GAINESVILLE — It’s the first question that arises after the final whistle in a college football players’ final game: So…what’s next?
EA Tiburon, known best for video games like Madden or EA College Football, uses collegiate and professional sports leagues as a training ground. Not for athletic activities, though. For the next line of product developers.
Former Gator quarterback Larry Richart found his calling four months after playing then-No. 18 Syracuse in the Orange Bowl in Miami. An ad in the student-run newspaper listed a job opening for a quality assurance tester for EA Sports.
Richart attributes getting his first job to luck; the rest of his career at EA Sports resulted from hard work and a PhD in coach Steve Spurrier’s “Run ‘N’ Gun” offense. The technical knowledge he memorized from Florida’s playbook helped Richart win off the field.
“Being able to play under Coach Spurrier was a great experience,” Richart said. “I still use some of the stuff he’s taught me 30 years ago now.”
Still, college football has drastically changed since the former quarterback left the Gators. Name, Image and Likeness deals and the transfer portal forced video game developers to publish updates routinely.
Video game designers balance a multitude of factors to make a playable game that fulfills users’ inner-most football dreams. By the end, the team transforms a three-hour game into about a 45-minute one using optimization and back-end cuts.
“That’s kind of the magic of what you do as a game developer,” Clint Oldenburg, said Madden’s Production Director. “That’s really why our players love Madden, because it’s so real, and you have to make it fun.”
Oldenburg, a former offensive lineman, bounced around the NFL, playing for five teams. Within three months of his last game, he joined EA as a game design intern.
The transition, however, didn’t start smoothly. On the field, athletes don’t need to memorize the NFL and college rulebook. Game developers do. Football players also meticulously follow a rigid schedule. For the first time in 14 years, Oldenburg managed his own time. Yet, his old job in the NFL helped him in other ways.
“Any good O-lineman is pretty selfless, because the only time anyone talks about you is if you mess up,” Oldenburg said. “That’s my approach as a leader at EA: trying to serve everyone else, remove obstacles for them and hopefully shine a light on what they’re doing and making our games better.”
More recently, the company developed relationships with the NFL, the National Football League Players Association and colleges across the country. This past summer, the Florida Gators sent players to Orlando to visit the EA facility as a part of GatorMade, a program to help players develop in the workforce.
Players such as running back Ja’Kobi Jackson and defensive end Kofi Asare received a two-day crash course in game development. Jackson put on a motion suit and reenacted game-day celebrations.
Asare, who likes playing FIFA and Madden, lit up when he talked about his experience. The 6-foot-4 defensive lineman looked like a little boy with wide eyes and an even bigger smile as he described the facility in Orlando.
“Everybody in there was cool,” he said. “I played a game myself, so I was super geeked up the whole time watching, trying to learn as much as I can. Maybe even think of the future where I could work in a space like that.”
The student-athletes also created a pitch to incorporate into a game: a training simulator that allows users to learn more about skills they can then apply to gameplay. Christian McLeod, the production director of EA Sports College Football, praised the group for their active participation in an email.
“They didn’t disappoint. The creativity and excellent thought put into their ‘final exam’ project were all extremely well thought out, their questions for the developers were outstanding and all the GatorMade participants were open to feedback,” he wrote. “It was a great collaboration, and our developers learned a thing or two from their team as well.”
As the pipeline from former players to video games grows, more opportunities arise for the more than 98% of college football players who never reach the NFL. Hanging up the cleats no longer means leaving football behind.
Former offensive lineman Clint Oldenburg, who played for several NFL teams, in a Sept. 6, 2017 file photo after his transition to Electronic Arts and the Madden NFL video game franchise. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
