Madden Central

Madden Central

INTERVIEW - Ernest Adams

Posted on 4/21/98

Interview with Ernest Adams
Technical Producer for Madden NFL
Education: BA in Philosophy, Stanford University 1984

Right now I write a monthly column on game design for Gamasutra, the webzine for game developers, and the best way to find out how I got my interest in computer games is to read my introductory column, which you can find by clicking here.

[Madden Central] - Considering your colorful background, did you ever think that you would be working in the field that you are working in now?

[Ernest] - Yes and no. I've wanted to write computer games ever since I was ten, when I first played Lunar Lander on a Teletype at a science museum. But I was pretty much of a science guy in high school. I never dreamed that I'd be working on a football game, or directing video shoots with John Madden and Pat Summerall!

[Madden Central] - What was the first project you worked on when you first started at EA?

[Ernest] - I was originally hired as a software engineer to write the sequel to Earl Weaver Baseball II, but I only worked on that for a few months. Scott Orr, the executive producer of Madden, had seen some design documents I wrote, and asked me to join his group full-time as a designer.

[Madden Central] - Out of curiosity, what happened to the sequel to Earl Weaver II (EWB3)? Why didn't the consumers see it?

[Ernest] - Well, that came at kind of a low point in PC gaming. You couldn't count on people to have a VGA boards or even a sound card. The company was making so much money with the Genesis that they wanted to redirect their attention to that platform. So the baseball project was cancelled, and I went to work on football instead.

[Madden Central] - What are some of the other projects you have worked on while at EA?

[Ernest] - I did the video compression for Bill Walsh College Football for the Sega-CD, and I've done some design work for a few other projects as well. But most of my career has been devoted to Madden audio and video. It's my job to put his face and his voice in the game.

[Madden Central] - What was the first Madden game to utilize video? And were you involved with it?

[Ernest] - The 3DO was the first machine EA ever supported that had video capabilities. As EA Sports' flagship product, Madden was naturally selected to go on it, and I was asked to be the designer. We had Scouting Reports on each team, accompanied by NFL Films footage. That was the nucleus that later turned into Madden 101, which now includes historical information and the Coach's Telestrator tutorials as well as team analysis.

[Madden Central] - What where some of the obstacles that you had to overcome implementing the video into this game?

[Ernest] - The real challenge is in the software engineering and not in the video production itself. The trick is to manage the tradeoff between the video quality and the space available on the disc - the more space you allocate to each frame of footage, the better it looks, but the less material you can store. We use MPEG-1 on the PC, and on the Playstation, we have a super-genius video programmer who has built us a proprietary codec [compressor-decompressor]. It looks at least as good as Sony's built-in codec and uses 15% less space on the disc, which means we can give you more audio, video, and game for the money.

[Madden Central] - Madden 101 was a great feature of Madden 98. It allowed the common user (football fan) to understand how the game of football is played. Will 101 still be a feature in Madden 99? If so, what will be different about it this year?

[Ernest] - Thanks! Madden 101 is almost entirely all my work, since it's all video. This year I plan to expand the history section to include all 31 teams (counting the Browns), and we're completely re-recording the Telestrator material to take advantage of our fantastic new polygon technology. In addition, we'll be getting Coach Madden's opinions on the 1998 teams, so the Team Analysis will be all new.

[Madden Central] - What is a typical work day for you like?

[Ernest] - Well, I usually come in around 10 and spend half an hour or so catching up on E-mail and voicemail. After that I start on the main task of the day, and that really depends on the time of year. From November through February, I'm mostly writing audio and video recording scripts. In March and April, I'm organizing the shoots and running them, and that means a lot of time on the phone - setting up equipment, wardrobe, makeup, transportation for our talent, and so on. For the rest of the summer, I'm editing the results together using video editing tools on the Macintosh, and overseeing the EA Media Lab's work of compressing them into the final form and delivering them to our development team. Most days I have a short meeting, or sometimes just a conversation in the hallway, to discuss upcoming issues with other members of the team. I typically work through lunch and leave around 7:30 or 8:00. I'm often in on the weekends as well, though, when it's quieter and there are fewer people around.

[Madden Central] - What steps are taken in order to put video into the game?

[Ernest] - The first thing is to decide how much video we want in the game, and what we want it to be about. After that, we write a script that covers all the material we've decided on. Some of Coach Madden's material is scripted and some of it is ad-libbed - it depends on the context. Then the script gets reviewed very carefully to make sure it covers everything we need. Two years ago, I forgot to have Pat Summerall say "Turnover on downs" in the play-by-play, so whenever a turnover on downs occurred in the game, Pat was just silent. Now we're very careful to make sure that doesn't happen.

After the script is written, we schedule the video production itself. This is a fairly complex business, because we have to get the lighting, audio and video equipment, wardrobe and makeup, and all the people together in the same place on the same day. The video production is the single most expensive 8 hours in the project, and we only have one chance to get it right. I direct the shoot, standing just off-camera where I can talk directly to Pat and John and JB.

Once the shoot is over, the tapes have to be edited to select the takes we want, and then they're captured to computer files in the EA Media Lab. Finally the captured video is compressed into its final forms for the different platforms, and delivered to the developers with instructions about when it is supposed to be played.

In the case of the team analysis and historical material that appears in Madden 101, we take voiceover narration provided by the Coach, and use footage from NFL Films to illustrate the points he's talking about. Often we select footage that can be found on the annual team highlight tapes, but for special items like the introductory movie or the historical videos, we have NFL Films research their vast library of material for just the right shots.

[Madden Central] - Does the pace in which video technology moves make it easier or harder on your job?

[Ernest] - Video production itself doesn't change that much from year to year, so that makes the actual business of filming fairly turnkey. We do our production at Goal Line Studios, which is Coach Madden's own sound stage. All the people out there are consummate professionals, so that part of the job, although complex, isn't difficult.

What does change is video compression technology on the different platforms we support. It's important to select a codec that makes the video look as good as it possibly can given the space limitations on the disc, and we also tune the images to make sure they work well with the codec. For example, the EA Sports studio behind James Brown doesn't have any grids or high-density patterns because they could create a moiré pattern in the video. Even though these are small details, they contribute to the overall quality of the product.

[Madden Central] - What's it like working with John Madden, Pat Summerall, and James Brown?

[Ernest] - They're great. Madden and Summerall are Fox Sports' top broadcast team, and of course James Brown is their anchor, and you can really see why when you work with them. They're all different, naturally. James Brown is very funny and lighthearted, and he always keeps the crew relaxed with his jokes. He's a brilliant announcer, though, and almost never needs to do a second take. Pat Summerall is very quiet and low-key; he's the perfect foil for John's energy and enthusiasm... but every now and then he comes out with something that really cracks us up.

Finally, the Madden line has one advantage that nobody else will ever have, and that's John Madden himself. He's a genuis as an analyst. He can watch 22 guys all running every which way and know exactly what each man is doing and why, and he picks up on crucial little details that ordinary fans would never notice. The Coach cares deeply about the game and is always willing to sit down and talk to us about it. This year we're going to have more of him in the game than ever, both in terms of football strategy and audio/video.

[Madden Central] - You're the sole person who is responsible for putting John's, Pat's and James' personality into the game. How challenging do you find this?

[Ernest] - This is really the most creative part of my work. Of course the goal is to make their performance in the game seem as much like live television as we can. In order to make that happen, I watched every football game that Pat and John broadcast last season, and we actually transcribed two whole games to text files - every word, right down to the "watch the X-Files tonight" announcements. Then we studied the transcripts exhaustively to understand their grammar, vocabulary, and speech patterns. Now we know how often Pat announces the down and distance (it's not every play), how often John talks about the players versus the team as a whole, and so on, and that will be reflected in the play-by-play and color commentary this year. Plus we've got a few surprises hidden among the Maddenisms, so listen carefully!

[Madden Central] - Are there other projects on the horizon other than Madden NFL that you are working on?

[Ernest] - Well, I'm fairly active in the professional community - I write a monthly column on game design issues for a developers' webzine called Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com). I'm also working on a super-secret project here at EA. Suffice it to say it has nothing to do with football and contains no video, so it's a total departure from my usual work, but it's going to be spectacular...

A big thanks goes out to Ernest for taking the time to do this interview. I hope it brings some insight as to what it takes to weave video into the game of Madden NFL.