I wouldn't call it dead, it just seems like the activity has migrated from the gaming forums more to the social forums. This can be expected with the quality of games produced recently.

Example being CoD. When I first joined the forums were essentially raided with people wanted to get into infected lobbies and such. As time went on, more and more people felt that the game(s) weren't that good, but the community on this website is great. Thus, they pretty much all moved to sections like General Discussion and Breaking News, in which at one point were unheard of on this site because of the lack of viewers.

TL;DR: Preferences changed over time, went from a gaming-based website to what is now seemingly a place to chill.

For the most part, I don't really think the Madden forum was anything big and active. Not as popular on here as it would be on other sites. GTA, CoD, Halo, probably drive in some of the most attention for gaming.