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Pittsburgh is gearing up for the 2026 NFL Draft: a weekend expected to transform the city into a sprawling celebration of all things football. It鈥檚 no surprise that football, by far America鈥檚 favorite sport, is capable of drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands. And through video games translating the sport into the virtual world, those hundreds of thousands of fans get a chance to become players themselves.

is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, with sales exceeding 150 million dollars worldwide. The franchise allows players to put themselves on the field and into the shoes of their favorite athletes by faithfully recreating the game, down to the smallest details: the physics of each and every tackle or end run, the blades of grass on the field, even the player stats, which are updated game by game as the real season progresses.

And the people behind many of those painstaking recreations? Alumni of .

For Abhijeet Singh Malhi, that experience is both personal and professional. After graduating from the ETC in 2023, he began working full-time at EA Sports on Madden and its spinoff . But Abhijeet grew up playing sports games long before he ever helped build them.

鈥淚 love sports in general, and I grew up playing EA games,鈥� he says. 鈥淐oming from India, cricket is really big there. EA had a cricket game in 2007, that was the last iteration they did of it, and people still play it.鈥�

At EA, Abhijeet鈥檚 role sits at the intersection of art and engineering. As a technical artist, he focuses on improving pipelines: the behind-the-scenes systems that allow artists to efficiently create and replicate assets across hundreds of teams and thousands of athletes.

鈥淚n sports titles of this scale, if anything changes in the assets or the pipeline technology we need to make sure it works for every other player as well,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e try to make sure that the artists don鈥檛 have to deal with the repetitive stuff so they can focus on the creative part of it.鈥�

For a sport with over 1,500 active pro players at any given time, the scale is enormous. And every year, new team members require the creation of new 3D character models, as well as updated uniforms and stadium layouts.

For 2020 ETC graduate Healthy Moeung, now a 3D character artist on the Madden and College Football franchises, the challenge lies in translating real athletes into believable digital forms.

鈥淐apturing the physicality of a real sport in a virtual environment means translating how athletes look, move and react into a digital character that feels believable in gameplay,鈥� she says.

Healthy and other character artists rely on reference photos, anatomical study and close collaboration with animation teams to ensure that players are represented accurately.

鈥淎 unique challenge is balancing realism with performance constraints,鈥� Healthy says. 鈥淔or Madden and College Football, there are always 22 athletes on screen and that does not include those on the sidelines and in the stadium. And we need to make all of the athletes look detailed up close while still being optimized for real-time gameplay.鈥�

It鈥檚 as much a science as it is an art. That鈥檚 where technical artists like Abhijeet and his fellow ETC alum Keyin Wu come in. Keyin, who works on the College Football franchise as a technical artist, describes her role simply: 鈥淚 develop tools and pipelines that streamline artists鈥� workflows, helping automate repetitive tasks and improve overall efficiency across the art production process.鈥�

For Keyin, who didn鈥檛 come into the job as a sports fan, working on football games has been an education in itself.

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 realize how many details go into the game, from the stadium environment to the traditions and mascots,鈥� she says. 鈥淚n my work, I sometimes need to interact directly with different parts of the game to validate features and ensure everything is working correctly. That process has given me a much deeper appreciation for the sport and motivated me to learn more about how the game works.鈥�

The expectations users bring with them is part of what makes sports games unique. Football games are rooted in a reality that players know intimately before they even begin playing, which means that developers have to balance that expectation of authenticity with entertainment.

鈥淲hen you look under the hood in those games, so much of what we were doing as designers was putting our thumb on the scale,鈥� says Tom Corbett, a 2014 ETC graduate and current ETC assistant teaching professor who previously worked in Electronic Arts鈥檚 R&D division as an associate producer. 鈥淔or example, you only have 20 minutes instead of the 60 minutes of official game time, but [players] still have the same expectation of a whole game鈥檚 worth of big plays. We were constantly leaning towards letting players make a big play or have a dramatic moment, instead of the yard-by-yard punts of a real NFL game.鈥�

At EA, Tom worked on several experimental adaptations of Madden, including a streamable version for Comcast customers and even a custom version of the game made just for ESPN.

鈥淚t allowed the talent to break down a play by walking between the [player] characters, who were rendered in 3D in the studio,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 got to go to ESPN and sit behind the desk with the team for that, which was pretty awesome.鈥�
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ESPN using the custom version of Madden Corbett worked on for their Virtual Playbook

Sports games like Madden and College Football are developed on an annual cycle, which means multiple versions are typically in progress at the same time.

鈥淥ne of the big challenges for Madden is they have to deliver a new version every year,鈥� Tom says. 鈥淭wo years out from a new release, they鈥檙e designing the new features. For a release one year out, they鈥檙e making sure everything is going to work correctly. And then there is a live service they鈥檙e also maintaining.鈥�

For ETC alumni, tight deadlines, teamwork and constant iteration are familiar territory. Abhijeet credits the ETC鈥檚 project-based curriculum with preparing him to tackle the kind of work franchises like Madden require.

鈥淵ou get thrown into projects straight away [at the ETC] 鈥� so it sort of prepares you already for what a real work environment looks like,鈥� he says.

The same goes for Healthy and Keyin.

鈥淏eing in an environment like the ETC accelerated my growth and made stepping into a studio feel natural,鈥� Healthy says of the transition.

鈥淚 got used to talking to different people from different disciplines for ideas or to solve a problem,鈥� Keyin says, 鈥渁nd that鈥檚 kind of my daily work right now.鈥�

For these alumni, all the work they put into these games pays off when they finally get to see fans react to it.

鈥淭he first thing I ever worked on for College Football was the mascots. [The franchise] had been on hiatus for 10 years when I started, and the mascots were a big part of the first trailer that came out for it,鈥� Abhijeet says. 鈥淛ust seeing that mascot in the game for the first time was a pretty huge thing for me. And even though I played a small part, seeing YouTube comments saying, 鈥楾here鈥檚 mascots!鈥� gave me a great sense of accomplishment.鈥�

It鈥檚 proof positive of the enduring nature of the sport 鈥� whether it鈥檚 played on a field with helmets and pads or at home with nothing more than a controller in your hand.

As Tom says of the game: 鈥淚t鈥檚 a cultural touchstone for a reason.鈥�

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