Maddening

Sometimes reality doesn’t match up to the fiction. You don’t have to tell that to Madden 11′s Chris Johnson, running back for the Tennessee Titans. I recently sat down with Johnson for a conversation. I readied my notes, put on my most serious spectacles and thinking jacket, and powered on my Xbox 360.

Just a statistic?

Mr. Johnson shed light on a problem spreading fast across the digital sports realm: video game sports stars who are unsatisfied with their supposedly real life counterparts. “They complain about player ratings in Madden,” he noted correctly. “But what about us? Their low stats make our ratings look bad.”

It was hard to argue. As I watched Johnson on the virtual field, squaring off against the Dallas Cowboys, evidence mounted. He galloped for 734 yards on nine carries, earning fourteen touchdowns. Late in the game, he even intercepted a pass, dashing from the bench to make the grab.

“See?,” he asked afterward, barely winded. “That’s what a 99 rating should be.” When the real Titans played the Cowboys in Week 5, how did the real Chris Johnson fare? 131 yards gained, or 603 fewer than Madden’s Chris Johnson.

And he is not alone. Drew Brees, quarterback for the champion New Orleans Saints, is on par for a solid season. With a solid touchdown-to-interception ratio and high number of yards thrown for, he would seem to be a bright spot for his 99-rated Madden 11 twin. Not so.

“Brees? Brees is a joke. By Week 6, I’d already thrown for every touchdown ever. Look at the history books. I’m by every one. I live up to my rating.”

“His stats are too low. It’s embarrassing. I think real life’s programmers need to tweak that.”

So what to do about this problem? Madden’s André Johnson thinks that it is urgent. “RL André only caught five passes last week. FIVE. That joker Hakeem Nicks (receiver for the New York Giants) caught twelve and two touchdowns. One time, Madden Hakeem Nicks tried catching a pass on my field and I broke his legs, fed his puppy to alligators and erased his code. And that was just for one catch.”

“RL André’s gotta step up to my 98 (rating).”

It would seem that all real players now have to step up to their Madden counterparts. Only a few weeks into the season, over six million touchdowns have already been scored compared to the NFL’s paltry thousand. Or something like that. I was too lazy to look it up. It’s a scoring bonanza, buoyed by player ratings that seem less to represent real life situations than arbitrary numbers. And nobody is comforted by that.