Now that we have announced the full broadcast integration of both ESPN and CBS Sports into NCAA Basketball 10, Producer Sean Campbell is here to elaborate on what you can expect to see and hear with these new presentation packages.

This is the first time that an EA SPORTS title has had full ESPN in game presentation and the first time any sports game has had CBS Sports integration.  It is also the first time that a sports game has had the option to choose your presentation package, complete with different announcing teams.  ESPN covers over 500 college basketball games per year and CBS Sports has been broadcasting the tournament since 1982.  Knowing this we feel that the integration of these leading brands evoke a strong emotional response when seen in game and will provide you with a greater level of authenticity and immersion.  With all of these changes and innovations there is obviously going to be a lot you have never seen before, let's break it down and walk through all of the different presentation elements that make up what you will see and hear in NCAA Basketball 10.

Audio

One of the first things you will probably notice when you enter into either type of presentation package is the music.  ESPN and CBS Sports coverage of college basketball have legendary signature tunes that instantly remind people of college basketball and March Madness.  It was a must that we had the authentic music that both broadcasts use to help set the tone for a college broadcast as well as help to help lay the foundation for differentiation between the two broadcasts.  Both sets of music really help set the stage and will definitely stir up the feeling of that comes along with exciting college basketball. 

Your ears are not done working after the music stops.  College basketball has great announcers that are synonymous with the sport and we have assembled a collection of the best around.  D1ck Vitale, Brad Nessler and Erin Andrews are back calling your ESPN games this year.  The ESPN crew recorded 2000+ new samples which makes their commentary fresher, less repetitive and ensures they can speak to all of the new gameplay elements that will be taking place after tip off (more on this in Novell's gameplay blog).  We had a lot of community feedback on the ESPN announcing team's commentary and we've spent time on addressing some of the issues like repetitive calls, but for the most part the new samples really help to freshen up the sound of this stellar team.

If you've seen/heard the NCAA Basketball 10 attract video then you can start to get a sense of what to expect from Gus Johnson in a CBS Sports broadcast.  In game he is paired with broadcast legend Bill Raftery who brings his signature style color commentary to help round out the best new addition of video game commentary this year.  These two combined to record over 4000 brand new samples and it sounds amazing in game. 

Adding a brand new announcing team in one year was a huge challenge.  We had to make sure we had the gameplay basics nailed with enough variation to keep it non-repetitive, but we also had to make sure we covered storylines, dynasty and the NCAA tournament to the best possible degree to give the user a worthwhile experience as well as do Gus and Bill justice.  Our audio SE Eric Herbstreit, Connor Dougan and Novell Thomas combed through the commentary every single day for just about the entire cycle making sure we were using everything we recorded and things were sounding broadcast quality.

Overall, with the inclusion of authentic broadcast music, the 2000+ new samples for Vitale and Nessler and the incorporation of a completely new pair of announcers, audio has definitely been taken to the next level for NCAA Basketball 10.

Cameras

Cameras were another major focus for presentation this year.  Being that we had full, authentic graphic package art for two of the most recognizable broadcasts, we had to make sure that what we were framing it with and putting in the background was just as authentic.  Doing this meant changing/tuning all of the cameras in game. (Click images to view in full screen)

To begin with we added a variation of the broadcast gameplay camera.  Along with the standard wide angle broadcast angle, we added a camera with a tighter focus and zoom behavior when the ball enters certain spots on the floor.  This camera will be focused tighter when the ball is in the key/post area as well as the top of the screen along with baseline.  This will allow you more choice in how you experience the game from the broadcast camera angle depending on what it is you want to see.

We replaced every single secondary camera from NCAA Basketball 09.  All the replay, post whistle, post basket and free throw camera angles are new.  The positions of these cameras are meant replicate authentic broadcast camera location and behavior.   This means you will see more cameras at court level and in places around the stadium where a camera man would be situated during a real live broadcast.   There are no more cameras that feel like they are hovering in space providing replay angles that you have never seen on TV before.  Everything you see in game will be through the eyes of a camera that you would be used in a television broadcast.  The game looks tighter and more authentic and this will really help you immerse yourself in the game and make it more exciting. 

With all of the new overlay graphics we have this year, we had to make sure they were given the appropriate backdrop to sit on.  All of the full screen graphics are paired with new wide angle cameras similar to what you would see in a television broadcast.  While some overlays (mostly pre-game and halftime) are matched with a NIS of players, mascots or cheerleaders.

Overlays, Wipes & Montages

If you have not seen the broadcast integration trailers, take a peek to see some of the overlays and wipes in action. This was one the biggest investments of the whole presentation project.  We created two brand new packages from scratch in one year.  Usually a presentation package upgrade is one version and evolves in a lot of ways from the previous year.  For us, not only were we starting from square one, we were going to double the amount of work that is usually spent on presentation graphics.

Here's just one example to consider helping you get a picture of the amount of work and detail that was involved. Our lead screen artist had to create 2 sets of broadcast specific logo sets (that are used in different overlays and wipes) for every team in the game. That's over 600+ unique pieces of art for logos alone! You'll see these logos in various overlays like National Top 25, player stat pop ups and team/player montage wipes (to name a few).

With this being the first time EA has had the opportunity to get broadcast style overlays and wipes in the game we really wanted to make sure we nailed the functionality and quality that people are used to seeing when they watch college basketball on ESPN and CBS Sports.  We had an amazing team of artists, renderers and SE's working on building and implementing all the assets in game.  We received tons of source art and animations from ESPN and CBS Sports to help us capture as much detail in the art and animations as possible.

What you see in game aims to replicate what you see on a broadcast.   Here are a few examples of overlays you will see at different points in the game.

Pre-game

o    Starting lineups

o    Players to watch

Halftime

o    Keys to the game update

o    1st half stats

End of game

o    Players of the game

o    Replay montage with score

In game

o    National and Conference Rankings

o    Player stat pop-ups

o    Team stats

o    Individual current game stats and averages (when in dynasty)

We also re-skinned every EA SPORTS gameplay pop up and menu that you see in game that is specific to the game.  For example: play calling, pause menu, timeout menu, coach PIP.

(Note: If you make roster edits to names or appearances you will see those changes reflected in overlays anywhere you see a player head or a place for a player name, one example being starting lineups.)

Replay montages were another element we added in game that really add a lot of production value and are key pieces in helping you to follow storylines throughout the game.  Along with your standard single highlight replay (with replay wipe and speech commentary) there are montages that show a collection of a certain type of replay based on how the teams are performing.  If a team is shooting a high % from 3 there will be a 3 point shooting montage, if a player is taking over the game you'll see a montage with his highlights, if your whole team is playing well you'll get a team montage.  There are numerous different variations of montages that can be shown, each with their own specific wipe and speech commentary, and they really add another layer the stories that are unfolding every time you play a game.

There are also general highlight montages that play along with the broadcast music and speech commentary at the end of each half and when a timeout is called.  These montages really help to give the game time to breathe as you enjoy some highlights from your game.

People who watch college basketball are used to seeing and extracting info out of the score overlays and montages during the games they watch on ESPN and CBS Sports. We had to nail this functionality and be true to the broadcast in order to make it authentic and easy to gather info and make changes based on that information. It is also a lot of fun knowing that the stats showing up in the ESPN or CBS Sports broadcasted game you are playing are a direct result of you playing a game or working through a dynasty.  ESPN and CBS Sports are recording and surfacing YOUR stats, YOUR team's averages, YOUR work. 

As you can see there is a lot to see and hear in this year's game.  Take a look at the screens and the video for a taste of what it looks like in action.  Next time I will be talking about presentation in dynasty and the tournament.  Thanks for reading.

~Sean

Sick highlights to a nice Kanye track...I’ll just keep watching this until the season starts back up. Ok back to player visuals.

As we start to wrap up the game, it’s amazing to see just how far LIVE 10’s player visuals have come. Today I’ll be going over those improvements in more depth.

For Ryan's full blog with screens, go to the NBA LIVE 10 In the Paint blog:  So Amazing

With still a few months until the game ships, the NBA LIVE 10 team is starting to pick up the pace and sharing more with the community.  Is it enough?  Is it ever enough???  Like you, I want to hear it all!  Well, from what I'm being told there is a lot of great stuff that LIVE fans should be excited about and all the producers are on board with sharing their hard work with all of you from now until the game ships.  This week, Presentation Producer Matt Lafreniere shares his thoughts on some of the new ways the team has enhanced the look and sound of the game.

I was going to start this thing off by posting some screenshots of a couple other pre-game rituals we have in the game this year, as I know there’s some speculation as to what ones we have other than the Dwight shimmy and the LeBron and KG chalk-ups.  But, instead I’ll be showing some of these in a presentation/visuals video sometime next week.  What a weak way to start out a blog, huh?  I will say this though, we used this reference for one of them:

Presentation was a big focus for us this year and encompassed a lot of different things: The broadcast look (overlays, screen wipes, replays).  The broadcast sound (Marv Albert and Steve Kerr).  The arena life (crowd, bench players, referees, dance teams and cheerleaders).  The arena sounds (crowds, PA announcers, sound effects and ditties).  And, stoppages in play (player emotions and reactions, player interactions).  Our goal was to make every game unique and authentic this year by taking all of these into account.  In addition, we wanted to make sure the regular season was different than the playoffs.  All of these things have been touched/overhauled to deliver a much different experience than previous iterations of LIVE.

Over the past couple of years we’ve done a decent job of creating an okay ‘basketball’ environment, but hadn’t taken it to the next step of creating unique ‘NBA’ environments.  One of the things I just read on Operation Sports sums it up really well: “As we all know, all the arenas felt the exact same last year in 09, other than the logos etc.” (pbz06).  I’m going to dive into some of the things we’ve done this year to make sure we really bring different arenas to life. 

Welcome To The Playoffs

Crowds not only look completely different in regular season compared to the playoffs (post season crowds have most of the fans wearing team colours, waving towels and on their feet early and often), but they sound dramatically different too.  Over the past couple of years we’ve sent audio guys to NBA games to record the crowds and sounds at a bunch of different arenas, and this is the first year where we have been able to use the playoff crowds we recorded.  Crowds in the regular season are pretty solid.  We amped them up a little bit compared to last year and added in all new sounds to make sure they’re all fresh.  But, when you hop into a playoff crowd it’s pretty crazy.  They’re a lot louder.  They’re chanting and cheering off the opening tip. And they’ll be booing much more on no-calls and even booing the other teams star player on occasion.  All of the chants are ditties are different, so things like the D-Fence chants are way more powerful in the playoffs.  So, all in all, you have two completely unique experiences in these differing atmospheres.     

BEAT LA!  Beat LA!

Second, the unique sounds, sound effects, PA calls, and chants that we’ve put in our game this year add another level of authenticity to each arena.  We’ve got a couple hundred unique sounds this year and rather than list all of them out I’ll just throw some examples up here that you can listen to.  (By the way, as much as I love trades in the NBA, it’s made a few of the things we’ve put in this year obsolete which sucks.  One of my favorite PA calls was “Did You See V-C!” after Vince dunked in Jersey and one of favorite chants “Rocky!  Rocky!  Rocky!” for Belinelli when he’s playing well in Golden State are a couple of examples of sounds not triggering anymore due to trades.)  We were lucky enough to work with a bunch of NBA Teams who helped provide some reference for us.   

Chants & Reactions

We didn’t want to just put in a bunch of sound effects and say each arena is different. We wanted to make sure our crowds were intelligent and basketball savvy.  We wanted to get them involved.  Honestly, hearing Vince get booed in our game when he’s in Toronto is pretty sweet.  Whether you’re a Raps fan and love the booing, or a Vince fan who silences the crowd with each made basket, it adds a whole new aspect to the game.  Especially if Marv and Steve are talking about it from the opening tip.  Or, hearing the Ric Flair “Wooooo” after Chris Paul buckets in New Orleans.  Or, being in Boston and hearing the fans yell “Beat LA” throughout the game.  Or, hearing “Scalebrine (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap)” if the Ginger Ninja is ballin’.  What’s cool about all of these is that they are actual chants from NBA games and not things we recorded ourselves at our studio here.  We’ve added a ton of these things in that will trigger based on what’s happening in the game.  You might even hear Kobe or LeBron get some MVP chants on the road.  Sound effects can get lost and drowned out from crowd reactions, and really don’t evoke too much emotion. But these chants and cheers really bring the arena to life and add a while new element to the story of the game.  By the way, still waiting to see if Starbury signs on with anyone and see how he’ll get treated in New York in our game…

I’m going to post a few videos of the reference we used to gather our sound effects/chants/PA this year.  Gameplay vids will be coming soon to highlight these all in the action.  For now, this is just a sneak peak at some that we’ll have in game.

Once again, we worked with a lot of NBA teams on these to get their sound effects.  So, you’ll hear things like the bomb drop sound for 3 pointers in Phoenix.  The backboard shatter sound on dunks in Orlando.  The train sound effect if LaMarcus Aldridge scores in Portland.  The sword swipe sound on made freethrows in Cleveland.  I actually didn’t realize how many of these were played in the NBA.  It’s crazy. Some teams have sounds for every player.  Some teams don’t do anything at all.  Unfortunately, a lot of teams play song clips for their players and we weren’t able to get a lot of them in (licensing those songs can be pretty costly).  But, all in all, we have a lot of these that will help bring out more of an authentic feel to each stadium. 

Al Murdoch is back this year (I know a lot of people were wondering).  But, we approached our PA a little bit differently this year to ensure we got a lot of signature call-outs in the game.  We would play a bunch of video clips for him and have him re-enact them.  Then our sound artist would tweak them a little to get them sounding as realistic as possible.  So, not only do we get a lot of signature call-outs for players (G-g-g-g-gerald Wallace), but a lot of team stuff too (For threeeeeeeeeeee in Atlanta).  He’ll also call out such things as Taco Night in LA or Pizza Night in Toronto (if that event happens to be triggered in the game you’re playing.  Here’s some reference video of what we showed Al to replicate.  These will be in our game this year (plus a whole lot more):

Most of the stuff above has been talked about somewhat in previews or on the boards.  Hopefully there’s some stuff in there that’s new and was worth the read so far.  Now, a quick sneak peak at our broadcast as I know people are curious about a few things.  As most of you know, presentation hasn’t been a big focus for the NBA LIVE’s in the past.  So, when we started up this year we knew we had to rebuild a solid foundation to ensure we could deliver some cool stuff this year and really build on it in the future.   One of these areas we focused on this year was replays. 

Let’s Take A Look At That Replay

In the past, the only time a replay would trigger was after a made basket, during gameplay.  While it would give you a good chance to trash talk your buddy it would also interrupt the flow of the game and not mimic a broadcast.  Last year there was a replay montage at half, but it would only play if you actually watched replays in the first half so they can save to your hard drive.  If you skipped those replays during gameplay you wouldn’t see the montage.  So, this year we re-vamped it.  We re-did how replays worked to ensure we could save them off in the background and trigger them at appropriate times in the game (stoppages in play).  By doing this not only were we able to show some cool stuff that’s happened, but also tell the story of the game.  After a reach-in foul you may see a replay montage of a player who is playing well.  Or, you may see replays of a team hitting from deep if they’ve been able to hit  a lot of 3 point shots or a lot of dunks and lay-ups if they’ve been able to get to the rim effectively.  Maybe you’ll see replays of a team committing a lot of turnovers if that’s contributing to the reason why they’re losing.  You’ll also see replays at the quarter breaks and end of game to sum up what went down.   

Dynamic DNA/Storylines

I don’t want to get into too much detail here, as I’ll probably be talking about this in a blog later on, but I know people are curious as to what the storylines are and how they’ll work.  We’ve created over  100 storylines that can occur throughout the course of a year.  And these are driven off of real-life data and our feed from Dynamic DNA.  So, not only is gameplay evolving throughout the year, our presentation is too.   To take an example from the boards, if Ramon Sessions is playing out of his mind Marv and Steve might talk about him being on fire.  Or, if he’s averaging 25 points a game they might talk about him being one of the top scorers in the league.  If his ratings start to increase he might also be talked about as a Star player or potential MVP candidate.  What’s exciting is real-life will help drive what Marv and Steve talk about throughout the year.  What this ensures is that some storylines will only trigger at certain points in the season so that you hear never before heard speech as the season progresses.     

A few examples of possible storylines:

1.    The Magic are on a winning streak
2.    An MVP candidate match-up between Kobe & LeBron
3.    Kevin Durant is leading the league in scoring
4.    Tracy McGrady is injured
5.    Mid way through the season and the Cavs are first in the east
6.    The Suns are chasing the final playoff spot
7.    The Magic have locked up home court advantage
8.    The Shaq – Kobe Saga Continues

That’s a quick and dirty sum up of what it is.  Like I said, I’ll probably get into more details on this later.  And yes, it also works in your Dynasty Mode. 

One more thing on Marv and Steve.  We spent a ton of time this year ensuring they sound better than ever and filling in a lot of dead air we’ve had in the past (It sounds a lot easier to do than it actually is).  We took on some new technology which has allowed us to do this, while not being repetitive in the same game.  Compared to last year it’s a huge difference.   

Cut Scenes Suck

In the past when the whistle blew we used to trigger canned cut scenes (we call them NIS: Non-Interactive Sequences).  While these visually looked pretty good, they completely killed the flow of the game and didn’t allow us to have an organic transition from gameplay to post whistle.  Quite often a player would be fouled at the foul line, but when the NIS triggered he was placed at the 3 point line.  Or a player was fouled in an isolation situation, but when the cut scene would trigger there would be a bunch of his teammates around him.  Problems like this occurred frequently, and also, the amount of these NIS we had became quite repetitive.  Gamers usually just skipped them.  This year we made sure that gameplay was extended into the stoppage of play and the transition was seamless.  There are no more cut-scenes.  If a player gets fouled he’ll instantly react and we just trigger unique cameras to focus on him.  If a player picks up a charge he’ll immediately show his frustration.  We’ve added well over a couple of hundred animations this year.  Varying levels of intensities, multi-player reactions (high 5’s, chest bumps, disagreements, etc.) and signature reactions can all occur throughout the course of the game.  What this means is that no stoppage of play is ever the same.  Once we start showing some gameplay vids you’ll see some of these in action.   



On Your Feet

Our bench and crowd received an overhaul this year as well with all new animations, improved reactions and they animate at 60 FPS.  We wanted to make sure they were really involved in the game and all of the logic, partnered with the visuals stuff Santos has done on them, equals a heightened level of arena life.  At the end of a close game when the fans are on their feet and the benches are going nuts, the game feels so much different than a blowout where everyone’s seated and chilling.  

We’ve done a ton of other things in presentation this year from the intros, to the overlays, to our Player Of The Game.  Some things are big and some are small, but it all adds up to a brand new presentation package.  I’m going to end this bad-boy here since it’s gotten pretty long.  Glad to see people are pumped for the game this year.  It really has come a long way this year and is looking and playing great.  (Be patient…gameplay blogs and videos are coming soon).

Matt

With the game's first look trailer dropping this week, NBA LIVE 10 Visual Games Designer Ryan Santos gives us a closer look at how the game has become more culturally relevant from visuals such as tattoos and authentic gear that players will be wearing, to the soundtrack that you can expect to hear in this year's game.

Swagga Like Us was the infamous hook made popular by T.I., Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z. It kinda sums up how I feel about NBA LIVE 10. I’m proud to say NBA LIVE is back in a big way.

For me, coming back to LIVE has been a great experience. As an artist, I was part of the LIVE team for years. At the start of development for NBA LIVE 2005, I moved off the team to work on our NBA Street titles. Now 5 years later, I’ve been lucky enough to take on a role as a game designer on the game that started it all for me.

A huge focus for us this year was to make NBA LIVE more culturally relevant. That meant a lot of things; from the revamping the visuals, to new game modes, and of course an all new soundtrack. All the decisions we made around those areas always took into account the culture of hoops. That’s really a huge part of my job as a designer. To take inspiration from the things that relate back to basketball and incorporate it into my design. How great is it that my research consists of watching NBA games/highlights, reading bball mags, surfing sneaker blogs and listening to music. Today I wanted to touch on a few things that make NBA LIVE 10 more culturally relevant.

For the visuals, things like updating tattoos; to having the freshest player exclusive shoes in the game was a must. We’re also bringing back a grip of NBA throwback and holiday/cultural jerseys. It may not seem like a big deal to some people when a guy like LeBron is missing some tattoos and his away color signature Nikes, but to our core audience this isn’t authentic. It breaks the reality of sim sports titles when details like that are missed… not this year. When you boot up NBA LIVE 10, it’ll look like a completely new game, where players and stadiums will look as authentic as ever. Below are some images showing you examples of the various visual improvements.

Player likeness:

Up to date tattoos:

The newest kicks:

Throwback and cultural/holiday uniforms:

As you can see the game not only looks amazing, but brings back the culture of hoops to our game.  On that note, we’ve re-designed your experience upon entering the game for the first time. Last year, you were taken into an NBA practice facility…. “We talking about practice?” Don’t worry, the practice gym is still around, but we decided to take a fresh approach on the user’s first time in the game. Now you’ll enter an all new state of the art player’s gym. Internally we’ve dubbed it the “Hangar.” Much of the inspiration was taken from the Nike Commercial for the Air Force 1 25th anniversary campaign.

I also thought about the idea of these players building their dream gym. I looked at various architecture for direction on the interior of the space.

Here are some images to show you some of the inspiration and concept art:

Here’s the final look:

It went from feeling cold and empty, to warm and alive. The use of different materials gave us more contrast and interest.

In the Hangar, you’ll see the top players hanging out in cool gear like signature shoes and branded apparel. The soundtrack will be bumping while you practice some of the new gameplay mechanics. Overlays will appear to walk you through some of those new controls. We also kept the video screens on the walls to feed you ESPN content, and some video on demand content from our servers. Throughout the year we’ll be posting some cool videos for you to watch in the hangar. In addition, there will be dynamic on-screen messaging to keep you up to date on the latest NBA LIVE 10 news, like Dynamic DNA updates.

By now, most of you have probably seen our NBA LIVE 10 cover athlete reveal video:

It featured none other than superman Dwight Howard, along with the voice of hip hop icon Mos Def. Mos is one of the artists that came up many times when we started to talk about the soundtrack. With the help of our EA Worldwide Music Group in LA and our marketing team at EA Canada, we got Mos Def to do all of the voice over in the video. Using a voice as recognizable as his, was one of the elements that would really make this video tight. Obviously I’m a huge fan of his music, but more importantly, his influence on hoops. If you remember his song “Umi Says,” it was used in a Brand Jordan commercial for the Air Jordan XVI.

Then he went on to make a sick Converse commercial called "Invisible Game.”

He was the obvious choice when we started to brainstorm about the video. To me, his voice over is another detail that sets the tone for NBA LIVE 10. Stay tuned because you may just be seeing more of Mos Def and NBA LIVE 10.

To listen to some of the singles from our soundtrack, check it out here:  NBA LIVE 10 Official Soundtrack

Well that wraps up my first blog post for this year. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more stuff to show you just how far NBA LIVE 10 has come visually. Thanks for following our blog, and I look forward keeping you guys up to date on the latest NBA LIVE 10 insider info.

Peace,
Ryan

Hey Madden fans - just wanted to drop in with a bit of good news and show an upgrade that we've added to Madden NFL 10 - and that is the addition of the USAF Thunderbirds!

These elite pilots make a guest appearance in our Super Bowl and Conference Championship games, buzzing over the stadium at speeds exceeding 300 mph, leaving a nice trail of smoke in their wake:

It's actually kind of a funny story how these guys ended up in Madden.

We're still maintaining a bit of secrecy on many of our presentation upgrades so far this year, but I can mention that we spent a really large amount of time creating a new scripted scene "system" - in essence a better toolset for us to build things with. We were focused on really fixing up our processes and pipelines to make sure that it was extremely easy to add any kind of prop (i.e. a jet), animation (i.e. a player with his hand over his heart), character (i.e.a coach), and visual effect (i.e. smoke) into the game, without requiring the work of an engineer. In Madden's history, we have never had a real easy time adding things like trophies or fans without a lot of engineering work - after all, we couldn't even take the helmets off the players until this year. :) I'll make sure we do a whole blog on the bonuses of this system and what all it's gotten us sometime after E3 (when we're closer to done with all the stuff we're still working on), but this week it seemed fitting to talk about the genesis of the Thunderbirds pre-game flyover and how we were able to get it all added to Madden NFL 10.

The week of this year's Super Bowl (Cards/Steelers), a few of us were feeling a little dangerous and wanted to see what all our new scripted scene system could handle as it was still in it's early stages. With a little experimentation, we were able to get a rudimentary version of a flyover into the game, only we didn't have any plane models at the time. So we had to improvise...we could have done players, but that would have been boring...so we chose injury carts. :)

We also assigned them a little smoke effect that someone had already authored just to get the point across...check it out:

This got a lot of laughs around the office, but it also got a lot of people fired up to do it the right way. When you're working on a game with really tight deadlines, it is often quite tricky to add new things that were never planned for or scheduled. In this case though, immediately a ton of people volunteered their own personal time to make this flyover perfect and make it into a big moment - animators, audio engineers, audio artists, VFX artists, etc. We even went out and got a license for the final notes of the Star Spangled Banner to play before they cruised over.

Oddly enough, right when this prototype went in, some folks with the USAF Thunderbirds actually contacted John Madden himself at the Super Bowl and expressed interest in being in the game! John forwarded them over to us to see how feasible it would be, and obviously we were extremely psyched to be able to add that extra level of authenticity (instead of plain grey generic jets, or worse, injury carts.) :)

Our artists went to work on creating the custom paint job for the F16's that the Thunderbirds fly, and easily enough we were able to swap out our lowly injury carts with the real thing. Below are some close-up shots of the custom model that our artists worked so hard on:

So there you have it folks - a quick explanation of how the USAF Thunderbirds ended up in Madden NFL 10. Start getting your gameplan together - by August 14 you need to be ready to take your team to Super Bowl XLV in Miami so you can see them yourself.

- Ian Cummings
Lead Designer, Madden NFL 10