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Liverlips

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I know next to nothing about video games and am certainly not a "gamer." But a while ago there was a thread (which I can't locate) talking about how the athletes for the video game covers are ALWAYS black. For example, Madden football has such losers as Vince Young, Michael Vick on the covers. Apparently having the worst or second to worse passing percentage in the NFL is the main qualification for being on the cover.

Anyway, last night I saw and ad for the 2008 baseball game (I guess it is for Play Station). Baseball is 8% black but one guess who they had on the cover.

Eric Howard of the Phillies.

But I'm sure it is just a coincidence
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But seriously, will the fat young white kids and drunk white adults who play these video games not buy a game if a black is not on the cover?
 
The only "reasoning" I can think of is maybe there is a shortage of black video game "heroes" in general. EA is also based in the liberal utopia -- the Bay Area. They tend to go pretty left with most of their marketing decisions. And since they own exclusive licenses in many sports, well they pretty much run the genre for the most part.

Yes, I think it's ridiculous that there hasn't been one white Madden cover in almost 10 years. Even more ridiculous is that most were unproven, recently drafted hype-fests that have since suffered from a "Madden curse". They have had a few white NCAA covers, so I can't say they are completely PC wackos. Also what is it with the show "Madden Nation" on ESPN? They have mostly black loud mouths playing and trash talking (if incoherency can be considered talking) during their games. Either their marketing is doing its intended job (turning off white players) or it's just more propaganda and misrepresentation of the game's player base.

Anyway, Madden is an inferior game to NCAA in my mind. It just plays slower and is just dull and boring (especially in the commentary) -- much like comparing real college football to real NFL football. As they say, "if it's in the game (boredom), it's in the game".
Edited by: FieldThrower
 
Liverlips, it's a very good topic you bring up. I actually posted an argument under a Youtube vid about this. I stated how black QBs are almost worshiped by the media, yet the white RB is mocked and called inferior/tight hipped. I stated "Vince Young being on the cover of Madden after one mediocre rookie year is evidence that Rush Limbaugh was 100% correct in his theory."
 
And the only white players that will make the front cover of Madden (if they ever do again
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) are going to be quarterbacks. I reckon the next madden should have a mean looking picture of Patrick Kerney displaying his bulging muscles (the best muscles in the business at the moment).
 
Jared Zabransky is actually on the cover of the current NCAA 2008, and Carson Palmer was on the 2004 version and Joey Harrington in 2003, and Chris Weinke was on the 2002 version. After three years of featuring white players, there were three years where the covers were all black with Larry Fitzgerald in 2005, Desmond Howard in 2006, and Reggie Bush in 2007.

I looked it up since I couldn't remember, and once they started calling it NCAA in 1998, the first one on the cover was Danny Wuerffel, they then followed up with three blacks with Charles Woodson in 1999, Ricky Williams in 2000, and Shaun Alexander in 2001. So the count to this point for NCAA is 6 blacks and 5 whites. It doesn't seem as bad as Madden.

They announced that this year will feature four cover athletes, a different one for each video game platform. The first one they announced for Xbox 360 is, no surprise, Darren McFadden. It will be interesting to see who the other three released are. Edited by: Electric Slide
 
Electric Slide said:
Jared Zabransky is actually on the cover of the current NCAA 2008, and Carson Palmer was on the 2004 version and Joey Harrington in 2003, and Chris Weinke was on the 2002 version. After three years of featuring white players, there were three years where the covers were all black with Larry Fitzgerald in 2005, Desmond Howard in 2006, and Reggie Bush in 2007.
Click to expand...

Utah's Alex Smith should have gotten the cover of 2006. Putting Desmond Howard in his "Heisman pose" on to promote the the new "Race for the Heisman" game mode was probably a cover up for the fact that they didn't want a (white) QB from a "mid-major" school on the cover. There were no other good candidates that year, as Leinart was returning, Bush was a sophomore, Peterson was a Freshman, and Jason White was an injury prone bomb. How Jared Zabransky got the cover is beyond me. I guess Boise State's BCS bowl game was more thrilling and had a better opponent than '04 Pitt.

Edited by: FieldThrower
 
It's unfortunate that fat, sedentary children (and sadly, adults) who have neither the inclination nor the ability to play actual sports will have their image of sports -- and who is able to play sports -- indelibly influenced by whomsoever graces the cover of their precious video games and other products that corporate hucksters are trying to fob off to them.

Yep kids, have another bucket of Pepsi, another tray full of McDonald's hamburgers, and another seven straight hours of Saturday afternoon sunshine indoors with the shades drawn playing Madden '08, laughing off the notion of a white running back and debating whether Vince Young or Daunte Culpepper is the best quarterback of the last decade.
 
GiovaniMarcon,

Right on. You hit the nail squarely on the head. I have no idea how this trend can be broken.

Tom Iron...
 
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