“We’re here to recognize the amazing milestone in gaming that EA Sports has undertaken with this year’s Madden 16. In a gaming climate where diversity and representation is an ongoing struggle, this brave gaming company has shown that they are willing to take a stand on the side of equality. I’m sure you’ve already heard about their tremendous feat, but it’s worth mentioning once again: This year’s Madden 16 will feature female fans in the in-game crowd. Let that sink in for a moment. So brave. So daring.” – Second Lady of the United States, Jill Biden*
Battling for the biggest non-news of the year, EA Sports felt it was necessary to make an announcement that the upcoming Madden 16 would feature female fans in the in-game crowds. You may be scratching your heads and asking “Why the hell haven’t there been female fans in the crowds in previous games?”. The answer, of course, is because only men like fruttttbrawwwll.
After EA Sports made waves (They didn’t make waves) by announcing that they would feature female soccer teams to the next FIFA game, the Madden developer stated that “We’re excited about FIFA adding women players, but we wouldn’t let them steal all the thunder…So we’ve added women to our crowds”. Great job, thunder achieved.
This is a non-addition to something that should have already been in place. Why they have chosen to not include female fans in the crowds in previous games is more news that them adding them in. It’s an odd announcement on the back of a somewhat less trivial announcement. STEP OF YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT NEWS EA.
I’m going to save EA some time and make some future trivial announcements for them:
-The next Battlefield Game will have 5 colors of camouflage!
-The next Sims game will let your character work a blue collar job!
-The next Plants Vs. Zombies game will feature zombies that were originally from minority groups!
*Not an actual quote, because why would it be?
The Sociology of Videogames 
There seriously haven’t been women in crowds?!
I’m from the UK and I’m an Arsenal fan so I’ve pretty much never had any interest in Madden, nor even American football but I saw this and it grabbed my attention.
I think this is something that I like to call deliberate withholding, where a gaming or gaming hardware company deliberately removes something from development for launch in order to re release it in later years, rather than have to implement something fans weren’t asking for anyway.
This is Xbox waiting until now to announce something as standard and as expected as backward compatibility.
This is FIFA 16 allowing the option to play women’s teams and advertising it as if it weren’t a perfectly reasonable or easy implementation anyway.
This is Assassin’s Creed adding a female protagonist…
Good read, enjoyed!
It’s hard to tell. I’m inclined to believe it was done out of sheer laziness, and they only wanted to animate 3 crowd members instead of 4, but the fact that they knew about the lack of female crowd members suggests maybe otherwise. It’s really just silly. Thanks for the comment!
Well, this makes me kind of embarrassed to both love and write about games…
Yeah, kind of strange oversight. It’s made me wonder if other franchises have female fans in them.