In a way, sports games are the longest running franchise in all of gaming; even though the developer has changed, every football game is NFL, every basketball game NBA, etc. Therefore it's no surprise that games series such as Madden and FIFA rake in millions year after year. Being one of the best-selling games each year, it's easy to think that making sports games is an easy and lucrative venture that takes less intelligence than say . . . making Bioshock or Fallout 3. So when Madden 11 fell flat on its face this year, many people including myself cried, "How hard is it to make a decent sports game?!". Now that I think about it . . . it's not as easy as it looks.

First off, it's very hard to innovate in a sports game. There's only so much you can tweak the controls or refine the graphics without ruining the balance of the game. When there's nothing to fix in the gameplay, they have to pad it with different modes such as "create your own player" or "franchises".

When Zelda wants to make a game seem new, they can make different supporting characters, more innovative dungeons and a variety of boss battles. When Mario's 3D adventures were beginning to get stale, they sent him into space and added gravity physics. What's Madden supposed to do when football gets old, give all the players jet packs? That would be a waste of licensing money . . . not to mention alienating a good part of their fanbase.

I am hardcore sports fan, but hesitate to spend $60 per sports game PER year when there are games such as Halo and Modern Warfare to invest in. I think I speak for most gamers, sports fans or not, when I make that statement. In fact, despite being a sports junkie, here's the list of sports games I actually own at the moment: NBA Live 05, Madden 05, Fifa 10, Madden 10, Madden 11. Three of those five I bought used.

Yet sports games make a reliable profit year after year. This is because there ARE hard(er)core sports fans out there; fans for whom the immersion of playing as their favorite baseball player is the same as us walking through Rapture (Bioshock). To them, paying full price for games year after year despite only minor tweaks is worth it if they can play as their favorite athlete through multiple seasons. THEY are the ones that carry the series.

Sure, if the goalies in FIFA 10 could launch fireballs, a small percentage of casual sports gamers would be pleased. But the majority of FIFA fans would be pissed off and EA Sports would lose a huge portion of their buyers.

But if they developers DON'T change anything about their games, reviewers will tear into it for "being stale" and "falling into patterns", which will drive away prospective customers. So even though 2010 was unequivocally the best year for sports games with NBA 2k10, FIFA 10, and Madden 10 establishing themselves as the best in their series, simply repeating the same formula will earn them no favors.

They have to find the right balance between familiarity and innovation, and hit the sweet spot year after year after YEAR. This is easy to lose sight of when games like Madden are raking in enough money to fuel the economy of a small country.

So the next time we scoff at how EA or 2k makes millions off such a simple concept as kicking ball, we need to remember: They've earned it.