Driving Me Madden

You know you play a video game too much when you’ve memorized all of the little background noises. At that point, you have two options: stop playing the game forever, or just put the stupid TV/computer on mute.


My husband rides a stationery bike every night, and uses these video games to distract himself from the fact that he’s excersizing. I like to sit and make comments on the color commentary on Madden 12. The next version won’t be coming out for a couple of months, and my husband has had this version for almost a year, so I know the dialogue well.


“They’ll set up shop at the Twenty.” Oh, really? What kind of shop? A lemonade stand? A specialty jewelry store that takes custom orders? An Asian grocery?


“He fires a laser down the field!” That was a football. He threw a football down the field. I don’t think these guys know what they’re talking about.

They do a pretty good job of masking the fact that the dialogue isn’t spontaneous. The most obvious place is when the commentators say the players’ names: “...was his intended target.” “He was brought down by...” “...is ready to kick it away, here...” And the most hilarious part of that is when they try to announce the actions of a player whose name wasn’t pre-recorded. They always seem like they’re hesitating, almost like they’re trying to remember the person’s name before announcing what they did. “...Number 22... was there for the stop!”


My least favorite thing to hear recently is the commentators’ bewilderment about my husband’s desire to run up the points against the computer. “Why go for two up by this margin?” When the score is 3 to 98, there’s no reason not to take chances, so he orders his team to try for two points instead of kicking a field goal after every single touchdown, and after owning the game for so long, my husband knows all the tricks. “Not sure why they were tryin’ to go for two there, it just, uh, makes no sense.” The only challenge, for him, is to see if he can break his own record for points scored in a game, and it’s rare that he doesn’t get at least ten touchdowns per game. “Wow, it really seems that at this point, they are just trying to embarrass the opponents out there!”


Although the game bears his name, John Madden has not done the play-by-play and color commentary in a Madden game for several years. I have a theory that it was because he still wanted to be one of America’s beloved public figures: he didn’t want the families and friends of those who played his game incessantly to hate the sound of his voice.


The moral of our story is this: when you’ve played/watched something so often that you know what the next line is before it is spoken, do your family or roommates a favor and (a) put on some headphones so that only you can hear it, (b) mute it, or (c) play/watch something else. Your family/roommates will thank you.