It's Franchise Time

If anyone thought the wait leading up to the release of Madden 10 was tough, try waiting another five days for updated rosters including Michael Vick and Brett Favre.

Because that’s what any true franchise game did, you know who you are. Today there will be more franchises started than probably any other day this year. If we’re lucky, maybe 5-10 of them will last for more than a month or two.

It can be one of the most exciting things when getting a football game and the biggest letdown.

For those who don’t like to venture online, franchises make Madden what it is today. But getting a good, competitive and realistic franchise to be enjoyed for a year is not that easy, in fact it’s nearly impossible.

There are, however, some key steps that can be taken to maximize your franchising experience.

Under the username “crusaderhoops10,” I ran franchises and dynasties at the MaddenMania boards pretty successfully since 2006. It wasn’t easy and it took a lot of hard work but I do feel I did a decent job of it.

The first hurdle to overcome is getting realism. It would be pointless if I was writing this article and didn’t think that this could be achieved with this year’s version of Madden, but that is not the case.

This is by far the most realistic Madden since the launch of next-gen gaming and thus has the potential for some nice franchises.

Last year the sliders were screwy, the CPU couldn’t run and the logic of the CPU-controlled teams was completely flawed. This is all almost fixed completely this year, with maybe the exception of the CPU still struggling to move the rock on the ground, but sliders are able to fix that this year.

This first step to take in starting your franchise is to get a good, tough slider set you are confident can yield realistic results. This isn’t going to happen overnight either. Go on the message boards and trial and error some of the sets people have posted, then add your own modifications to mold your playing level.

You should play almost an entire season of games against the CPU before playing the first game of your real season.

Use a lot of teams too and make sure you control the favorites and underdogs in different games to make sure you can get a feel for how certain games should flow with your sliders.

Once you’re ready with your sliders, it’s time to pick a team. I strongly recommend not picking one of the better teams in the game because early success is the leading cause in disinteresting franchises.

Once you select your team take some time to sit down and think about what type of year you expect for this team in real life. You have to then decide if your sliders can make this happen.

Don’t underestimate how fun and rewarding losing early in a franchise can be. It makes winning later so much better and gives you a chance to get some solid rookies when the draft comes around without making cheesy trades to move up in the draft.

Once you’re ready, begin your first game and get ready to start changing your sliders again because it always happens like this the first game. If you think you have perfect sliders, you’ll probably end up in a shootout in your first game.

That’s okay because this is a video game and there are a few things that only happen in video games that you have to put up with for your franchise to last.

You’ll probably have to keep changing your sliders during and after most games in that first season. There’s nothing wrong with ending up with inconsistent stats as long as by the end of the season everything looks reasonable.

To mention a few things that you must put up with: your team will probably always be in the top 5 in scoring in the league, your pass defense will likely be the worst every year, your offensive linemen should never make the Pro Bowl because they won’t get enough pancakes, the player you control on defense will probably be going to Hawaii every year regardless of who he is, and your kicker will make over 90 percent of his kicks every year.

This are just some of the things you will most likely always have to bear in mind when analyzing the realism of your stats. It’s better to have the worst pass defense in the league and go .500 than going undefeated with a middle of the road pass defense.

The most important thing is to have fun and enjoy the franchise. Do it for yourself. If you are sharing a franchise on the message boards, do it for you and not just to try and get a lot of readers.

Aim to win a Super Bowl in your eighth or ninth season, not you second or third, it’s more fun that way.

With that said, it is now time. Everyone get out your Madden disc, go online, get the roster with Vick and Favre and crank up that franchise engine. Hopefully it will last because this year it should.

Thank you, my name is Andrew.