This spring, Electronic Arts opened an in-house production facility at its Redwood City, Calif., headquarters. Its goal: to produce content that can rival NFL and NBA broadcasts.
At the direction of EA head of broadcast, Joe Lynch, the company converted a cluster of cubicles on the ground floor into two studios and a control room. And while EA has hosted a handful of Madden tournaments and FIFA-related shows since it opened in March, Lynch says they are “still breaking it in.”
Lynch’s team has been throwing things at the wall, experimenting with new production technologies and forms of storytelling. Previously, EA had produced all of its shows from remote locations, which cost the company both time and money when it came to setting up, rehearsing and breaking down—to say nothing of impeding the broadcast team’s ability to iterate. Now the team has been infused with a new sense of freedom to create.
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“We didn’t have time to play,” Lynch said. “Now my office is upstairs; we just come down and say, ‘Hey, let’s try this.’ We can start playing, doing different things and iterating on it … The creative opportunities that this has lent has paid dividends.”
EA, which owns The Sims and the shooting game APEX Legends among its vast inventory of titles, now produces nearly all of its shows in-house, with the exception of most FIFA tournaments because of their larger scale. The time savings have freed up the broadcast team to push the boundaries of what’s possible as they strive to compete with the traditional pro sports broadcasts.
“We’re just trying to find new ways to tell our story,” Lynch said. “We need to figure out a way to tell ours so people go, ‘Oh, yes, this is cool, this is different.’ ”
The facility consists of two studio spaces. The large one is 2,500 square feet and set up like a TV studio, with a desk for talent and guests, a room for a small in-studio audience, and telestrators that allow EA’s personalities to tell the story of gameplay by drawing directly on the screen. There’s Madden signage everywhere (though it can be easily swapped out for other EA titles), and a “player pod” where esports athletes face-off against each other.
The other studio is 1,500 square feet and serves as a hangout area, which is Madden’s version of a locker room. Tournament players interact with one another in this sofa-lined space during breaks, and EA zeroes in on interesting conversations with directional microphones. The broadcast team captures reality TV-style clips with robotic cameras and uses them as drop-ins later on in the shows to feature the players’ personalities.
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“As you do a show you want to give the viewers someone to fall in love with and someone to hate,” Lynch said. “We realized that a lot of the screen time players are getting is when they’re playing. You can see some outbursts but you can’t see a ton of their personality. We wanted to give them a space where they could come in and hang out, feel open and free to goof, talk trash, strategize.”
Adjacent to the player living room is a large green screen where EA is currently testing new production technologies, such as interactive graphics, augmented reality and virtual reality. One day, Lynch said, EA might shrink its talent down and have them host shows from a virtual field of play, similar to the way TNT put Kenny Smith on the court during NBA broadcasts.
“Every day we get to come down and play,” Lynch said. “How do we want to do AR in the studio to help tell the story? How do we want to do VR and put our analysts on the field in the game? That’s part of the advantage of having this space. We’re still in such an exploratory phase when it comes to competitive gaming and we need to figure out new, interesting ways to tell the story.”
You want to give the viewers someone to fall in love with and someone to hate,” says Lynch, who also wanted to give esports players “a space where they could come in and hang out, feel open and free to goof, talk trash, strategize.”
The studios were built to primarily support coverage of EA Madden tournaments, particularly its flagship EA SPORTS Madden NFL 19 Championship Series. Today, the majority of EA’s productions are tied to tournaments, from pre- and postgame shows to live coverage of events, in which EA analysts are explaining game mechanics and analyzing why players pick certain plays or lineups. Unlike broadcasts of traditional sports which cater to people who tend to know the basic rules, Lynch said an added challenge EA faces is educating while simultaneously entertaining.
“Everybody knows what a football game looks like and everybody knows what a soccer game looks like,” he said. “So the trick for us is: how do we do that and not look like a younger brother, or a cheaper version of, Monday Night Football or the World Cup? What can we do different? That forces us to take a lot more chances and try a lot more different things.”
Gaining popularity within the company, the production house is also now being used to support a growing number of EA content needs outside of tournament coverage. The facilities, for example, have supported the marketing team in making new trailers for games, and the producers of Madden Daily Drops, a 15-minute promotional show that informs Madden players about new game features and content. A slate of daily and weekly shows will also be coming online beginning with next year’s game releases.
“Starting with Madden 20, FIFA 20, APEX, we have a lot of daily and weekly shows coming online that we just didn’t have the financing to do before because it would’ve been too cost-prohibitive. Now, we have an asset and can create those for a fraction of the cost. It’s going to be a machine, a content engine,” said Lynch. “There’s no question in EA’s mind that content is key in what we’re doing.”
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