Focus Put on Defense for Madden NFL 13

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

“They are doing big things this year,” he said. “They’re making big changes. Those are big changes that are going to break a lot of stuff, and they know that. What we’re after is a better defense that’s more fun to play.”

Statements like these though carry very little weight at this stage. What a “focus” means could be just about anything and how much in the way of improvements or new features are implemented on defense could range from minimal to extensive. Every year EA claims a focus is being placed on different aspects of the game and consistency of delivering on the lofty expectations simply hasn’t been there.

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

It’s probably a good sign that the development team wants to better represent defense and provide more realism on that side of the ball – and that its what comes up in February rather than something about making the game more accessible – but that talk matters little right now. They’ll have to prove what they’ve done is worthwhile and beneficial from a sim standpoint rather than lacking true influence or being gimmicky in nature.