Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Talking sports with EA Tiburon GM Philip Holt

EA Tiburon General Manager Philip Holt sits down with Ars to chat about the …

First and ten

Just prior to his speech at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, EA Tiburon general manager Philip Holt sat down with Ars to chat about the past, present, and future of the house that built Madden.

Ars Technica: One of the big news stories recently was that EA got NFL exclusivity for another few years, so why don't we start with that? Tell us what it means for EA, how it's going to affect the company moving forward, and what it's like to have a stranglehold over the NFL like that?

Philip Holt: Yeah, we're really happy to have that part of the business behind us, and we know we're going to make licensed NFL games for the next couple of years, so the team can focus on what they do. From a team perspective, there's just a lot less of a sense of focus around exclusivity.

What it means for them, day-to-day, is that there are certain things that are easier to deal with from the licensing partner—we have a tight relationship with the key people [in the NFL]—and it just makes certain things easier to get done. As always, our focus is on delivering a number one-rated product, all formats for any kind of game in the market. It hasn't really changed anything for us; we want to build the best football game we can, one that's at the top of the industry year in, year out.

Ars: One of the questions that such exclusivity raises in the community is how are you going to keep innovating and moving forward without the competition, without the 2K football?

Holt: We look at the broad industry as competition; we do competitive analysis of the big titles in the industry, regardless of genre. Madden transcends being a sports title to become an entertainment property that informs popular culture. We want to create a game experience that's true to football and authentic to everything that Madden stands for, but that is open to a casual or a passive fan of football wants to buy because of what we deliver.

We look at that stuff. We look at where people spend their time these days; you know, increasingly, things like Facebook are becoming really important for us to understand and deal with so we can leverage it.

Ars: Looking at EA Sports' other franchises where there is competition, it seems like the EA titles are still the fan favorites. What is that secret recipe, that magic formula, that makes EA games succeed even where there is that competition?

Holt: That's a good question. It's hard to answer because it's the little bit of special sauce. Clearly, there's a level of production quality that we try to bring to everything: every screen has the spit-shine polishing, gleaming, we go big on bringing the right athletes for the cover, and those kinds of things. It's a really tremendously authentic experience that is the core of EA Sports. In fact, when you look back to the beginning of the relationship with John Madden, one thing he insisted on was that we have to have 11-on-11 football. It was hard to do, but we stepped up. That drive is what set the tone; it's the tagline, you know, if it's in the game, it's in the game. The guys that work on the titles are committed and passionate fans of the sport: they started on the Genesis playing Madden as kids and they're sort of living the fantasy, the dream life, of contributing the legacy of what Madden has become. It's true gamers building this stuff.

Having to put out a big product every single year, every August, has made us good at very specific things.

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