Madden NFL is an annual football game series published by EA Sports. In its 20-year history, the Madden games have been produced for almost every conceivable game system, from PCs to cell phones.

Long a cash cow for its parent company, Madden games have in recent years become a ritual for a class of game players who only purchase one video game a year (sometimes exceptions are made for the game’s cousin NCAA Football ‘[Insert Year]), and the console on which to play it on.

The ritual includes posting messages to game forums and blogs about glitches in each successive game, a rending of garments that has increased in severity as these dazed “gamers” have begun to wake up ask themselves in recent years if the Madden series is not devolving and if their $60 shouldn’t be spent on something else, like, say, beer.

The Madden games, which were rendered even more monolithic by an exclusive agreement between EA Sports and the NFL, are the very definition of cult games. Casual and even many hardcore gamers have long given up on Madden, which seemed to jump the shark (would that there were an NFL team called “The Shark”) in its transition to the current-gen consoles. Madden seems to change its control scheme every single year, introduce new, completely unnecessary passing features and find new ways to botch simple gameplay elements. Only the zombified true believers are willing to put up with that shit.