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John Madden has died
- safaci2000 5y agoThis might be in poor taste, but will the next Madden game be a zombie FPS next year?
- isamuel 5y agoIt’s all over, fat man. You’ll be missed.
- selimthegrim 5y agoRest in peace, you turducken lover. There's a place on the West Bank in New Orleans that made them for him special order and sent them to him on game days.
- damontal 5y agoI’ll never forget him sawing through a turducken with his bare hand on TV as he explained what it was.
- rlyshw 5y ago
- Overtonwindow 5y agoOn the issue of obituaries, etc. on HN, I think it's helpful for us to remember that we are reaching that point when the people of our collective childhoods, the pioneers of technology, media, entertainment, etc. will start to die off. I didn't realize Madden was that old, what a great guy he was.
- dylan604 5y agoThe only thing that happened sooner in my life was musicians.
- Lamad123 5y agoOver the last few days I've been seeing here a lot of these random so and so, zoology/cyclist/librarian legend, dies at some advanced age.
- subpar 5y ago“At the end of the game the team with the most points on the board is going to win.” ― john madden
- christophilus 5y agoMy friends used to say, “Thanks, John Madden” whenever someone said something particularly obvious.
- mysterydip 5y agoFrom one of the earlier madden games: "he tried to go through the hole, but there wasn't any hole."
- liquidise 5y agoMadden was the butt of many jokes for his “duh” comments but the older i get, the more sense they seem to make. I’m reminded of the “software is just ifs and loops” post from weeks back. I had that opinion when I started, lost it for 15 years and find it returning more and more.
- basementcat 5y agoAt least we still have Frank Caliendo.
- kinos 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcTKHupdxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcTKHupdxo
- sfblah 5y agoI wonder what will happen with the game franchise. For a lot of folks his name is synonymous with NFL gaming.
- FillardMillmore 5y agoEA will keep his name and they'll continue to make a boatload of money with each yearly release while making the minimum amount of fan-requested changes with the least effort possible.
- blattinum 5y agolol sadly exactly right I'm sure
- theturtletalks 5y agoThe game is actually regressing. Just bought Madden after 3 years and the initial load time is somehow longer. Game sometimes stutters when running plays. Don't get me started on MUT being pushed everywhere. At this point, I wish they'd give me Madden 07 with better graphics.
- notyourwork 5y agoThey are doing the same thing with Fifa, pushing FUT and hoping kids gamble on packs. Gaming isn't about genuine good fun now, it is too focused on milking Mom and Dads wallets. I took a few years off Fifa because it was heading that direction and I knew it was time to retire. Caved in and purchased Fifa 22 last week after a 3 year sabbatical. My wife: "How's the new game?!?" Me: "Feels like 2019, I'm not sure what I bought." I'm officially done with yearly sports releases and I guess that's ok to them because I'm clearly not their target demographic anymore.
- dylan604 5y ago> I'm clearly not their target demographic anymore. Every year a new crop of kids come of age for the parents to be willing to buy them a game. For the rest, it's a status symbol just like the annual purchase of a new phone. Gotta have the latest player rankings! Like purchasing skins/wardrobe/stickers for in-game use. A whole generation of people that will probably be just fine paying Toyota a monthly fee to use their key FOBs.
- owlbynight 5y agoLegend. Don't think I'd love football nearly as much as I do if he wasn't around calling games when I was a kid. He had an infectious love for the game. The game lost a lot of its appeal when he stopped broadcasting.
- gregd 5y agoTruly a loss to the game of football. I will forever remember his voice while commentating as well as him drawing on screen in a silly fashion, to explain different plays.
- tjr225 5y ago
- PretzelSweat 5y agoErr- EA's Madden series? I'm trying to help.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y agowhere does it say that this website is about tech or engineering
- acjohnson55 5y agoI would argue John Madden is an important figure in tech history by endorsing one of the most popular video game franchises in the world, and moreover, one that brought video gaming into the mainstream.
- ABeeSea 5y agoIt’s also a history of video game technology. You can compare Madden 88, 94, 2002, etc; and see the mini-history of video games. https://youtu.be/3k4TTpjk63k https://youtu.be/3k4TTpjk63k
- clairity 5y agono, it’s because he’s a white guy and kobe was not. note that it doesn’t require explicit racism, just implicit bias, to create such disparities (though it would be statistically unlikely that no explicit racists contributed to this state of affairs).
- acjohnson55 5y agoI'm a Black guy and very much of the activist mindset, but that's just not a reasonable comparison. The first John Madden Football came out in 1988, when Kobe was 10 years old. Jordan vs. Bird came out that same year, which was a cool game. Michael Jordan had all the opportunity to be a better franchise maker, but AFAIK, the next effort he lent his name to was Chaos In The Windy City, and it simply wasn't a very good game, let alone a franchise. Jordan (and Shaq) were conspicuously absent from most NBA products, having negotiated video game rights prior to the NBA negotiating collectively. This is all from memory, so I may not be 100% on this. I don't know if John Madden did anything particularly special or if he just got a bit lucky, but my point is he is embedded in tech history.
- excerionsforte 5y agoI was looking at Madden NFL 200x games last week specifically the assortment of music (Chamillionaire, Earshot, Slipknot, Green day, etc.) that got me into listening to music in the first place. If it wasn't for those games, I don't think I would have ever gotten into football or listening to music. Modden NFL helped demonstrate technology really well in a variety of ways that was fun and interesting to people who didn't see the appeal in video games like Pac Man. It was definitely a big contributor to getting more people into electronic interactive content.
- pram 5y agoHis name shall live on eternally in the stacks of unsold used sports games at Goodwill and Savers.
- hamiltonians 5y agohow much does he or tony hawk make liscensing thier brands to video games?
- kloch 5y agoWhat a loss for Football, what a loss for Broadcasting. I'm pretty sure I saw him coach in the 70's but my fondest memories of him are as a broadcaster in the 80's and 90's. No matter how trivial the thing he said was you felt like you had just received critical knowledge directly from the football Gods. (Because you did!)
- syspec 5y agoGreat 30 for 30 podcast episode, where they feature a few stories /from/ Madden himself about what it was like creating the first John Madden video game and how his early influence helped make it what it became. > Madden's Game: we look back at how John Madden went from being a football player and coach to the conscience of a billion dollar video game franchise that has stayed true to the sport itself. https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/maddens-game/ https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/maddens-game/
- boulos 5y agoI ran into John Madden a few years ago at A.G. Ferrari in Soma (he had a residence nearby at the St Regis). He cut in line in front of me, to get his seemingly daily sandwich. The lady behind the counter and I let it slide. I'm glad I didn't quote the game (or worse, say "boom, tough actin tinactin"), but it was definitely interesting to have thought "Huh, what a wild life. Now he's just an old man who wants a sandwich like anyone else".
- bitexploder 5y agoEven when you are wealthy or famous at the peak of whatever fame or wealth you may have, or at the end of it, some times you just want to be left alone and have a sandwich.
- lokar 5y agoStill, don't cut the line
- bitexploder 5y agoEhh, yeah, that’s not really cool. I wonder how many times he got away with that?
- listenallyall 5y agoLikely zero. "boulos" was probably tapping away at something on his phone or listening to headphones and didn't respond when the employee at the deli counter yelled "Next." Or maybe, it was as simple as an 80-something year-old guy not feeling comfortable leaving his 80-something year-old wife at home alone for long. Whatever happened, boulous is still so bitter about it that he felt it necessary to post this story on the day the man died. Says a lot more about him than about John Madden.
- PickledHotdog 5y agoI'm not sure how you read 'bitter' into his story. Seems like OP just had a moment of realisation that the cultural elites have similar desires to the common folk and wanted to relay that minor connection to the man
- slg 5y agoThe most impressive thing about him is he is a football legend to different generations based on his work in three separate disciplines. People born in the 1950s or earlier remember him as a Hall of Fame coach. People born before the 1990s remember him as the country's most beloved sports broadcaster. People born in the 1990s or later remember him as the guy behind video game football. It is hard to think of anyone else who had a similarly large impact in one field in three such distinct ways.
- dylan604 5y agoHe's also had impact in how camera work for sporting events have been done. They've implemented cameras that were clearly inspired by Madden games.
- darknavi 5y agoAnd those who browse YouTube will remember him as JOHN MADDEN of critical acclaim from Moonbase Alpha videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B488z1MmaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B488z1MmaA
- sul_tasto 5y agoI will remember him for turducken: https://youtu.be/RsAuIsn3Kw4 https://youtu.be/RsAuIsn3Kw4
- silisili 5y agoRight on. I remember him strictly as an announcer. He rarely had anything super important or overly technical to say, but we loved listening to him nonetheless, probably for that reason...like a football grandpa. Reminds me a lot of Harry Caray, and I'll forever miss listening to both.
- listenallyall 5y agoHall of Fame coach with the #1 highest winning percentage in league history, rarely had anything important to say. Unbelievable. You'd probably come out of a personal lecture by Albert Einstein saying, all he talked about was that ancient E = mc2 stuff that we covered way back in high school.
- fabiensanglard 5y agoThis is Chuck Yeager level of loss. Being European I knew these guys mostly thanks to really good video games.
- ptrklly 5y agoThis podcast helped me understand just how significant an accomplishment the Madden video game was—I recommend! https://overcast.fm/+dxvETG06k https://overcast.fm/+dxvETG06k
- topkai22 5y agoOne day in the late 90s or early 2000s a friend and I were playing Madden. My dad walked into the room and announced “huh, why are they playing football on a Friday.” He hadn’t noticed at a casual glance that it was a video game- John Madden’s voice was coming out of the TV and it looked like football, so it must be football. That has always stuck with me as an impressive level of immersion. Sports video games, and Madden in particular, helped mainstream gaming and computing in a very real way. I hope EA brings him back to the cover one last time next year.
- throw7 5y ago
- sosborn 5y agoOk, I'll bite. Why is sport not intellectually interesting?
- throw7 5y agoMy bad. It was a rhetorical question. I don't find anything intellectually interesting about madden though and I suppose that's why I got a little snippy. Supposedly "Hacker News" is intellectually interesting news for "Hackers". I'm not convinced this is. edit: I see am I getting a ton of downvotes, I suppose there's a lot of american football fans on "Hacker News".
- topkai22 5y agoAs covered elsewhere, John Madden’s partnership with EA created one of the most important (and profitable) video game franchises in history. He was/is literally the face of the “sports video game.” That’s relevant to this forum. As for sports, while you can not find it interesting personally it’s clear it is interesting to a huge number of people. The consequences and study of that should be interesting in and of itself.
- makeitdouble 5y agoThis kind of reaction seem to stem from past moderation choices where sport legend deaths’ submissions have been pretty much deleted as off-topic.
- sbagel 5y ago
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- saxonww 5y agoThis article on ESPN has some anecdotes of events in his career, and I think it's really good: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31215567/coach-broadcaster-esports-icon-legacy-john-madden https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31215567/coach-broadcast... Looks like he may have been responsible for at least inspiring the digital first down line that's just part of the broadcast now. It's not all football stuff, though. Hard to know who famous people really are, but he seemed to be a pretty good dude. One thing I remember that I rarely read about is him being involved with marketing for Florsheim shoes. My dad had extra wide feet and for whatever reason the Florsheim dress shoes were the ones he liked to wear for work. On a couple of occasions as a kid I got dragged along with him to the Florsheim store in the mall so he could get shoes. I think this was in the mid-to-late 80s. They had what was basically a video game cabinet, except it was like a guided sales catalog or shoe picker, and it was narrated by John Madden. At least it was something I could mess with instead of sitting around looking at shoes.