EA Sports Madden NFL 19

Project: ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ - the 2018-2019 entry in EA Sports’ long-running NFL simulation franchise, featuring “Real Player Motion” technology, expanded “Franchise” mode depth, and the continuation of the cinematic “Longshot: Homecoming” story campaign.

Final Role / Title: Embedded Quality Assurance Analyst II (contract) - supported a small, embedded QA team responsible for end-to-end validation of “Franchise” mode and key systems across ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’, collaborating daily with designers, engineers, producers, and offsite feature teams to ensure a stable, polished multi‑platform release.

What is EA Sports Madden NFL 19?

‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ is the 2018-2019 edition of the ‘EA Sports Madden NFL’ game series developed by EA Tiburon and EA Sports. ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows in August 2018, acting as the first time the franchise was officially released for the PC market since EA Sports Madden NFL 08. ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ released with a standard edition of the game featuring Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown as the cover athlete, while a limited edition "Hall of Fame" version of the game featured Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Terrell Owens on the cover in his Dallas Cowboys uniform.

Key features of EA Sports ‘Madden NFL 19’ include:

  • Real Player Motion

  • Interactive Touchdown Celebrations

  • New Story Mode: “Longshot: Homecoming”

  • Madden Ultimate Team Improvements: 3v3 Online Matchups, Solo Battles, & Leaderboard-Driven Rewards System

Role & Responsibilities

  • Supported a small embedded QA team (3 analysts) responsible for end-to‑end validation of ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’s “Franchise” game mode, ensuring stability, performance, and feature completeness across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

  • Collaborated daily with designers, gameplay engineers, producers, and project managers to define acceptance criteria, clarify system behaviors, and prioritize issues for “Franchise” mode and the “Longshot: Homecoming” story campaign.

  • Designed and executed comprehensive test passes covering gameplay systems, UI/UX flows, audio, input, platform‑specific behaviors, and asset iteration, ensuring consistent quality across multiple modes and development branches.

  • Provided direct QA partnership to the design team, contributing feedback and validation for the new “Player Archetypes” progression system overhaul and assisting with updates to player rating attributes.

  • Coordinated cross‑team playtests and feedback loops, helping feature teams identify polish opportunities, surface systemic risks, and refine user experience ahead of key milestones.

Challenges, Learnings, & Career Impact

Transitioning from hardware‑focused QA on Xbox One X into an embedded role on ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ challenged me to rethink quality from a purely technical lens to a deeply player‑centric one. “Franchise” mode serves a wide spectrum of player types - from casual users simulating seasons to power users managing every transaction across their virtual team - so I had to quickly learn the systems, flows, and edge cases that mattered most to each audience. This shift required rapid onboarding, strong curiosity, and the ability to reason about how design decisions impacted player experience across an entire season-long progression loop.

Working as part of a small satellite QA team based in Austin, TX also meant partnering closely with the primary development studio that was based in Florida. We often supported features or tools we had only recently been exposed to, which forced me to become highly adaptable, ask precise questions, and build trust quickly with remote designers, engineers, and producers. Coordinating across time zones and disciplines taught me how to communicate clearly, surface risks early, and maintain alignment even when teams were operating on different schedules and priorities.

This experience strengthened my ability to operate inside a distributed, multi‑mode development environment and deepened my understanding of how systems, narrative, and user experience intersect in a large-scale annualized sports title. It also reinforced the importance of structured workflows, proactive communication, and cross-functional empathy - skills that became foundational to my later work at other studios and organizations.

Ultimately, ‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ was a pivotal step in my growth as a production‑minded leader. It taught me how to navigate complexity, support multiple feature teams simultaneously, and translate ambiguous requirements into clear, actionable testing and alignment strategies - capabilities that continue to shape my work as a Senior Producer and Technical Program Manager to this day.

Where to get EA Sports Madden NFL 19

‘EA Sports Madden NFL 19’ was officially released to all major physical and digital video game retailers in August 2018 (current availability may vary).

EA Sports Madden NFL 19 - Links & Media