From the opening scene of former NFL lineman Clint Oldenburg leading a team meeting at Electronic Arts in downtown Orlando, the new documentary series, “It’s in the Game: Madden NFL,” about the history of one of the video game industry’s most beloved franchises makes clear its connection to our region.
In fact, after a series of NFL players yell the game’s tagline – “It’s in the Game” – into the screen, the site shifts immediately to Electronic Arts’ downtown Orlando headquarters.
“Look, feel, play like an NFL superstar,” Oldenburg says to a room full of Electronic Artists. “That is the experience that we want our Madden players to have across the entire game.”
And, just like that, we embark on a 202-minute journey through the history of the classic video game series Madden NFL.
The narrative shifts from early stage discussions using archival footage and interviews from the people who were there to present-day development of the most recent entry into the series.
As a longtime gamer who cut his teeth way back in the late 1980s on the first Madden game, the documentary hit its mark for me.
Frankly, it checks so many boxes.
I’m a sucker for nostalgia, a huge video game nerd, a football enthusiast and an interview geek. So it was a thrill to get a peek behind the scenes of the development and production of the game.
Let me backtrack for a scene-setter here for a second.
When I first arrived in Orlando, I became the Orlando Sentinel’s technology reporter. Little did I know when I accepted the gig, I inherited the beat that covers Electronic Arts.
So, I have had some level of “behind the scenes” and have always had a good level of access for both good news and perhaps less-than-ideal news. But I love how this documentary was shot.
The real appreciation that pours out of some of the NFL players was really cool to see. Even as a kid, I wondered what it would be like to be in a video game so hearing from them provided a good amount of heft to the production.
Also, if I’m not mistaken, this might be the first time I’ve ever seen behind-the-scenes footage of recording sessions for tackles and dropbacks. Seeing the director call “Action!” reinforced something we don’t get to see too often, unless, like me, you are also addicted to “The Making of … ” videos on YouTube.
That is, the games we play today have some of the more advanced technologies at their disposal.
They showed, to a controlled extent, how the sausage was made without revealing too much.
The first episode of the documentary, which launched on Amazon Prime this morning, does a great job of introducing this four-act documentary.
It blends a narrative surrounding the early days of Electronic Arts and the Madden franchise with the story of how the latest video game, Madden NFL ’25, was built during the early part of this year.
Decades later, it confirmed something I suspected even as a kid: The Joe Montana football game was little more than a watered-down, inferior version of Madden. Although I will admit I never knew it was deliberate.
That said, I enjoyed both games for different reasons: Montana for the simplicity of its gameplay and Madden for its complex simulator.
I love realism in my sports video games so it is no surprise that I think Madden blew Joe Montana out of the water.
The documentary follows an exciting trend of video productions that wax nostalgic about some of the fun things we grew up with.
Let me be as upfront as I can be: this isn’t meant as a hard news column meticulously investigating and breaking down the story of Madden and its development. There have been many general video game documentaries and books written about crunch time in the industry, the ups and downs of huge studios like EA and other not-so-flattering aspects of the game industry.
No, it’s a personal column about how the things I once considered majestic and almost mythological – that is, video games and their developers – have become subject material for what I consider really cool, peeled back storytelling of some of the great milestones of my life.
It helps that a couple of the main players in the documentary – Oldenburg and EA executive Daryl Holt – are folks I have interviewed myself.
With aerials of downtown peppered throughout, this one hit home as much if not more than all the others.
And I mean that literally: you can see my old apartment in some of the aerials!
