"I think in our heads, subconsciously as gamers, we feel like, 'Well, they just have some knobs to turn to do this thing. When he first arrived, Oldenburg said what surprised him the most was how difficult it is to make video game at all. And that was the first thing and still the thing that I'm most proud of because that pass blocking system is still being used in the game. We moved on to the brain, the logic, 'Who are we going to target? And how are we going to put that into code?' And it was just a long process. Let's figure out what those first couple steps look like and capture that. "Let's figure out what stances we want to use in pass protection. So what's the first thing we learned in pass protection ? Stance and start, let's start there," Oldenburg told his new coworkers. "Because I didn't know how to make a game at the time, I started on the field. To his excitement when he joined the Madden team, Oldenburg would be given the reins on improving the series' blocking system-something he seemed uniquely equipped to handle. Since then, six other former players have had a hand in developing Madden, either through contract work or, in the most recent case, a second full-time employee joining the team last year: former Cowboys defensive lineman Kenneth Boatwright. Cam Weber interviewed me back then and I got hired as a design intern on College Football in January of 2012." So I met with her and ended up getting interviewed. Interestingly enough, the person at EA who owned that internship, I didn't know at the time, she became my wife and the mother of my kids. As a kid I loved playing College Football. They were looking for former college athletes to come in as interns on EA's college football game they had at the time. "I came across a job posting on the ESPN website. Without a locker room to call home, Oldenburg said it was around this time that he simply got lucky when browsing the internet for sports news. So I knew I had to find something else to do." I had gotten released from Washington at the beginning of the 2011 season, and I wasn't getting much more action from NFL teams, after I'd already gone through six teams and hadn't stuck anywhere. Every time that I was about to get over that hump-about two or three times in my career, I was pretty dang close-I'd have an injury that would kind of erase all the progress I've made that year. Never got over that hump to get that second contract where you feel secure. I knew I was reaching the end of my pro football career, I played about five years. "It was really kind of a mixture of opportunity, timing, luck-all that stuff came together. "However, in the meantime, since I've kind of grown through the company, that is something that I've actively owned and turned it into, let's say here, some sort of pipeline." The former lineman is now in his 12th year on the development team and explained to me how it all began. "At the time that I came on, there was not ," Oldenburg told me. Now Playing: MADDEN NFL 24 Gameplay First Look I recently got to chat with Oldenburg about moving from the field to the studio, the game's…let's say passionate fanbase, and the sage advice from history's most intimidating mumbler, Bill Belichick, that still helps him in the studio at EA Tiburon all these years later.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's He was the first NFL player to make the jump into Madden game development, but since then, there's been some emphasis within EA to bring in other NFL vets to help build the Madden games. Drafted by the Patriots in 2007, Oldenburg is today the production director of Madden NFL, and arguably the face of EA's team that builds the annual and exclusive NFL sim. Where do they go from there? For former NFL offensive lineman Clint Oldenburg, life beyond football became football of a different sort. The Tom Bradys of the world are rare, and the average NFL career might not even make it to the end of a player's first contract. As the biggest sport in the US, the spotlight on the few athletes talented enough to compete in the NFL can seem blinding, but it also burns out quickly for most players.
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