It’s that time of year again, it’s the holiday season where kids are wishing for games and the grown ups are wishing for their NFL team to make the playoffs. In the spirit of the holiday season I’m going to wish for both of those things. My wish this holiday season is for a football video game. You may think, aren’t there are a few of those already? You’re right, there is. You have Madden and NCAA Football already, but I’m going to be talking about a different, unique NFL Football game. I’m talking about wanting another NFL Head Coach game.
What is NFL Head Coach? Well, like I said it’s a unique football game in a sense it deals with simulation, strategy, and RPG elements. Something no other football game on the market offers. In NFL Head Coach 09 (The last NFL Head Coach EA Sports made) you started off creating your NFL Head Coach and picked a team. From there you could choose to go into the offseason and develop your team, or just go straight to the NFL Regular Season with what the team did in real life. Personally, I always went to the offseason. That’s where the fun comes from. Developing your team from there. Scouting, releasing players, signing free agents, drafting, just building your team the way you want to. Getting players that fit your system, your philosophy all that is the heart of NFL Head Coach. But, anyway, Whichever one you choose to start, the object is to build up your team, win games, and eventually the Super Bowl.
So, the offseason is over and you have some of the players you want to build your team around for the next few years. From there, you get your players to learn the playbook, develop them as players, and you even develop your coaches. Improve them using a skill set tree. There’s a lot of layers to NFL Head Coach a lot of strategy involved and I’m just touching upon different elements in the game, just to give you an idea of what NFL Head Coach is.
Now, why has there been no NFL Head Coach for the past few years now? Well, one can assume it had to do with sales. Sales are pretty hard to come by, but it’s safe to assume it didn’t sell well, but I don’t think it means that people don’t want an NFL Head Coach game. It’s because when NFL Head Coach 09 came out, it was bundled together with Madden for a 20th anniversary special on August 12th, 2008. I bought that, I didn’t buy that bundle for Madden though, I bought it for NFL Head Coach. at the time, I think it was 60 bucks for two games, so I thought it was a great deal. Plus, the standalone version of NFL Head Coach didn’t come out until September 2nd, 2008. Pretty much a whole month later to buy one game for the same price, or two games a month earlier. An obvious no brainer choice. I think a lot of NFL Head Coach fans did what I did and just bought the 20th Anniversary edition. I don’t think EA gave NFL Head Coach a chance to succeed, and that’s why making another NFL Head Coach game would be a good idea, it would give you a chance to see what the market offers.
So, we got to why it didn’t sell well on it’s own, now what are somethings to do to help it sell well? One is release it during the Summer time, the June-July-August month. It’s the Summer time, nothing comes out besides sports games, give NFL Head Coach some love and stick in there before NCAA Football comes out. Give players that are obsessed with football and buy every football iteration, give them that itch of a new football game coming out before Madden, and before NCAA Football. Perhaps, sell it at a discount, only 30 bucks, or do it the opposite of when the NFL Head Coach 09 came out. Instead of buy “Madden get this game for free.” Do the opposite. Give the consumer an option to buy NFL Head Coach and get Madden for free, or buy NFL Head Coach and get Madden at 50% off, some sort of deal. If the consumer passes on that deal, and just buys Madden, well, then I guess there isn’t a market for NFL Head Coach.
That’s just the financial side of things, now let’s talk about the other gaming type things. Let’s talk about giving players the incentive to playing NFL Head Coach. Trophies are a big deal, players check a game, look at the trophy list and that has a lot to do with whether or not players will play it. For NFL Head Coach to have a chance, EA Sports would need to put out a good Trophy list and EA Sports doesn’t put out good trophy lists for most of their games. They have to improve on that, but anyway, a good trophy list starts with having a Platinum Trophy. That’s step one, players care about their trophies and having a Platinum Trophy. Step two is having no online trophies. NFL Head Coach should not have online trophies. That’s step two, step three is put a good list, that’s fair, but features longevity and a challenge.
I’ve thought about this and some of the ones I’ve come up with are something along the lines of winning a Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders, win a Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs, etc. basically, have a few teams that are bad, turn them around, and win a Super Bowl with those teams. Then, of course, win a Super Bowl, may’be even win back-to-back Super Bowls, and even try and win three Super Bowls in a row. Something that hasn’t been done before, and may’be even win 5 Super Bowls in a season. Those could be your Silver and Gold trophies, and then, of course, fill it out with some Bronze Trophies like, draft a player that goes to the Pro Bowl, or even little things like don’t draft a bust in the first round, draft a sleeper pick in the later rounds, things like that.
So, we talked about the financial aspect, the fun, trophy aspect, and now, let me just touch upon the marketing aspect. How to market NFL Head Coach? First thing is first, it has NFL in it, which means sports, and that automatically takes out a big portion of the gaming population. One of the things to hammer home is the strategy, the RPG, the Simulation that NFL Head Coach features. A friend of mine saw me playing NFL Head Coach, he isn’t a sports fan, but he was interested at what I was doing. Just things like making plays, creating a gameplan, developing my players, and coaches. He saw this as like building up a clan, and then deploying the players as soldiers, sort of like a strategy game like Kessen, or Valkyria Chronicles something along those lines, and this really hit home, he become fascinated with the game and become addicted to the game. And again, this was a friend who didn’t care for sports or anything like that. The strategy, the simulation, the RPG elements is what makes NFL Head Coach so good and there’s a large portion of the gaming community that could really get into NFL Head Coach because it has these things. If EA Sports really marketed it as such, it could really resonate with a lot of people, get people interested in the game, even if they aren’t into sports or football.
Now, I’m going to try and wind this down a bit. NFL Head Coach wasn’t a perfect game, a good game, a really good game, but it did have its problems. I’ll touch on them, some areas to address for EA Sports. The first deals with the gameplay. First is the Quarterback sneak. That has to be worked on. The QB Sneak is an easy, and cheap way to get yards. Now, it’s not automatic, the runner will go sideways, or the defense will stop him, but for the most part the QB sneak is an easy way to get at least 3-4 yards a pop. That should be worked on, and I think some of the Madden’s did improve that where the QB would just lean forward, and fall down. That’s easily addressable and could easily be done in NFL Head Coach.
The next gameplay issue is the play action pass. The play action isn’t a cheap way to get easy yards like the QB sneak, but it’s a way to neutralize a pass rush. You use the play action, the defensive rushers go after the halfback and the quarterback would look down field and throw a pass. Now, the problem I have with that is, you can do that 4, 5, 10 times in a row and the defense would still bite on it. That shouldn’t happen, especially a highly rated defense, and a highly aware defense. If a player(s) have high awareness in the 90’s they shouldn’t be falling for the play action every single time. That should definitely be improved on.
Those are just a couple of the gameplay eye sores that have issues right off the bat. There’s some other issues with the gameplay that’d I’d like to see improved like ball carrying. Players with 90, 95 shouldn’t fumble 3-5 times a season. They should go a couple of years without fumbling. Same with ball carrying vision. If you have a halfback that has a 90, 95 ball carrying vision, then he should always hit the hole. Those are some issues, but they aren’t cheap, like the play action and the QB sneak.
Now, let’s go to just some other things I’d like to see. I’d like to see the scouting be improved and make it more of a challenge. Right now, scouting is pretty easy. When you start up a new season, a new draft class comes out and depending on your GM you get to see some or all of the players and get a scouting report on them. You basically know all the players that will be good and bad depending on who they are compared to and if their negatives has a “none” in it. So, it’s a bit too easy right now.
The way I’d like to see it improved is by having scouts on your team and depending on how good they are, that’s how good the information. If the scouts are bad, then the information about players may not be accurate. One of the other features I’d like to see is a running tally throughout the year of information. For example, take a player like Jack English from Stanford. Preseason he’s the number 1 pick, Heisman favorite and all that, after every game you get a stat sheet of what he did (IE: 25/30, 325 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs) and then your scout gives you some information like strong arm, accurate deep ball, character issues. Something like that, I’d like to see something like that, it’d be an improvement over the current scouting system.
Last, but certainly, not least, is contract talks. After about 4 or 5 weeks into the season players who have their contract expiring at the end of the season come to you for negotiation, depending on if they want to resign or not. As it is, the big stars only come one or two times in the season and they quit coming. Here, I’d like to see the player to have more control on wanting to resign players. If a star player comes to and doesn’t come back, you are pretty much screwed. He doesn’t come back and you can’t resign him. I’d like to see the player have control and try and resign him during the season. Have the player initiate talks, and depending on the personality of the player, they can choose to talk or not. Just something like.
There are other things I’d like to see improved on, but this is sort of the landscape. You can only improve so much in a game, but these are some that really stand out to me. Well, all right, I’ll wrap this up, so whether or not another one comes out is another story, but if there is, these are some of the features I’d like to see included. So, that’s sort of my long winded wishlist. One, that a new NFL Head Coach comes out, and these features, improvements included. During this Holiday season, what better time to ask for a new game? May’be Santa and/or EA Sports will work together and make this happen. Happy Holidays!
