In the Huddle: Adembroski

Curious about the evolution of the Madden community? Join us as we sit down with Adembroski, a veteran member of OperationSports.com, who shares insights from his extensive journey in the Madden NFL world. Discover his take on playbooks, community dynamics, and the secrets behind what keeps players coming back for more. Want to elevate your game? Adembroski's tips could be the game-changer you need!

Over the past 8 years of online play, several Madden NFL communities have come and gone. Subject to closings, mergers, or a mere lack of interest many displaced members of ghosted communities have become new faces in new places. If you've ever wondered "Where are they now?," your questions are being answered.  

Our first foray includes an old staple of websites dating back to the early days of online Madden and MaddenMania. Adembroski, now a member of OperationSports.com's robust Madden community agreed to answer some questions for this week's Madden 11 Community Spotlight:

Q: What about OperationSports.com draws you here?

Adembroski: More than anything else, it's the breadth of content. While my gaming focus is definitely football, I used to have to maintain accounts at several different sites in order to get the full range of sports games I played. mvpmods.com, soccergaming.net, and others. At OS I was only a click away from forums for Winning Eleven, FIFA, NHL, MVP, etc..

Q: What is it about other OS members that draws you to OS?

Adembroski: First, there's the sheer number of them. OS is one of the largest gaming communities on the internet, and as far as sports gaming in particular, its unmatched for sheer size.

Whenever you gather that many people in one place, odds are a few of them are going to be quality posters, and with guys like Playmakers, rgiles, LBzrule, Sven Draconian, BeZo, TheWatcher, it's easy to find new insightful perspectives. I always feel like I can learn something from these posters (and there are plenty I didn't name).

Q: What are the biggest rewards to your OS membership?

Adembroski: It's a resource rich community. Need a good slider set? A roster file? Tips and strategies? OS has it all. Even if another website produces the content, it ends up on OS eventually, and OS doesn't seem to get into the website jealousy game. They are willing to promote like-minded websites in small ways in order to continue enriching the community at large.

Additionally, OS is the epicenter of the developer interaction revolution that has occurred over the past few years. Developers across the sports gaming spectrum have figured out that the place to go to interact with your fans isn't your own website forums, but OS.

Q: What do you believe are the biggest challenges the overall Madden community?

Adembroski: Learning to put aside our anger over Madden's history and working with Tiburon to help create the best product possible for all segments of our fractured community. I firmly believe that it was the hate that was so publicly displayed for Madden when Ian Cummings first entered the community that killed MaddenMania.

We make no progress telling developers they are lazy or incompetent. We make progress by taking them at their word that they're indeed looking to make the best possible game and providing our feedback in the most constructive manner possible. I think we've seen the evidence where Ian and Phil Frazier want to take Madden, and I can say from personal insight, having spent an extensive amount of time in the Tiburon offices, that the obstacles they face are formidable.

We can help make Madden better, or we can reject that opportunity. If we chose the former, and Madden never progresses, then we can blame Tiburon and EA all we want. But if we chose the latter and Madden continues to stagnate the way it did from '06-'09, we only have ourselves to blame.

Q: How long have you been playing Madden?

Adembroski: When I was 12, I was obsessed with Tecmo Super Bowl. Madden was actually rather intimidating to me. It wasn't until Madden '94 that I really gave it a shot. Once I got the hang of it, I was hooked. I've owned every version since (save the lost year, '97).

Q: How would you describe your play style and philosophy?

Adembroski: I'm a sim gamer, I want the most realistic game possible. I sometimes even feel bad controlling more than just the play calling... I can't always reconcile the fact that I'm in direct control of multiple players.

On the in-game level, I'm a ball control freak. I go into every game with the goal of getting 25 first downs. I like to run a West Coast style of offense out of the I Pro and Strong Pro formations, making sure to have versatile backs that I can motion into the slots to create multiple sets against my opponent's base defense.

Defensively, I've only recently started using the 3-4 because my teams at both levels (49ers and Notre Dame) have switched too it, but I'm a Tampa 2 guy at heart. I love getting pressure up the middle and playing the run on the way to the quarterback. I like to create big plays defensively, and the cover 2 is better at that than any other defensive scheme.

Q: What do you like most about Madden?

Adembroski: Last gen, I would have said the play editor. I spent hours in that thing. I had dozens of my own personalized playbooks.

Now days, with that gone, it has suddenly become game planning. I don't use gameflow, but I do use game plans. I love examining my opponent to come up with an approach, and then implementing it... and seeing how it works once I take it in game. It's the tactical aspects of football I love the most.

Q: What gaming mode is your favorite (Franchise, Online, Head-to-Head, Practice, SuperStar, etc)?

Adembroski: I'm a franchise mode freak, but the quality needs to improve before I'm really happy with it right now. I could be a Superstar mode guy if it was made by Bioware or something. I really want to see both of this modes improved greatly.

Q: Has OperationSports.com changed the way you play Madden? If so, How?

Adembroski: It hasn't changed how I play Madden, but it has provided resources that have made Madden more enjoyable. Sliders, tips, opponents, etc.. There isn't a better site for making sure the game plays as close to the game you want as it can get.

Q: If you could change one thing about the OS community, what would it be?

Adembroski: I'd like it to be a bit more personal. MaddenMania's strength was in a feeling that the people you were interacting with were real people. We knew each other, there was a camaraderie that no other site has succeeded in replicating since. Operation Sports is very sterile in a lot of ways... off topic conversation is not tolerated, and for good reason, but I sometimes pine for MaddenMania's "brotherhood" so to speak.

Q: If you could change one thing about the Madden community as a whole, what would it be?

Adembroski: We are so fragmented, but I don't think that can be helped. The Mass Effect community is fragmented, the Call of Duty community is fragmented. It's natural that we have so many different types of gamers and that they gravitate toward each other.

I think what we need to do is start recognizing productive community members vs. unproductive community members. There's a certain arrogance that floats around some sections of the community and they tend to think themselves superior or more important than the other segments. We sim gamers have to acknowledge that we've benefited from the features that were designed for the tournament gamer (hit stick, truck stick) and the tourney players should acknowledge the other way around (deeper playbooks, locomotion).

Q: Where do you see the biggest strides in community unity coming in the next year?

Adembroski: I think essentially "sim" elements like locomotion and real assignment AI are going to be recognized as being beneficial for every segment of the community and that will help. I have noticed that the freestyle community is warming to the new Madden direction than the sim community is... maybe that's because we're more picky or because what we want is more difficult to achieve... but either way, as EA shifts towards a more sim game, its the freestyle players that are hopping on board quicker. I can't see how that can be bad for the community as a whole, so long as the strides continue from EA and the sim gamers finally get what they want as well.

Q: Are there other communities besides OS that you frequent, and why?

Adembroski: NCAA strategies is one of the most informed, technically, sim communities around. Those guys know their football, and their Xs and Os forum is a phenomenal resource for coaching-minded Madden and NCAA players.

Football-freaks is an amazing resource for those still clinging hard to Madden 08 PC, and their 3rd party utilities still make for the best franchise mode in the Madden series.

FBGamers recently got going again, that's the site that originally brought me into the Madden community when I'd spend hours upon hours at work between calls copying down ratings to put into my rosters when I got home (I hadn't discovered the SharkPort yet!).

I can't forget VSN/TheGamersLab... a fairly contentious site, but you wont find as good of off-topic conversation anywhere in the Madden community.

Join us next time as we highlight another member of another community, why they play, how they view the community as a whole, and how their thoughts on how we can pull together to make Madden the best game it can be.

To celebrate the rich diversity of the Madden community, MaddenUniversity.com is working with other Madden communities to spotlight key contributors to the wealth of reliable information available for Madden both online and off.