Beaver Stadium is one of the best atmospheres in college football and while Penn State is trying to preserve that throughout $700 million renovations over the coming years, EA Sports is trying to replicate it for the return of the NCAA Football video game.
Andy Staples of ON3 was one of the few media members lucky enough to play the game before its July 19 release date and broke down the details that the designers went into for this game. Staples even remarked on his podcast that the specific alignments of the band for each of the 134 FBS football programs were perfectly matched in the virtual stadiums. However, Penn State’s gameday environment got special attention.
The game’s lead designer, Christian Brandt is a Penn State graduate and Staples spoke about Brandt’s ambition to perfectly represent Beaver Stadium down to the S in the student section and the school’s most important gameday song.
Zombie Nation will be included in the game’s soundtrack and will come on after a big play by the Nittany Lions. However, that isn’t the only song that will be a staple in games played at Beaver Stadium.
Moments like that one are unique to college football and it seems that EA Sports really cared about capturing that feeling and carefully distilling it into an expertly crafted video game. Almost every report is that this game is nothing like Madden, EA Sports’ famed and lately much-maligned product that has been declining in quality for years, and the effort to recreate the college football in-stadium experience is apparently a big reason why.