ORLANDO -- Just outside of downtown Orlando and not far from Disney's Magic Kingdom sits a six-story building where the top videogame football franchises are made. In addition to the Madden NFL, NCAA Football, and Arena Football franchises; EA Tiburon is home to the development teams that create the NASCAR and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR games.
Tiburon Entertainment was founded in 1994 by Steve Chiang, John Schappert, and Jason Andersen. Chiang, who is currently the vice president and general manager of EA Tiburon, said the trio left California and started Tiburon in Florida because of the low cost of living, the proximity to great beaches, and the weather. He said California, where they were living, was too clustered and chaotic.
"Our goal was to build great experiences and great sports games and ultimately to get acquired by EA," said Chiang.
They achieved that last goal on April 1, 1998. By then, Tiburon was growing into one of the leading sports game developers in the world and had created 12 games for EA. But at the start, Madden 96 for Nintendo Entertainment System was made by a team of three -- one programmer and two artists. For Madden NFL 97, the studio had four programmers and 10 artists make the PlayStation and Saturn games.
"We stumbled onto sports videogames," said Chiang. "Our background was in Apple II GS, which had the same processor as the Super Nintendo. We got our first jobs and were building sports games for EA and that's what got us into it."
Tiburon's first full Madden game for PlayStation actually began as a College Football game. They started developing that game for PlayStation in October, but by January, when it became obvious the Madden NFL 97 developer was off-course, EA swapped studios and killed the College Football game for that year. No Madden game shipped in 1995, the only year football fans were without the franchise. Tiburon shipped Madden NFL 97 in September 1996 and they've made every Madden game since, as well as every College Football game (which later became NCAA Football).
Madden NFL 08 will be the 13th version of the game that Tiburon has created. They're making 10 different versions of the game this year (out of a total of 22 different game versions for the entire studio output). A team of 80 people are working on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games, which is a far cry from the team of three back in 1994. The studio, which has 600 employees working on games, has half of its staff working on the football franchises (Madden, NCAA Football and some other unannounced projects).
The name Tiburon means shark in Spanish, and Chiang said that name was chosen because the founders wanted to be aggressive, fast and sleek.
"We wanted to be competitive because sports are competitive," said Chiang. "We wanted to be the best and the shark gave us cool logos to work with."
That has led EA Tiburon to attract huge sports fans to its team. The studio has two organized fantasy football leagues: Tiburon Fantasy Football League (TFFL) and Junior Tiburon Fantasy Football League (JTFFL). Every year, the bottom three guys from the 32-team TFFL are dropped down to the 32-team JTFFL and the top three guys from JTFFL get promoted to TFFL. Chiang said that during the football season, there's constant smack talk.
"It's a lot of fun," said Chiang. "I don't think we're as intense as ESPN, but we have some sports fanatics. We have guys who are just devoted to their own sports. We're the intersection of sports, fandom and gaming."
Chiang said that he's always adding to his team and one avenue he explores is the best Madden gamers. The studio hired the top Madden player from 1995 and 1996, who they met at a Madden Challenge, and now he works on the game to figure out all of the cheats so they can be corrected before shipping. Another hire came from a guy who wrote Madden strategy guides. He now does the playbooks for the franchise. Chiang said they're always going to tournaments and looking for some of the biggest fans to add to the team.
"When you look at sports and gaming you see a different level of passion here that you don't see at other companies," said Kendall Boyd, product manager, NCAA Football franchise, who previously worked on the WWE games at THQ. "The sixth floor of the studio is the NCAA Football team and you have guys with pennants from all different schools that talk smack about which school is better. It especially gets rowdy during Bowl season. These guys sincerely care about the games they make. Each floor has that level of passion. The Madden team is on floor five and there are all sorts of football memorabilia."
The Madden team has its own videogame trophy that the developers battle for routinely. It started out a few years back as a Steve McNair action figure from McFarlane Toys that someone painted gold and put on a marble slab.
"We keep track of scores and records and we challenge each other for the trophy," said Dave Ortiz, project lead for Madden. "We have the only trophy with movable limbs. This year we're going to start building it up like the Stanley Cup and put the names on the bottom of the winners."
Ortiz said the team has to balance the long hours they spend making games with the long hours they spend testing and playing the games. He said this drives them to create new and better features for Madden each year, because they're some of the biggest fans of the game.
NFL pros are also fans of this franchise, and Chiang said that pretty much every cover athlete and every Madden Bowl champion has made his way through the studio at some point. Devin Hester, the first player to get a 100 speed rating, was also in the studio.
"We're open to their comments," said Chiang. "These Madden Bowl champs like Dwight Freeney, Alex Smith and Jacquez Green know every exploit in the game. These guys play. One thing Jacquez would do on kickoff returns is step back a few yards and then catch the ball on the run for a head start. These guys are hardcore. And we're always trying to get this game more accurate."
The competitive edge also comes through intramural sports. EA Tiburon offers softball, golf, basketball and volleyball sports for its employees. Across the street from the studio is RDV Sportsplex, the state-of-the-art gym where the Orlando Magic works out. All EA Tiburon employees get use of that gym for sports.
Employees also can take breaks in the arcade, which includes a pool table, ping pong table, pinball machines and an assortment of arcade games new (Virtua Fighter 5) and old (Donkey Kong, Miss Pac-Man). That is, when they're not playing the latest Madden, NCAA Football, Tiger Woods or NASCAR games.