House of Cards: How Madden and NBA 2K have turned their card collecting modes into full time jobs

gamepur.com:

I owe my entire existence in this industry to sports games. Without my father insisting that he be able to play the latest Madden game, it’s possible that I never owned anything past a Sega Genesis. As I got older sports games became a way for me to express myself as a disabled man — the literal power fantasy of being good at a sport has always been appealing to me. 2021 was also a fantastic year in real-life sports for me as well, as my hometown Cincinnati Bengals not only won their first playoff game since I’ve been alive but made it all the way to the Super Bowl. Knowing that this year’s Bengals team would be one of the highest-rated Bengals teams in recent memory, I was ecstatic for Madden 23 to arrive in the fall. Having a team with a good base rating means higher-rated cards in the fantasy team building that is Madden Ultimate Team, which is where I spend most of my time.

With that in mind, I was able to grab a few of the Bengals top players and build an 85 OVR team in the mode over the first few weeks. While that may not sound impressive, the core structure of MUT is built on the idea that we very slowly increase the OVR on the cards, week after week, and we normally don’t reach 99 OVR cards until around the Super Bowl in February.

Related: NBA 2K23 review

Knowledge isn’t always as helpful as we need it to be. These games are always trying to make big overhauls to their formula so that nothing ever feels “solved.” One of the biggest changes MUT made this year was to give people who bought the most expensive version of the game $40 worth of Madden Points, the game’s premium currency. Madden is a bit late to the party in terms of offering “free” premium currency to players, but it still made for an exciting first