch of others that are using, you know, really great at using all the tools available to us. We have a great relationship with pro football focus. So that's one piece of data. We don't use that as the only piece of data. But you know, that's a great tool for us to understand how players are being viewed and do all of the research we can do. You know, we don't really have, there's no combine, so we don't have verified 40 times for these players and freshmen coming in. But a lot of them run track, so we're able to pull times from track and things like that to help get an idea of what these players are. But there's also too the perception, you know, these aren't 10 year vets that you've got a really solid feel on. Sometimes you're projecting, hey, this guy didn't play last year but he's going to be the starter. And you know, we're not just going to rate him in the 50s or 60s just because we don't know. So you're going to kind of take that leap of faith based on his pedigree. What do we think he's going to do? And then we have those weekly roster updates. We started those mid season last year, but that's going to be full go from, you know, week one after accounting for the week zero updates. We'll update start in week one and go all the way through the national championship game. To be able to have something like last year, you saw Drew Messemaker at, at North Texas, started off somewhat low as OVR but had a tremendous season and saw his OVR rise throughout the course of the year. So we're able to reflect to that in real time. Or, you know, Trinidad Chambliss, you know, was not in the game at the start last year, but opted in and we were able to add him into the game as we went on. So, you know, it's just one of those things that makes it feel like it's a live game and it's reflective of the season that you're seeing.

[B]

Ben, this was the thing that I disliked the most about last year's game. And you know, I say that with immense respect for the work that you do because I know how much care you put into it. But you also know I'm a gamer. So I'll be honest with you. Every time I was trying to kill the clock, someone got hurt every time. And I wasn't usually trying to kill the clock because I was pretty bad. I was losing a lot of games. Like I would try to ice a game and there'd be a magical injury to someone on my team and my opponent would get a free timeout. That was an in game problem. That was the bane of my existence. Everyone kept getting hurt right when I was trying to kill the clock and it didn't seem like it was just happening to me. And we also got a question from listener American playbook who says that their only real complaint with the game the last couple years, and it's minor, has been injuries, which is that unless you simulate there aren't that many multi week injuries. The vast majority are just a few plays. In fact, this listener has had seasons where he's had a single. Has. Has had not a single player miss a game. Was that a choice? Is there any tuning and will my guys stop collapsing when I'm trying to ice the clock?

[A]

And the worst part about that too, Alex, is we didn't even have a fake, fake injury kind of feature. Right.

[B]

To.

[A]

To try to replicate the faking of injuries or they looked at the sideline and dropped down. No, they were actually getting injured because it was a combination of how wear and tear was functioning. That feature there that we added in to make it a little more realistic of how worn down you can get through the course of the game. And so you would get these moments towards the end of the game and we all suffered through it too of just like cool, just give another free timeout guys. Thank you. Appreciate that. I'm just trying to get out of here. Um, so you're a gamer.

[B]

You know, you're a gamer at heart. You're. You're an advocate for the player. Yeah.

[A]

There's nothing you can tell me you don't like that I, that those of us that make the game don't hate 10 times more because we have to live with it and hear about it all the time. And so yeah, you're going to see tuning to the injuries. You should not see any injuries within the final two minutes unless it should be a severe one like we're not going to complete. But this should be very minimal. The Number of injuries that you see in that post, 2 minute timeline to help with that problem of these free timeouts that everyone was getting. And so too, yeah, with that wear and tear tuning, you're going to see more injuries happen organically, hopefully in a really, you know, smart way. And then. Sorry, I forgot, I'm forgetting the other part with it.

[B]

Oh, multi week injuries and injury management over the course of the season.

[A]

And so for that, that's another peek behind the curtain of how Super Sam, which is the engine that runs the simulation, works differently than if you actually play the game. And so our job is to try to marry those two as best as possible. And sometimes those do get out of sync. And so yeah, we put work in to try to get those closer and closer. You know, unfortunately it's not, it won't be one to one because they are two different systems, but we can get them as close as possible. So yes, you should hopefully see, you know, longer term injuries when you're playing. And we're, it's something we're going to monitor because that's always the other fun part about this is as much as we can QA this game, the day we launch, we'll have more eyeballs playing it and more hours logged in it than the entire development cycle just because of the sheer number of people that are playing. So you're going to see things that you've never seen before or you're going to get a better overall view of the statistics of what's happening because of the, the volume of people playing it. So if it doesn't hit the market launch, we have those title updates and so we will make adjustments to try to get that even better.

[C]

This is really niche, but will there be a dynamic attendance during gameplay? I. E. The stadium empties out during a blowout. I actually remember that was in there in 2004, 2005, way, way back in the day you'd be blowing a team out and then it had come back for the fourth quarter and the stadium, the stands were empty.

[A]

Yeah. So we have the, the dynamic attendance in the course of your season. The start of the game will be dynamic based on how the season is going. We are still, you know, we all feel that same way. We, we love that old feature of being able to see the attendance dip during the course of the game and like the corners of the upper deck getting, you know, thinned out first as everyone kind of gravitates and moves towards the middle. It's on our list. We want to get to it Technically we've run into some challenges with it. Specifically, you know, we show replays throughout the course of the game from earlier in the game. And loading those fans back in on the new hardware and the new systems we have is a more, is a more tricky thing than it used to be way back in the day. So that's been kind of the piece there that's held us from doing that. We hope to get that back. That's something we would love to have in. It did not quite make it this year, but it is on our radar. But if you want to talk about something dynamic, I'm going to shift over to dynamic weather because that is something that is very new this year and very interesting. And you know, Richard, we were talking beforehand, you know, we're both, you know, Florida guys, Florida State. And that's why I use the game as my escape from real life. But you know, dynamic weather, we live here in Florida. It's sunny right now. In about 20 minutes from now it's going to get pitch black here. It's going to rain very hard for a short amount of time and then go back to sunny again. The game never really had that before. The game was just is it a rain game or not, Is it a snow game or not? And that's not real life. You have ebbs and flows of how weather works. And so that is now incorporated into the game where you will know in a Dynasty game going in what the forecast is. We've also gotten rid of the people who can, oh, I don't want to play in a rain game. Back out, go back in and now it's sunny, the weather's set. You get the weather that's generated for that week. So you can't really kind of cheat the system that way. But it will be dynamic that you might start off sunny and then get rain and then come back and you know, it's just really fun to see that element of how the, the weather works in real life making its way into the game.

[C]

I, I think I've read this as far as Madden is concerned. But like am I going to get like a nuts 20 minute or quarter long thunderstorm if I'm playing Florida versus if I'm playing Washington, is it going to be that kind of steady drove versus? I know the example that the Madden people keep on using is the AFC Championship game last year, right? They keep on saying like what? In Denver, you know, the first half was sunny and then the second half was just an absolute blizzard. Like am I going to get that in different places across the country.

[A]

Yeah, you know, we, we have regional specific weather that's all broken down that, you know, the way it works in the back end, you know, is based on. On regional. And we'll go in and say, okay, based on this time of year, what are the chances it's going to be? You know, what's the average temperature? And then there's kind of a system that determines what the actual temperature for that game will be. What's the chance of it being rainy? And then there's a system that determines that. And then if it's cold enough and, you know, and the rain is there now you have snow. If it's hot and you have that rain chance now you have rain. And then wind kind of functions that similar way as well. And so, yes, you should see things fluctuate and function, you know, more like they do in real life. But, you know, in the fun of current day and weather, we're. I was just in Knoxville yesterday, it was as hot as Florida. So we're kind of getting closer to everywhere being the same, which is not really great. But yeah, that's another topic.

[B]

You don't say, yeah, and we're going to move the season further back into August, which is just going to be awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. I actually am looking forward sort of to this moment because you mentioned the weather. That's a chance for me to talk about Nokian tires. Nokian, as we tend to talk about later in the year, fall, winter is the inventor of the winter tire, always has had this really serious commitment and really made it part of its identity and to make a tire that will take you wherever you need to go in whatever weather you are driving in. But I think that that Nokian commitment to durability, to reliability is going to work for you in any weather. Safety is still really important in the summer, as I like to say. And I am guessing that a lot of you are listening to this right around the time that you are taking a July 4th road trip. If I'm right, even if I'm not right, this might be for you. If you go to nokiantires.com guide, that's nokiantyres.com guide. You enter your road trips real and imagine just ideas that you might have and you can be entered to win Nokian Tires swag. Thank you very much as we move to our partners at Nokian Tires. Ben, this is a question from subscriber Hope. Have you guys tinkered with the Dynasty logic for things like Coach Hiring and firing and looking for other jobs. Hope notes that last year there were a couple things that hurt the immersion in their case, which was coaches leaving jobs for their main rival. Hope regularly saw Sark to Oklahoma, for example. Coaches getting fired after one year, every off season. How are you.

[C]

That's, that's a pretty good immersion these days.

[B]

Two years you could do, you could have Harson mode or Taggart mode where you get fired into in your second year. But where are you guys at, Ben on coach carousel stuff?

[A]

Yeah, you know, the coach carousel is a fickle beast. You know, if we had a coach carousel last year that said James Franklin's getting fired, everyone say, oh, this is horrible or Billy Napier is going to wind up at James Madison. Unrealistic would never happen. But then real life happens and you're like, wow, okay, you know, but you know, our, our carousel was a little unrealistic for sure. Number of times that coaches will get fired, you know, after one year and things like that. And so we have put in a lot of work into trying to improve that logic. Trying to improve when, when a guy will go to the NFL or not. You know, we probably need to do a better job in that regard. I think we've got some ideas of how we're going to, to improve that going forward. Things like you mentioned the, the Sark going to Oklahoma or things or Lane going back to Tennessee or things like that. Right. You know, that's something that is challenging for us because we only have so much built into our memory, these coaches and it's hard for us sometimes to predict would a coach ever go back to that job or that sort of thing. And so we put some stop gaps and things like that in there, but they're will be, you know, just the course of how you run a thousand simulations, you're a thousand different results. So, you know, I can't guarantee that this thing's gonna look bulletproof, but we do hope it looks more realistic. And we've also given you as the user more agency to now say I want to apply for this job versus just getting the, the few that are sent to you. So you know, because we'd have problems in the past where the logic wouldn't quite work. Right. And so you're a two time defending national championship champion and you're being offered an offensive board in your job.

[B]

That's not right.

[A]

You know, that just looks wrong. It makes us look like we don't know what we're doing. So we're putting the work to try and make sure that those things don't happen again, but also give you that agency to say I want to go after this job and now put your hat in the ring. And you're not always guaranteed to get it, but you can at least have that agency to say give me a shot and they can consider you when they might not have previously.

[B]

I do a lot of lying to my players when they are considering leaving. Like playing time will get you sorted out. Considering leaving for the draft. I think your development would be better served if you were to stay around for another year. We have a question from Germaine. Do players enter the draft based off of their performance or just their rating? Like if I had a 72 receiver and gave him a 1600 yard season, would he go to the NFL draft?

[A]

The answer to is it performance or ratings? The answer is yes, it's a combination of the both. And so if you have a, you know, obviously you have to be NFL draft eligible to, to even go in but then at that point there is a, a piece that looks at, you know, what is your overall and if you're high enough that increases the chance that you will, you know, try to go early. If you are a junior or red shirt sophomore. Actually red shirt, I guess I can't use that term anymore. Who knows what they're going to actually call them going forward. That's another piece that we've got to figure out is the, the change of the red shirt rule for next year. Like what's that going to do to just a vernacular because we don't really have those anymore. But yeah, so we have that logic built in to determine and it's also ratings based and sorry, ratings based and performance based. So if you do have a guy who was a little lower rated but you've just balled out with him, he's going to think he can make that step to the next level and try to go. And that's all going to also impact their persuasion chance. Can you try to get them to come back or not? So there'll be some guys who are dead set that they're going and nothing you can do to convince them to come back. And others that, you know, just takes a little leaning, hey, come on back. And they might be like yeah sure, I'll come for another one. Same thing with the transfer portal too of can you convince them to stay or not? Some will be dead set to leave and others you'll still be able to try and bring back. And also too, you can use the new program points and NLPs to try and lure them back. It's not just, you know, asking them to. You can kind of, you know, put your thumb on the scale a little bit there and say we really want you and this is how we're going to show you.

[C]

Holt asks a question that I think pertains to Dynasty. If you're using split zone to a state, if you're using your own high school like some people do for, for, you know, team builder, all that kind of stuff. How modular is stadium builder? Are we selecting for presets or can we place individual sections where we want? I also think that I read that team builders, you're allowed a little more customization with like end walls and like field goal pads and like stuff like that to help if you're making a team builder school from scratch.

[A]

Yeah, you know, so the addition of team builder and the stadium aspect of that is again the first step into a foray for a larger piece for us to be able to have a very full, robust, customizable stadium experience. You know, you do have some presets there and you can make adjustments and customizations to those. You can update edge walls, things like that like you're talking about. We'll have more there to expand in the future. It's a starting point for us. We hope that fans appreciate that that's there and understand that this is a multi step approach because yeah, we want to get this thing to be a point where you can create stadiums that are as good and as detailed and as customizable as the real world ones. But it's a starting point for us that we're going to continue on for sure.

[B]

Ben, a handful more feature questions here. Someone, Eric S asks what changes have you made to the grading system for Road to Glory? Eric feels that the game mode should allow for more opportunities to improve your player, especially in between seasons, while other teams players gain significantly. I know we have some RTG players in this, in this audience.

[A]

Yeah, no, for sure. And so we've completely flipped player creation and ratings and everything on its head. You'll see a whole layout of you know, every ability, every rating, what the caps are for those. And you can expand those caps through the course of your playing and really create these archetypes. And we've got, you can either start your own fresh or we have a handful of legends at each position that you can use as your template for what you want to build your player into. And so we've kind of given you that those reigns to be able to really have a much More customization of how your career develops and not just the bucket of spending points and ratings go up. Like you can fine tune things a lot more to your own degree. So yeah, a lot of work has gone into changing that, that game because we wanted you to, you know, to have that experience, to be able to really customize your player. We talked about generational recruits before you can do something similar with your road to glory player. Where we have what we call cap breakers. The guys that kind of define, you know, just the laws of physics, right? Your Derek Henry's of the world that no man should be that big and run that fast. So we don't want to have that just out of the box, but you can earn this cap breaker that now allows you to essentially become that superhero type player. So those are the pieces that we've added in to really help that grading piece to give you more, you know, fluidity to your development, but also to more functionality of how you want to build your player out.

[B]

Ben Jermaine asked about what changes you have made to recruit generation this year. Last year, you guys, after the first year the game came back, you guys came under some criticism for there being maybe a few too many Jacob Rosenblum cornerbacks with 98 speed. What are, what's on our agenda for this year?

[A]

Tuning passes have happened for sure to try to make things better and maybe remove some hairstyles that don't quite fit with the heads they were put on. Because behind the scenes, I mean, it grabs a hair, it grabs the head, puts them together and there should be, you know, pieces that say this hair can't go with this head and that sort of thing. And you know, sometimes those are not quite as tight as they need to be. And so yeah, so we have done some, some work they're passing to try to make those improvements again, like I mentioned, the day we launch, there'll be more eyeballs in this than all the development of it. So there'll probably be some more further training we need to do there. Same thing with the name Generator too. We know some folks love having fun with the name Generator. We purposely kind of leave it a little bit loose to have it. Not so strict about how names are applied to people because we kind of, we enjoy seeing those things too. It's kind of the levity part of it, right, of seeing that. But what we don't want to have are those complete immersion breakers where it's just like, okay, cool. Like this just is not at all reflective of what the sport is. And so Again, that's a hand up that's on us to get better at. And so hopefully we've got improvements there and if it didn't hit the mark, updates will make it better.

[B]

Ben, this is the why isn't this in the game? Or why can't I do this? Or could I be able to do this in the future? Lightning round. We'll go quick through these ones from Red Tide and also from three or four other people. Are there any plans to put this thing on PC?

[A]

PC is here this year. First time since NCAA fall 99. The game will be launching on PC day and date with worldwide launch. I believe you didn't even.

[B]

I didn't even set you up for that to try to make you look good. I actually did not notice that. I'm a Mac guy.

[A]

Yeah, well, now you got me stumped because I'm not sure if we have Mac support, but we do have PC support for the first time. So I know that is a big piece that fans have been asking for. We're going to see what that market delivers for us and how many people are truly going to go with a PC version versus a console version. As the guy who owns the relationships with our schools from the development side, I am looking forward to all of the calls from licensing directors screaming, why are these uniforms in the game? What is this? Because our fans are gonna have some fun modding the game and making some fantasy things that are going to look like they are actually in the game, but it's just some person's model. And so thank you in advance for the headaches I have to deal with for that. But it's all for the good of the game. So I'm down. Here we go.

[C]

Is that the modding thing has always been fascinating to me. Like I so any. I mean I can. I'm not this computer savvy but like anybody can just whip up a mod for whatever PC game they have on their. On their system.

[A]

Yeah, it's one of those. It's the fun part about PC but also the tough part about PC is that, yeah, you only have so much control because you know, you can go in and kind of get to the guts of the game in a different way than you can get on a console.

[B]

Swap files.

[A]

Yeah. If you think about the old revamped game, right. NCAA revamped, we have a couple of guys on the team I'd mentioned the Playbook guy earlier is Thomas Fleming, who came from that revamp world or when I talk about a lot of the modes that we do and things we do in Dynasty and Road to Glory. That's, you know, Chad Walker came from that re ramp world and these guys figured out like Thomas figured out how to make plays in the old, you know, game through just kind of reverse engineering stuff. Like these guys just waste again, way smarter than I'll ever be. And so you're seeing that same sort of thing where now with this PC world, like, yeah, you know, if you're savvy and know what you're doing, you can get in and make some adjustments on your own. You, you know, obviously we're not condoning people doing that, but we know we can't stop it. Don't try to sell it. That's how you get your cease and desist if you try and make money off it. So that's a little, little tip for those out there. Don't, don't try to usurp our money. But because, you know, we are a business after all. But yeah, I mean we know that mods are going to happen. It's just a part of PC. Madden's been on PC for a number of years now and you see some mods there from time to time that are really, really good and we know that's going to come for us as well. And so yeah, so we look forward to seeing the creativity that people have but also too heads up to the licensing directors that not everything you see on the Internet's real.

[B]

Quinn asks, what is the coolest feature that someone on your team came up with? Everyone really wanted to build but you couldn't make it happen this year?

[A]

Oh, so we do our best to not talk about what didn't make it in. You know, that's one of those things we love to focus on what did. So I, you know, I have a thousand thoughts that rush to my head because there's always more that you want to do than the time you have left. But so I will go instead in a direction of something that we did get in that we were all thought was really kind of interesting and very small, low hanging fruit that really wasn't hard to put in but wasn't really on anyone's radar until one of our guys said, hey, you know, Notre Dame on their back plate they don't have the ND logo. They have play like a champion today. Can we get a secondary logo on back plates? And so that became kind of a research task for us because you know, we work very closely with schools but you know, it's not just a one stop, just like hey, pick up the phone and get every piece of information you ever want to know. You know, sometimes it's easier and faster for us just to do the work ourselves. And so we split schools up amongst a number of us and started doing research and scrubbing through games because you don't always get, you know, very clean photos showing the back plate. And not everybody has an exposed back plate. So we're just scrubbing through like getting frame by frame on YouTube of different games and saying there's one cut that. Okay, here it is. And so we had our list of schools that have non primary logos on their back plate even you know, to the degree of like an Oklahoma or North Carolina that have the Jordan Jumpman or LSU has the tiger eye. So you know, some of these schools are not using. Florida State uses the, the spear instead of the, their, you know, Seminole head logo. And so we wanted to put those pieces in there because that's one of those small just touches that most fans aren't going to notice. But if you notice, you're like, ah, these guys, these guys are good. They saw this. And that's the stuff that really makes us happy to see that. And that goes part and parcel too with probably our loudest contingent this past year have been our uniform fans and our equipment fans. They have been relentless about things they want to see like the hanging mouth guards or a single leg sleeve and all these pieces that. Do they impact the actual playing of the game?

[C]

No.

[A]

Do they impact your immersion? Results there vary and for some folks it absolutely takes them out that you know, the, the helmet didn't sit right on players heads and the tilt wasn't correct. So the helmet didn't fit right.

[C]

The helmet didn't fit right on people's heads. Right.

[A]

So that's been resolved, that's been fixed shoulder pads. You know, I think what Vanini just had a great article the other day in the Athletic about bringing back big pads. And you know, some of us long for those old days but that's just not modern football. So we got shoulder pads fixed for all position groups so that they're more, you know, conformed to the body and more like what fans are or what players are wearing. You know, just simple things like the visor. We had clear visors but we never had the clear reflective visors before. Those are now in. So you see a lot of different pieces like that coming in that are gear fans. They're taking victory laps out there and I love seeing that because you know, nothing makes me sadder than when A fan base feels like they're being ignored, or a group of our audience feels like they're being ignored. And so to be able to deliver for them was great. And so now it's on us to keep that foot on the gas and keep doing things, you know, we didn't get, you know, talk about something we didn't get in. I'll say we did not get in the, the bike shorts, you know, the super high shorts above the knee. Because I, you know, we have to, you know, it's a, it's, it's, you know, you have to place your bets early on of what you're going to build for that year. And it's not so simple as just cutting off the shorts and saying, oh, you're done. You have to actually, you know, build in the leg that's now exposed because that's not a texture that you actually normally see if the pant is there. So we didn't want to put in that effort and that work just to have the rules committee come in and say, you know what? These are done. And then that is just thrown away. And so that decision came too late for us to make an action on. So it did not make it this year. But that's something that we are looking for in the future to be able to add because it's replicates real life. And so, you know, and we want to have people have fun and be able to dress themselves the way they want to dress themselves and make them, you know, that immersion piece of what they're looking for. And so we got a lot of the stuff they asked for this year. But, you know, there's always, let's say there's always a list of 10. You kill five of those things. That list is not five anymore. That list is still 10. It's just the five that weren't on the list move up to fill those spots in. So we'll always have things to go after. More, you know, more cleats coming in, helmet shells, face masks, all those things. We work with our partners to understand what they're building in and make sure that we can get that stuff into the game as well.

[B]

Ben, the last thing I wanted to ask you about, in the spirit of ending on something light, is that earlier this year I saw the big social media trend that I'm sure you saw too, where people were using AIs to make little, like, scenes of, like, players walking around campus and players walking into the stadium and what have you that I guess they thought some people were pretending that they were actually going to be in the game. They were not. I wanted to pick your brain about how that is all landing with you. I imagine this is the first time that anyone on the Internet with probably a $20 ChatGPT or cloud subscription has been able to make, and I put that in very heavy air quotes, has been able to make scenes for your game that in theory, not just in theory, that they were basically saying, put this in the game, Ben. You know, this would be great. Let's look. This should be part of the game because they were able to kind of hack this thing out on an LLM.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How did, how did all that land with you, a game developer?

[A]

You know, it was fascinating to watch and it was also a lot of fun to watch because, you know, I'm, I'm a fan first and foremost. Even though I've been here for, you know, we're at the end of June here at the start of this month marked my 26th year here at EA. So you know, I've been doing it since before there was the Internet to even, you know, we did that. Excuse me, but before there was social media to be able to share these things around. And so, you know, Photoshop's been around forever and that's typically what we would have seen in the past is someone making a Photoshop mock of what they would expect things to see or how they would look. But now we've entered a whole new world where they can look as vibrant and real and confusing to people. Is this really in the game that, you know, I don't think we were quite ready to see, but we were like, wow, this is actually really interesting. And we kind of look at it, we don't take it as, oh, stop, this is horrible. You're putting us, making us look bad, but more of like, okay, that's an interesting thought, but let's extrapolate this out. How much do you really want to do this? Do you want to truly walk across campus to go from one place to another versus just select a menu option and you can get arguments for either side. But you know, and you know, I think it was fascinating seeing all the different variations. And we even saw West Virginia, for example, post their own version, which was really fun and cool to see. But then you saw other ones that were kind of funny. Like the Florida State run out and it had the little map in the corner and it's like, like a GTA style map. And you're like, would you really have a map for a run out to the sideline? Like, you know, but then you saw other ones that, you know, obviously were more tongue in cheek, like the Georgia one that we obviously would never go down that road. And so, you know, it just, it's fun seeing the creativity of the fans and just that, you know, what can be unlocked through these new tools. And so that's kind of given us a stop to. Okay, well, what actually does make sense

[C]

for us to do?

[A]

You know, this is now in the world. This is now something that people talk about. So is this something that we want to go down or is this something that, you know, is cute but the moment has passed. We're going to see how things, you know, materialize down the line. Obviously, these things start showing up well past the point where we could actually pivot to do anything for. But no, those thoughts start percolating in your head of what would that kind of experience be? Does it function just in the background as a kind of a cut scene that just plays over and over again? And that harkens back to Madden had that with a coach's office and a locker room and kind of. We, we've tried that before, but there's a moment where it just gets too repetitive and just becomes white noise. How do you keep it engaged? How do you keep it fresh? And what makes sense for 138 schools now, or who knows by the time if we ever do implement this, how many number of schools do we have? You know, making sure that you are creating each one in an authentic way versus just like, oh, I guess that building kind of looks like our school. Like we, you know, you want it to look like your school, you want it to feel that, that, that immersion piece. So there's a lot there for us to figure out, you know, what that avenue is going to be. But that's the fun that sometimes happens where, you know, a single, you know, single tweet or a single post of something on Reddit all of a sudden now can start a firestorm of now we have a thought in our head now how, okay, what is this thing and what is it actually going to be? So, you know, we're. I'm as excited as you to figure out what that's going to look like. It's going to be on this side of the table, though, too.

[B]

I support it as long as the people actually putting stuff in the game are experts doing it, rather than amateurs making stuff that might not work. Not to say that the tools could not be useful to actual trained professionals like Ida who are using them, but I Just hope, Ben, that if this stuff gives you ideas, I hope that the corporate overlords allow you and your fellow game developers to be the ones putting them into effect. That's my hope.

[A]

You know, inspiration comes from anywhere, right? So, you know, I can be walking down the street and see something and all of a sudden have a feature idea or, you know, I talk all the time about, you know, you guys. Sometimes it takes me an hour to get through a 30 or 40 minute episode because you said something that just sparks an idea and my head just travels off to a feature design for it and I realize you guys kept on talking. I got to go back a little bit to figure out where I, where I missed off, you know, you think about that. Exactly. That thing happened with Road to Glory. We have a graph now for your draft projection. Because just listening to Andy and Ari one day, Ari said, oh, if you're a fi five star recruit out of high school, you have an x percent chance of being a first round pick.

[B]

Boom.

[A]

Oh, there it is. So now, based on where you finish your high school, that determines your draft projection. And so now you're seeing through the course of action of what you're doing both on and off the field, you know, can, you know, impact that draft stock and also too can come back and, you know, resurface itself. Some of the decisions and things you made might resurface themselves if you move that character over into, into Madden. So it's fun seeing those, those pieces come to life. But again, just, we love this sport and we love consuming all pieces of it and we listen to everything you guys are putting out because that's job research for us. You know, it's, it's the fun part because we're fans, we get to listen to it and know more of the sport. But we also had those moments where you guys say things that were just like, that's a feature. Cool, let's start thinking about that now. And so inspiration comes from everywhere, man.

[B]

He is Ben Ha Milmiller. He is the principal game designer for EA Sports college football and a great buddy of this show. Ben, thank you for making the annual stopover. We really appreciate having you. And my way of showing appreciation is that you mentioned Florida State, State football in this episode, but we didn't.

[A]

Not even me.

[C]

I didn't even do it.

[B]

I guess we just did. Shoot.

[A]

I'll be living in the game this year, that's all. That's where I'm at.