EA Sports Exec Talks “Madden” Curse & Those Eerily Accurate Super Bowl Predictions

[With the new must-have “Madden 16” game finally available this week, EA Sports Creative Director Rex Dickson talks to SOHH about the mythical “Madden” curse and how they are able to make such accurate Super Bowl predictions every year.]

We don’t think about that too much. I think [Seattle Seahawks’] Richard Sherman kind of bucked that trend last year and I think [New York Giants’] Odell [Beckham Jr.]’s going to have a great year this season.

It’s interesting to see the pop culture mythology surrounding “Madden” with the “Madden Curse” and our ability to predict the Super Bowl. It’s all cool stuff but yeah, the development team doesn’t really think about that stuff.

We really leave that up to PR and marketing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eVF9uBbuqc

If you think about building a simulation game, a game that’s trying to emulate a real-world sport, we’re using ratings and traits and stuff that’s pretty much in an NFL scouting report.

So if we have these scales of ratings and traits and we’re sort of matching that to performances we’re seeing on the field in the real sport and we talk about that simulation system being almost 20 years mature now, my expectation is if we’re true and honest about us making a simulation game, then that simulation engine should be able to do an accurate prediction of what you see in the NFL.

That’s not just who wins the Super Bowl. That’s passing stats over the year – how many interceptions is [New England Patriots’] Tom Brady or [Denver Broncos’] Peyton Manning going to throw in a game in a given year because If any of that stuff goes wrong in the game, our fans let us hear about it.

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