By Vaughn Wilson
John Madden was one of the most beloved figures in all of football on any level. His genuine and transparent personality endeared him to fans across the globe. When he was selected as the face of Electronic Arts’ (EA) groundbreaking football game in 1988, it was the start of a multi-billion dollar franchise that is solid to this day.
Initially made for PCs and Apple computers, the original version of Madden Football was quirky, but as processing power evolved, the game is now three-dimensional with a massive playing base. It now employs the latest in technologies in graphics, sound, and features.
For the first four years of Madden Football, starting in 1988, all the players were the same color. At the time over 75-percent of the players in the NFL were Black. However in oversight all the players were represented as Caucasian. No one at EA Sports took a moment to consider that this was a false representation of the NFL.
Amazon Prime has a current documentary on the Madden game titled “It’s in the Game.” It details the rise of the super-popular game and its nuances. In 1992, EA Sports hired a humble and talented creator in Gordon Bellamy. Bellamy, who was Black, was charged with bringing more reality to the game. He realized that there were different abilities to change the colors of the uniforms, but not ability to change the color of the players, which he found was inaccurate.
With his urging, EA Sports put the different hues in the game and began making the players look more and more like the way they actually appeared. This was a very important element in the thinking of the uber-successful EA Sports and fostered their push for more reality into the platform.
With all the brilliant people at EA Sports, the resources they had, the drive to put reality into the game, it is a case study in why diversity and inclusion are important at some junctures. Without Bellamy in the room and with authority, we may have seen many more years of grey players and not representing the true nature of the NFL players that were represented in the game.
While the U.S. is on a path to totally dismantle each and every diversity, equity , and inclusion effort that is currently in place, there will be more instances of disregard for others who won’t be in the rooms when decisions are made.
Interestingly, Bellamy cites the success of the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl as one of his motivations in adding the proper skin tones to the players. In 1988, Doug Williams led the Washington Redskins to a Super Bowl victory and became the first Black quarterback to start the Super Bowl and the first to win Super Bowl MVP.
After EA Sports decided to add the players’ correct color, they went through the effort of ensuring that all features were representative of the athletes. It all began with someone who was not like the other developers to recognize that there was a glaring error in what this multi-billion dollar company was creating.
To Blacks, we often quickly see where we are omitted where non-Blacks often just never consider things from our standpoint. Often folks just believe a standard one-size-fits-all approach is sufficient. Too often over the history of our country has that been the case.
Blacks are here. Latino and Hispanics are here. Asians are here. Every hue, nationality, race, religion and sexual preference exists in America. There is no going back to a one-size-fits-all. That concept is outdated and can not represent our nation any further.
