Blitz: The League originally began development under the working title "Blitz: Playmakers" one year prior to Electronic Arts announcing they acquired the rights to develop official games based on the National Football League. According to executive producer Mike Bilder, Midway saw this announcement as the perfect opportunity to announce their own game to "tell all of the disgruntled gamers that they would have an alternative to Madden." To differentiate it from Madden, the developers took inspiration for the game's tone from the 1999 film "Any Given Sunday", and ESPN's 2003 scripted drama series "Playmakers". They hired the series' staff writer Peter Egan to be the game's lead writer, and consulted with real-life NFL players to include mature content such as strong language, drug use, and more devastating violence that would have been off-limits in officially licensed NFL games. The game's title was later changed to Blitz: The League to distance itself from the "Playmakers" show.