The John Madden Video Game Concussion Drama, Explained

“I think of a guy had a concussion or has a concussion then he shouldn’t play anymore,” Madden says in the clip. “They always talk about boxing being archaic, but if a boxer gets knocked out he can’t fight for another month. And sometimes in football we say, ‘Oh that guy has a slight concussion, he’ll be right back in.’ I don’t know if I ever agreed with that.”

As for how EA’s Madden franchise handles head trauma and injuries as a whole, that has slowly changed over the years. In early entries, players getting injured during a game would result in an ambulance taking the field, comically knocking other players out of the way to get to the wounded one. The ambulance was removed after Madden 2001, as the NFL felt it glorified injuries. The hit stick, which allowed players to perform stylish hard-hitting tackles, was removed shortly after it was introduced in Madden 2005 because the NFL felt it promoted violence. There are no career-ending injuries in the game anymore. And concussions have historically been referred to as “head injuries.”

These in-game head injuries meant a player might be out for a couple of quarters in older Madden games. That changed in Madden 12, in which players with a head injury would be out for the remainder of the game, with commentators Gus Johnson and Chris Collinsworth talking about the seriousness of head trauma when such injuries occur. Head injuries are still in the game to this day, but they are not referred to as concussions. That’s a mandate from the NFL, however, and not Madden.

The NFL seems keen to keep the series from getting too violent. But by keeping the word concussion out of the in-game discussion, I can see how someone might think it’s sending the wrong message to football fans.

Yes, football is violent. People get hurt. Players suffer life-changing trauma. The hits are hard. The potential for injury is what kept me, a six-and-a-half-foot-tall high school sophomore, from joining the Dunwoody Wildcats. I still play Madden every year, and never once has it made me feel like getting my head bashed in was okay.