- The year is 2015.
My partner, Jon Bois was working on a show
called "Breaking Madden."
And man, was he really good at breaking "Madden."
In one of the episodes his main character
Clarence Beeftank tried to score
more than 255 points in the game.
But when he kept trying to break that threshold,
the game kept crashing his Xbox One
over and over and over again.
255, the "Madden" version of the Great Glass Elevator.
The current year is 2022.
Many things have changed,
except for "Madden" in the most part,
which always seems to be a throw pass and punt away
from the game before it
and the game before that
and the game before that.
This left Jon and myself
wondering if the 255 point threshold
was still the same.
So yeah, we're trying to break "Madden" again.
Will we be able to break through the "Madden" ceiling
or have they raised the roof?
Welcome to the "Fumble Dimension".
(relaxed electronic music)
Our experiment is pretty simple.
We went on our Twitch stream,
which you should follow,
and recorded our escapades of us trying to run up the score
and seeing just how high that scoreboard gets.
We will use the Bengals
because they're my favorite team.
And the Texans because I've never met a Texans fan,
so, less angry comments for me, I think?
At first I was in control of the Bengals
and I score on the very first play.
That's cool.
But then I get an idea.
What if instead of being the team trying to win,
we become the team trying to lose?
I immediately switched sides
and joined the Texans instead
where we will take a safety, let them score,
and then intentionally let the Bengals score on the kickoff.
This gives us a nice efficient three play cycle.
A few plays later we decide just to make the Texans
take a safety on the kickoff
to save even more time.
However, I realized that even with me
trying my hardest to allow a touchdown
on the kick return,
sometimes I tackle the returner on accident
because I can't control everyone at once.
Oh no, I tackled, aw!
So when that happens,
we just let them score on the next play.
But the Bengals don't wanna score.
They wanna score on the next play, (sighs) nevermind.
Okay, how about?
Alright, there we go.
I decide to up the AI difficulty to All-Madden
so this doesn't happen again.
Well, it shouldn't happen again.
Now, if you watch the Twitch archive
this happens again.
Less than two minutes into the game
we get our first evidence that "Madden"
is basically held together with Elmer's Glue.
Whenever we take a safety on the kickoff,
it says it's our second safety of the game.
- [Commentator] Can you believe it?
It's a second safety in this ballgame.
And this defense continues-
- Did he say second?
I haven't been keeping track of the safeties in the game,
but I know that that definitely was not
our second safety in the game.
It's 46 to zero.
It got to a point where the chat
would copypasta the announcer
every time we took a safety
because it would always say
that it's our second safety.
Now I know that "Madden" isn't anticipating people
to take three safeties
or more than two safeties in the game,
but come on, bruh!
Now the announcers will also repeat
that the Bengals are on cruise control
every time they score,
accompanied by the "Who dey" chant
which would be annoying as fuck
if I wasn't a die hard Bengals fan.
Midway through the first quarter,
it starts to hit me.
If the score goes over 255 points
and doesn't freeze,
then I might be here longer than I anticipated.
Ah, shit.
Now, the "Madden" AI doesn't always score
immediately after I give them the ball.
Sometimes they try to run the ball instead of Audibling.
Now, this is funny because I use field goal block
and I know Joe Burrow is better than this.
At first I thought
that they were trying to run the clock out,
but that was not what they were trying to do.
For many drives Joe Burrow is seen warming up
for a drive that he'll never take.
Now I'm not confident in this addition of "Madden"
because of my experience playing "Madden 22".
This game has froze on me before
but Face of the Franchise.
In their Face of the Franchise mode,
every time I have that cut scene
of them on an airplane, my game freezes.
I have tried numerous times to unfreeze this game
but to no avail.
EA Sports is not slick.
Midway through our experiment,
a commenter says that it's no longer 255 points
which, for me, is not good.
- [Crowd] Who dey? Who dey?
- [Commentator] And what a job there
by all 11 on the kick return, the blocking-
- Alright. It's no longer 255 anymore?
Oh boy. I might be here for a while.
Since we have no way to confirm
that this person is right or not,
people started making possible guesses.
The most popular were 512 and 999.
And then the number of two bytes,
which is 65,535,
which isn't even possible
given the pace of which we're scoring.
Now, at our current pace
a thousand definitely seems possible.
But why the fuck did our guess
just jump to over 65,000?
Six minutes in
we get the most pointless booth review of all time.
25 points per minute.
- [Commentator] And now, before the ball changes-
- What?
Three minutes later,
we have another pointless booth review.
- [Commentator] And can you believe
that it's a second safety in this ball game?
And this defense continues to dominate.
How about two safeties in one game here.
- But why would they review that?
What's there? There's nothing here to review.
There's legit nothing here to review.
Now, in honor of the Bengals
never having played a normal football game,
of course they fumble the ball.
And this safety that we take here
is what changes the safety announcer audio.
- [Commentator] Now back, he got out of the end zone,
the referee was right there to call it
and that is a safety.
- [Kofie] My theory is that because the safety
was not taken on the kick return,
the game was able to change the audio.
We also unlock a new safety audio
on the kick return.
Now it's time to see if we are looped in that.
- [Commentator] For the third time now,
this is gonna wind up a safety, unbelievable.
- Ooh, we got the, oh!
New audio unlocked.
New audio! (laughs)
It only took 237 points.
Coming up on 255, we decided to hit that number exactly.
Mostly because I wanna confirm
if a non-kickoff safety also changes the audio.
- [Commentator] And for the third time now-
- Nope.
We're on third safety audio, chat.
Moment of truth time.
It's time to see if the game would freeze on us.
Ooh!
- [Announcer] Welcome to a moment in history.
- Reality starts to creep and set in.
We got ways to go.
Do you think we'll get to halftime, chat?
- [Commentator] From a yard or two deep.
Oh! That is gonna be a safety.
- No? No way, right?
There's no way.
- [Commentator] In the end, they force him out of bounds.
- (sighs) Famous last words.
Checking our stats with three and a half minutes
to go in the first quarter,
we noticed something strange.
Oh, shit, look.
Look up here, look up here.
It caps at 180.
At around the three minute mark,
my controller stops working sometimes
during the play call menu.
It's like the game is begging me to stop playing.
It's not letting me pick plays.
Which honestly is fair,
good looking out, "Madden"
I'll give you that one.
With 12 seconds left to go in the first quarter
the Texans are starting to wear down.
Some are trying to even leave the building.
They can't escape, though.
Pennywise is like, oh!
He's trying to... (laughs)
Oh my God.
Now, this is not the first time
someone has tried to escape the football Fumble Dimension.
So why do they try?
So, we have another football "Fumble Dimension"
and another episode where people and players
are trying to leave the arena mid game.
And that reminds me,
what is the weirdest thing that you saw
from the old "Breaking Maddens"?
- This is such an easy answer.
The monster that "Madden" made in,
I think it was "Madden 25",
my first season of "Breaking Madden".
That would've been almost 10 years ago.
And essentially in a nutshell,
I scored 280 points, something around there.
And then I went to an instant replay.
I realized the field was totally empty.
No players, no refs, no nothing.
And I was like, what the hell is going on here?
So I navigated the instant replay camera
to midfield, 'cause I saw a little spec of something.
And what I found was this half Denver Bronco,
half Seattle Seahawk monstrosity.
It was just this absolute horror of a human being
with its legs.
It was like if you've ever seen a Transformer
that was all folded in on itself.
That's what it looked like.
And I was genuinely a little bit scared.
I'm not someone who is very superstitious,
I don't really believe necessarily
in supernatural hauntings or anything like that.
But it definitely shook me a little bit
'cause I've never seen that duplicated,
I've never seen that happen with anyone else in "Madden",
no one else has ever come forward
and presented evidence that they made that happen.
It's like it was a horror visited upon me
and me alone.
And I'm still a little scared.
- Did you name it?
- No.
I had some people tell me I should name it
because it's my child, and no, it's not, it's not.
- Now we've reached the end of the first quarter
and the stats aren't appealing.
Second quarter.
We see the kick returners actually have negative yards.
Not our kick returners,
the Bengals' kick returners.
And later on we noticed something else.
Evan McPherson's kicking stats don't add up.
It says he's kicked 26 extra points.
I feel like a kicker would get tired of kicking
but that's just me.
And if I was, I would at least want
my fucking stats to be right!
An hour and 40 minutes into the stream,
I'm starting to fall asleep at the wheel.
Everything is breaking, but the game won't quit.
30 touchdowns, 88 yards
at 12 yards per return.
It's like they saw Jon's experiment
and then they fixed only that.
And then everything else went to shit.
Now, as the game rolls along
more Texans are trying to leave.
The only people that seem to be actually tired
is me.
(Kofie yawning)
With nine minutes to play in the second quarter,
even the game starts to question what is happening.
- [Commentator] Oh, why are we doing this?
- Two hours in, my camera gives up.
Oh my camera, no!
- [Commentator] Got it on cruise control.
And the rout is on here this first round.
- It has to be a thousand, right?
You would think, if a thousand's not the breaking point,
I give up.
Now, I'm starting to space out from time to time
and forget that I'm actually trying to lose.
But even I still manage to throw a pick
because at the end of the day,
it's the Texans.
I was trying to dive, I forgot! (laughs)
I was trying to dive, chat!
After a bit of a lull in the stream,
we get a second wind of energy.
We figure out a new strategy.
Now, if this was a speedrun
you'd hear the Summoning Salt music intro,
as the chat so politely pointed out.
(lively electronic music)
Can I force the Texans to fumble?
- [Commentator] A mistake on the lateral,
it's a loose ball.
And the Bengals grab it!
- Oh shit!
Oh no, oh God.
What have we been doing? Oh!
Someone goes through.
Oh! (laughs)
But even with our new strategy,
sometimes even "Madden" can't do that right
as the Bengals often get credited for a touchdown
even when they don't really have possession of the ball.
We're approaching the a thousand score mark.
This is it.
Everything is leaning on this score.
Alright.
- [Commentator] So, a free kick situation
forthcoming from the 20 as they'll punt this one away.
- Please to stop at 99, please!
Please!
- [Commentator] And he will score! Touchdown Cincinnati!
A great effort there.
- No! - Can't be stopped.
And the Bengals have got it on cruise control.
- Oh, how much more is left?
(somber orchestral music)
"Madden" is still refusing to give McPherson his due,
claiming that he's only kicked 29 extra points.
That's just so far off,
I don't even know what to say anymore.
Like, how you get to that point.
We finally get to half time.
The score is 1,129 to zero.
Feeling bad about the blowout
we decide to give the Texans a point.
We do.
The one point safety.
- [Commentator] To a knockout.
- [Commentator] The defense more than did its job,
now the offense is summoned onto the field
as they'll go for two.
(cheerful music)
That's gonna be a loss of 15 yards on the play.
(somber orchestral music)
- Now, the Texans have nothing to do with their time.
Their coaches don't know what's going on.
It's like they're pawns with a bigger, twisted purpose
and they don't know why.
My motor functions are starting to get slower.
I start to space out.
Time isn't moving fast.
Now, imagine if there were actual
real life commercials in this game.
We'd run out of them by the first quarter
This would be just nothing but commercial-free,
infinite football.
Up over a thousand points,
the Bengals have finally decided to run out the clock
but they have also decided
to keep their starters in the game.
The clock winds down and I'm finally relieved.
Until I remember that I'm in the third quarter.
Oh, I have another quarter of this.
♪ Lacrimosa ♪
♪ Dies illa ♪
My camera falls asleep again.
I don't know, guys.
The Bengals finally start to show more and more mercy
as they start to run out the clock more and more.
I only have three timeouts to use
so there's only so much I can do.
With 2000 seeming impossible and off pace,
and nothing to play for,
I throw in the towel as well.
The final score is 1,804 to one.
Or as I like to say, "Madden", one, Kofie, 5,234.
You win this round,
but I'll be back to break you again.
♪ Qua resurget ♪
♪ Ex favilla ♪
Alright, so I didn't get to 2000 points
because after we broke a thousand,
I just mentally wiped out for the rest of the stream.
It was very exhausting, very tiring.
I knew that I couldn't just cancel the stream
or pause the stream and come back later.
But I know that 2000 points is possible.
What do you think the true limit is?
- Well, I've done some very rough math here
and I watched through some of your tape
and my feeling is, especially once you mastered
that technique of once you catch the ball
you flick it back and then you intentionally fumble it
so the other team recovers for a touchdown,
it looks like that can take
as little as four seconds to do.
So you've got 60 minutes in a game,
60 seconds in a minute.
That means 3,600 seconds in a game,
divided by four means,
times eight if you get the two point conversion.
So I think, long story short,
I think 7,000 is possible.
Yeah.
And it is not gonna be us, just to make it clear.
There are workplace regulations.
I cannot allow you or me to do that.
I do not wanna do that.
So, maybe some other. - No.
- Someone else who's braver and bolder than we are
can do that someday.
But I think, 7,000, 7,200 may be the upper limit.
(somber choral music)