It’s a bit strange to think of Madden Football in retro terms. Yes, the franchise dates to the eighties- but it still exists today, debatably as the most popular video game of our era, just not one we generally describe as a part of video game culture because, well, it’s football. And Electronic Arts is such an unapologetically corporate institution, the name doesn’t exactly evoke dedicated Apple II programmers. It’s In The Game is also clearly premised at least partially as an advertisement for contemporary Madden, with flash forward segments of programmers working on the game’s contemporary edition. Surprisingly enough, director Nathan Caswell is either a fan of retro gaming himself or at least an exceptionally talented documentarian, because the first episode crams a lot of information in about the early Madden titles, to the point that it’s surprising, yet not surprising at all, that the first episode only goes as far as 1990.
For awhile It’s In The Game is just the story of Trip Hawkins’ lifelong obsession with trying to make a compelling simulacrum of football, and mostly failing due to technological shortcomings. The documentary doesn’t shy away from the fact that the original version of John Madden Football for the Apple II computer is, by any modern standard, mostly unplayable. Hilariously, the main problem with the game is actually that it’s too fast. It doesn’t feel like football. It’s oddly refreshing that this documentary manages to get the whole team together and all of them admit fairly quickly without too much prodding that the game was awful.
Yet none of this is played for drama. These early gaming professionals clearly enjoyed their work and remember it fondly, even granting that most of it didn’t go anywhere. And a lot of this cohesion is pointed directly at John Madden himself. It’s In The Game makes a point of the fact that, while to kids of the nineties John Madden was just some random football guy, in the eighties he was a legitimate popular culture icon who turned down ninety percent of his offers. It’s surprising that John Madden ever agreed to the project, and even more surprising that he sticks with them despite the failures, trying to help them make the game better. Sandy Montag, John Madden’s agent, notes that John Madden was really big loyalty, and similarly genuinely believed the John Madden Football team was doing the best they could and if they couldn’t make authentic video game football, nobody could.
The real hero of the story ends up being Jim Simmons, who was able to put together the behind-the-line-of-scrimmage look that defines all modern football games. Although how the story got to that point is quite convoluted- Electronic Arts realized that football for PCs wasn’t working out, and they needed to try it out on consoles. Loathe to pay licensing fees, they straight up reverse engineer the Sega Genesis, and unlock its sixteen-bit power to create something very new and iconic in the video game world. There are all sorts of fascinating elements beyond all of this, yet It’s All In The Game doesn’t go down too many rabbit holes, staying quite focused on its mission of developing video game football.
It’s In The Game doesn’t really have twists- the presentation respects its audience too much to rely on gimmicks like that. But there are plenty of surprises- like how Joe Montana Football is literally a John Madden Football reskin with most of the best features stripped out. There are plenty of schemes like that which the John Madden Football team seems genuinely surprised they were able to get away with it. Hoodwinking Sega for a better deal and avoiding a lawsuit isn’t presented as them being cheeky, though, but rather just a means of dealing with their financial problems without selling John Madden out, because he’s the guy who made the project work, not Joe Montana.
That’s the first chapter of the story- the creation of John Madden Football. Both the bad version, and the good one. What comes next? While I only vaguely remember my gaming history around nineties football, I’m eager enough for more of these nitty gritty details.
