League Manager's Direction and working relationship with EA SPORTS for Madden NFL 12 Online Franchise
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posted by Derek in Madden 12 News, leagueManager Features, Updates, EA SPORTS Game Changers News

Today, via their official EA SPORTS forums, the Madden team announced that they have made no significant changes to Madden NFL 12 online franchise. With this information they have stressed that their focus this year was to get offline franchise correct before they moved to the online portion. While this may seem like a blow to online franchise, I must elaborate on positives here to put this into perspective and hopefully raise the moral of the online franchise community.

Over the past year my work on leagueManager has afforded me the opportunity to meet much of the EA SPORTS Madden NFL 12 management, development, and support team. I've been granted insider access to the development process and seen the stages the game has went through with my admission in to the EA SPORTS Game Changers program and during trips to the EA SPORTS Tiburon studio. Over this same time period I have been in talks with upper level management from the Madden NFL 12 team to work out ways where a collaboration and sharing of information between EA SPORTS and leagueManager could work to benefit the online franchise community.

It is with much excitement that I am able to announce that we have been successfully able to get a working relationship set up that has given the leagueManager team exclusive access to online franchise data and remote procedural calls. This unique collaboration with EA SPORTS, a first of its kind, proves the Madden NFL 12 teams dedication to providing an experience to their fans that hasn't been previously available. The Madden team has always been at the forefront of a new wave of community/developer relations in the gaming world through their leveraging of social media, and this is another step in the right direction in building a completely engaging fan experience. What this all means is that come Madden NFL 12, the leagueManager experience will be brought to an entirely new and innovative level.

Through this working relationship, EA SPORTS will be providing leagueManager with the following:

Full realistic player contract data
1. league Manager will have 100% exact replica contract structures as offline franchise.
2. league Manager will provide leagues the option of running an "NFL-style" real contract based online franchise or the point based contract system that is already in place.
3. league Manager will replicate contract negotiations, cap penalties, player holdouts, and much more to add to the realism of the GM side of online franchise.
4. As always, leagueManager will also be able to be used without a contract based system.

Complete tie-ins to the draft process
1. Access to all of the controls of the online franchise draft will give leagueManager the ability to have a custom draft console that will enable leagues to run a draft in any manner they please.
2. A draft can be run over multiple days to accommodate the busy schedules of owners, paused and restarted at the will of the commissioner.
3. Draft pick trading will be enabled and tracked via leagueManager .
4. Draft boards will correctly draft for owners who cannot make a draft.

Complete CPU controlled team intelligence
1. CPU controlled teams will now have trade logic in place.
2. CPU controlled teams will re-sign players needed and cut players not needed.
3. CPU controlled teams will bid on free agents needed during the free agency bidding period.

Commissioner controls via the web
1. The ability to invite and boot members of your online franchise via the web.
2. The ability to add/drop players from any team.

Streamlined access to all online franchise data
1. Using the remote procedural calls how they were intended to work instead of the current way they were obtained via reverse engineering, league manager will be able to optimize the way you interact with the tool and provide a higher level of user experience.

*Adding these incredibly exciting features to leagueManager will only boost the current list of available features that is being upgraded and optimized:*

Complete player resign period
1. The new resign period will be receiving an overhaul which will engage owners in contract negotiations with their players that are up for contract re-sign.

Free Agency bidding period
1. An optimized and more efficient free agency bidding period with a player watch list, trending, and other innovations will take this feature to the next level.

Yearly player awards, weekly player awards, and Pro-Bowl rosters
1. All of these features will still be available along with optimizations and new ways to analyze this data.

Full stat tracking for the life of the franchise and opponent scouting
1. We will still be tracking statistics over the life of your franchise and some new ways to analyze this data will completely transform the way you scout your opponent. No longer will you be heading in to a game without a clue how to game-plan for your opponent.


Along with the above updates made possible via our collaboration with EA SPORTS, leagueManager will also provide customized league discussion boards and private messaging to enhance league communication and facilitate a more engaging online franchise experience without the technological knowledge needed to set up your own website or forums. We will be rolling out community features that will allow you to feel a part of both the leagueManager community and your individual franchise community.

With all of the above information, leagueManager will continue its mission to provide the most complete and satisfying online franchise experience possibly available. We have formalized the addition of a team of developers and support staff to ensure that when Madden NFL 12 drops, your leagues will be able to successfully set up and run your online franchise using leagueManager .

In the next coming weeks, we will release more details and screenshots of the new updates. We will be piloting the new leagueManager software to a select group of leagues in early August for feedback and optimizations. If you would like to get on the list for piloting the new software, send an email to support@myleagueManager.net.

Follow our leagueManager community team on twitter (DerekJAdams,LM_CaseyMosier,DreDayG35) and like us on Facebook for live-time updates on leagueManager .

note: It is important to note that leagueManager is not employed by EA SPORTS. It is a completely fan-driven site and we are using our own time and resources to bring leagueManager to the online franchise community.