Gus Johnson was brought aboard at a time when he had enormous popularity with a young audience feeding on social media, and by his second year he sounded rote and inobservant, his enthusiasm poorly served by the commentary engine. Yet he spent a drowsy two years in Madden's booth before an even quieter departure. Tom Hammond was the voice of Notre Dame football on NBC and routinely supplied exciting regular season calls (including this glorious day) in the NFL. ![]() When he got the call from EA Sports, 'I felt like I was getting punked,' says Gaudinĭavis and Gaudin certainly say all the right things heading into their video game debuts, and they say them sincerely, but the Madden NFL series has made even broadcasting hall-of-famers sound like weak impersonations of themselves. I hope that as we get deeper into this, that I can add value, not only from the play-by-play role, but also with the general knowledge of 'this is how a broadcast works, we should try this here,' and hopefully add more value in that." "I want to be invested on the ground level and the ground floor, to be involved with the design of it and the script writing, and that was their vision, too. "I don't want to be somebody who goes in, gets handed a script, reads it, flies back to Atlanta and then comes back and does the same thing again later," Gaudin said. In his interview with EA, Gaudin pushed those buttons. EA Sports, said producer Christian McLeod, wanted a ground-up reconstruction of its commentary helmed by voice talent who viewed themselves as developers as much as narrators. His proximity helps - a commuter flight from Atlanta - but Gaudin professes an interest in voice acting on the whole, and is fascinated by how it comes together in a video game, sports or otherwise. ![]() "I felt like I was being punked when I got the LinkedIn message from the talent director, asking about an opportunity with Madden," Gaudin told Polygon.īut Gaudin was on EA Sports' radar for reasons other than an up-and-coming résumé. His most noteworthy national broadcast work so far has been for radio coverage of the NCAA men's basketball tournament for Westwood One, which will assign him NFL games on radio beginning this year. He's currently the voice of Georgia Tech's radio network, calling both football and basketball for the Yellow Jackets. Gaudin is the only Madden announcer to join the game with no prior NFL television experience. Gaudin, 32, is Madden's sixth play-by-play announcer, following Jim Nantz, Gus Johnson, Tom Hammond, Al Michaels and the late Pat Summerall. His commentary frequently threads cultural references into an encyclopedic analysis, one informed by his own experiences as an all-Southeastern Conference player at Tennessee in the mid-1980s. For a sports video game looking to become more conversational, Davis is a good start. Last year on Fox Sports he was paired with Thom Brennaman, his old NCAA broadcast partner, for his first year in an NFL broadcast booth. "Brandon and I can't become familiar to people until we start, and I hope people give us the opportunity to grow on them."ĭavis, 51, will be Madden's analyst going forward and the fourth in series history, succeeding Phil Simms, Cris Collinsworth and John Madden himself. Before that he was part of Fox's college football operation for about nine years, and he has done studio work for NFL Network. "These names we're following are icons of the sport," said Davis, who just finished his first full year as an NFL broadcast analyst for Fox Sports. Never heard of 'em? Yeah, well, they've heard that, too. They are the sixth broadcast team in the 28-year history of the EA Sports flagship. Madden fans, say hello to your new play-by-play voice, Brandon Gaudin, and analyst, Charles Davis. Madden's sixth broadcast team is one that lives very close to EA's Orlando studio ![]() The tradeoff, however, is Madden will give its coveted announcers' chairs to two relative unknowns, in exchange for having both men close to EA Sports' Orlando, Florida, studio, so they may sit down to more recording sessions than ever before. ![]() In Madden NFL 17, EA Sports seeks to solve these disappointments with volume: A voluminous dialogue library, so far comprising seven months of near-weekly working visits by a new broadcast team, with even more material still to be recorded. Even today, many of Madden's on-field actions are covered by tentative, generic descriptions, and in career modes that extend several seasons into the future, the broadcasters will still be talking about real-life events from the year the game launched. It's volume, as in the amount and variety of things the announcers say and are served up by the game. The problem with Madden NFL's commentary over the years has always been one of volume, and not in a "can you hear me" way.
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