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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Inside The Mind Of The Man Who Broke Madden

How Jon Bois’ delightfully impish series became an internet sensation.



All images and video courtesy of Jon Bois and SB Nation


Once in an unbearably long while, a person produces a thing on the internet that transcends politics, gender, race, religion, class, personal and professional jealousy, the balkanization of public interest, and the unsteady tides of social distribution. In my view, these things tend to succeed for two reasons: 1. They are so surpassingly Good that not even the wartiest internet hobgoblin can make a tolerable claim that they are Bad, and perhaps more importantly, 2. They are motivated by such obvious good faith, good humor, and good sense, that to pick their nits would be not just pointless, but somehow, immoral.


This fall and winter, the writer Jon Bois made one of those things. It is called Breaking Madden and it is one of the funniest things to ever appear on the internet.


Breaking Madden, if you haven't read it, is the recounting of 17 attempts by Bois to fuck with the hugely profitable and popular football videogame, through various modifications to the game's myriad settings and player creation options. It began with a Bois-created 400-pound mobile quarterback inspired by the zaftig Jared Lorenzen, and included single games in which a team ran for 2,400 yards, in which offsides was completely legal, and in which the New England Patriots fielded an offense comprised of 11 Tom Bradys.


It culminated in an epic finale days prior to the Super Bowl in which Bois, through a series of diabolical manipulations, attempted to score 1000 points with the Seattle Seahawks against the Broncos. And in a nice instance of life imitating art, when the IRL Seahawks laid their own pasting on the IRL Broncos on Sunday, Twitter lit up with "Breaking Madden come to life" jokes.


Bois, who is 31 and splits his time between Louisville and Montreal, has written for SB Nation since its launch in 2009. He talked to BuzzFeed about the origins of the series, his history as a gamer, and the pains of being a Chiefs fan.



When and how did you get the idea for Breaking Madden? Is there a story behind its inception?


Jon Bois: Like a lot of kids who grew up playing video games, I had a lot of fun tooling around with game settings. My friends and i would play GoldenEye 007 with every available cheat code turned on, and we'd thoroughly abuse the "create-a-wrestler" features in wrestling games. I'd make a sloth-like, 120-pound, horrible wrestler with no moves and send him out to fight Steve Austin, and I'd just laugh so hard I'd start crying.


Back in about 2005, I tried to make a primitive version of Breaking Madden, but my know-how and technology was limited, so I scrapped it. I tried it again a couple years ago with an NBA 2K game, but it veered a little more toward realistic "what-if" scenarios. So, I've been kicking this concept around for almost 10 years.


When you pitched the feature to your editors, what was their reaction? Did they get it? Or did they humor you at first?


JB: My boss is my pal Spencer Hall, who shares my love of crappy broken things. We'd previously spent lots of time laughing our fool heads off at this glitch reel of Skate 3. As with most things, I just told him, "hey, I want to do this," and he said, "DO IT." It was a pretty easy sell.


Did you originally pitch it as a series? If not, when did it become clear that it needed to be one?


JB: One of the rules I hold myself to as a writer is to be ready to scrap something and move on if it runs out of steam, or just doesn't work. From the first episode, I was planning to make it into a series, but I would have moved on to something else if it didn't pan out.`




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