Relocate your team in Madden 25's franchise owners mode

EA Sports lifted the curtains today on one of its core additions to Madden 25 this year, Connected Franchise owners mode. In it, players take on the role of team owner, setting prices for tickets and concessions as well as having the option to relocate teams to both domestic and international cities. Owners also handle the hiring of team personnel, such as scouts, trainers and coaches, and they answer questions from the media. Players will manage stadium upgrades and market their superstar athletes so fans will buy their jerseys, increasing their teams' yearly profit.

The options to import draft classes from EA's NCAA Football series and take control of all 32 teams in the Connected Careers mode were woefully absent from last year's game, but will return to Madden 25. Additionally, the game's primary career mode will receive a face-lift thanks to an improved user interface that includes a transaction log to follow the movement of players from team to team. The mode's UI includes a new Trade Center, allowing users to see what other teams are offering for players and draft picks so they can top their opponents' bids.

Lastly, Madden 25 will feature more media personalities for the career mode's in-game Twitter feed, such as ESPN fantasy analyst Matthew Berry and Fox Sports NFL writer Peter Schrager. It will also receive new legendary players and coaches, including Mike Ditka and William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

Gallery: Madden NFL 25 (Connected Franchise)

Relocate your team in Madden 25's franchise owners mode originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why Defiance's 'fun now, depth later' is great for MMORPGs

This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

I had my World of Warcraft year. In 2007, when 'The Burning Crusade' came out, the game clicked with me and it became almost the only thing I played for months on end, to the point where I started raiding with an up-and-coming guild. I know many other people who've had that year, with WoW or some other massively multiplayer game, before they lost interest, burnt out, or continued out of habit more than joy. In the last year or so, I've tried several massively-multiplayer role-playing games - Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World - and couldn't find that magic again. I could admire the design, but quickly lost interest in playing them. I was starting to think I'd never really like a massively multiplayer game again - and then, on a whim, I decided to check out Defiance.

Defiance is the main game I've been playing for two weeks now, and this may continue. It's not that it's less flawed than the other MMORPGs, but instead that the parts of the game that it focuses on hold much more appeal to me. To put it another way: Most games within this genre are focused on combat, and Defiance's combat is significantly more fun for me than its competitors'.

Gallery: Defiance (PAX East 2012)

Continue reading Why Defiance's 'fun now, depth later' is great for MMORPGs

Why Defiance's 'fun now, depth later' is great for MMORPGs originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 19 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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