An Open Letter of Thanks to the Madden Team

Dear EA SPORTS Madden Team,

I wanted to take a moment to simply say thank you.

I have been purchasing and playing “Madden” for around 35 years, and when I stop and think about what that actually means, I realize that Madden has been part of nearly my entire adult life.

My love of football games actually began before video games became what they are today. I grew up playing electric, Strat-O-Matic, and other tabletop football games. I loved the imagination, strategy, statistics, and the ability to recreate the great game of football. Those games allowed me to become a player, coach, general manager, statistician, and broadcaster all at once.

Then Madden came along.

I remember when Madden was something new. Over the decades, I have watched the series evolve from those early games into an extraordinarily detailed recreation of professional football. I have watched the graphics change, consoles come and go, the game evolve, players retire, new generations of NFL stars emerge, and the presentation become increasingly immersive.

But looking back now, I realize something else was happening during all those years:

My life was changing, too.

I got married. My wife and I built a life together. I became a husband and a father. We welcomed our first child in 2006 and our second in 2011. I built a career, took on new responsibilities, changed jobs, experienced successes and disappointments, and went through the same financial ups and downs and unexpected turns that most families experience.

There were years when things were going very well, and there were years when money was much tighter. There were career changes, new responsibilities, difficult decisions, and times when life simply did not go according to plan.

Yet somehow, every year, there was Madden.

Even during the years when funds were limited and buying a new video game was not necessarily an insignificant purchase, Madden was the game I found a way to have.

Looking back, that means something to me now that I probably did not fully appreciate when I was younger.

Madden became one of those small constants in life.

My family grew. My children grew up. Jobs changed. Houses changed. I grew older. Technology changed. The NFL changed. There were good years and difficult ones. There were times when life felt predictable and other times when almost nothing seemed certain.

But when football season came around and through that year, there was Madden.

There was something reassuring about that familiar ritual—opening a new Madden, learning what had changed, seeing the new rosters, playing teams, starting another season or, studying players, calling plays, and once again losing myself for a little while in the world of football.

For a few hours, I could still be that person who once sat on the floor playing electric football, or studied Strat-O-Matic cards, and imagined an entire football universe unfolding in front of him.

Today, I am 60 years old.

That young football fan is still very much a part of me.

I still appreciate the strategy. I still love the statistics. I still enjoy building a team. I still enjoy the anticipation before kickoff. I still love hearing the sounds of the stadium and experiencing the presentation of a football game.

And I still look forward to Madden.

There is something remarkable about being able to say that a game has accompanied you through more than 35 years of your life. Madden has been there during my marriage, the births and childhoods of my two children, decades of my career, job changes, financial challenges, accomplishments, disappointments, and countless ordinary days in between.

In a small but meaningful way, Madden has become connected to the memories of those years.

That is why I wanted to write.

I know developing a game as large and complicated as Madden cannot be easy. Fans are passionate, expectations are incredibly high, and there will always be conversations about what should be changed, added, removed, or improved.

But sometimes I think the people behind these games deserve to receive a message that asks for absolutely nothing.

No complaint.

No feature request.

No criticism.

Just:

THANK YOU!

Thank you to the programmers, artists, designers, producers, researchers, writers, audio teams, presentation teams, testers, and everyone else—past and present—who has contributed to Madden over all these years.

Many of you will never meet the people who play the games you create. You may never know what role something you worked on ultimately played in someone's life.

For me, Madden provided thousands of hours of entertainment, but it also provided something harder to quantify: familiarity.

A constant.

A connection to football.

And, increasingly, a connection to different chapters of my own life.

When I play Madden today, I am enjoying the newest version of the game, but somewhere in that experience is also the younger version of myself playing football games decades ago. There is the young man beginning his career. There is the husband. There is a father. There is the person navigating career changes and responsibilities. And now there is the 60-year-old who can look back and appreciate just how quickly all those years passed.

The consoles have changed.

The graphics have changed.

The NFL has changed.

My life has certainly changed.

But every year, somehow, Madden has been there.

From electric and Strat-O-Matic football to Madden NFL today, the technology has changed beyond anything I could have imagined when I was younger.

The reason I play, however, really hasn't changed at all.

I simply love football.

And for more than 35 years, Madden has allowed me to experience that love of the game in my own way.

For that, I sincerely thank you.

Please share my appreciation with the people who work on Madden today and, in spirit, with all those who helped build this remarkable franchise over the decades.

Here's to the next kickoff.

With sincere appreciation,

Chris 
Madden player for more than 35 years