There's an interesting rift with sports games. Many of the same folks who happily grind to get Achievements in Oblivion wouldn't take 500 Microsoft Points to try Madden for an afternoon. For those players, any game relating to one of the four major American professional sports leagues has zero appeal, creating a huge section of the market companies like EA and 2K are missing out on.
 
We say, if you're EA, you owe it to yourself to try and pull more players into the football franchise, so we came up with five potential ways that Madden could expand its audience. To get an idea for how these suggestions might go over with the Madden base, we sent them over for review to the guys at Maddenbible.com- a fan and strategy site for the franchise run by a pair of buddies, Zach Farley and Stephen Gibbons, who also wrote this year's Official Madden NFL 12 Players Guide.

Deeper Player Customization

True, Madden 12 comes with a highly detailed "NFL Superstar" mode, letting you create your own player and control him through a career. The game lets you select qualities such as what college your fake player went to, his skin tone, and even birthday. There's also now a set of "Player Traits" that will affect your player's gameplay when it matters most, like "Confidence" and "Consistency."

How about we take a page out of The Sims and go even further with "Player Traits," looking past gameplay and into more personality-based categories like "Charitable and Community Engagement," which could, say, earn you various league upstanding citizen awards.

If you wanted to make your player a little edgier, you could tinker with other options like "Propensity for Twitter Controversies" or "Desire to Operate an Underground Gambling Ring." Push things too far in any one direction with these qualities though, and you could suffer suspensions. Then again, if you make it through the season with various handicaps-via-character-flaws without your player getting penalized, well, that's just extra bragging rights. 

And since we're heading into Dragon Age-ish customizable territory for future Maddens, why not add the option to create your player as a woman? True, this could add an extra layer of unrealism to the series, but we're trying to open doors here. Plus, it's a videogame- isn't the idea to embrace the unbelievable? Are you saying you wouldn't be scared of a tatted-up 300-pound female linebacker having a bad day charging at your quarterback?

MADDENBIBLE SAYS: "Why stop there, how about adding some new armor options to really jazz up the look underneath the pads? We're sure Commissioner Goodell would love that. On a serious note, we like how EA Sports' Fight Night brought you down a story mode with your character. Most sports games don't have that storyline element to keep gamers engaged, other than what is in their own imaginations. If we could follow that Packers magical Super Bowl run last season and have cut scenes and choices to make, I think Madden NFL could be even more engaging!"

A Morality-Based Approach to Offseason Conditioning

You've created your player, but does he (or she) really want to play? It seems like an obvious question, but a yes or no answer could affect his (or her) entire season. Here's where we pull a page from the Fable playbook.

Giving your player the option to not get in shape for the upcoming season creates a world of possibilities. Say your options are "Full Preparation," "Mild," or "None." If you want your player to be good, moral and upstanding, you'll choose "Full Preparation," which involves attending every training camp practice and preseason game, giving you a mathematically greater shot at excelling in the upcoming season, thereby earning awards, accolades and achievements.

For non-sports game fans, that may sound kind of boring though, right? Let's say instead, you decide to forgo the preseason altogether to pursue other interests, like Kristin Cavallari. As a new player to the Madden franchise, this path could be less dependent on your experience with the game and end up more of a straight statistical crapshoot. By cavorting with a Kardashian sister in August instead of doing suicide drills, you're proving you're both a ladies man and a guy who just wants to play when it matters. Sure, this behavior would also heighten the chance for everything from a career-ending injury to getting hammered in the local press, but if games have taught us anything, it's that danger and unpredictability makes everything better.

MADDENBIBLE SAYS: "There should absolutely be a popularity vs. narcissism meter on every players rating. This way, if you spend too much time becoming a glamour boy, your rating will suffer. However, if you become a popular fan icon like Chad Ochocinco, you will earn extra cash in the paycheck each week."