EA Exec Says Its Games Are "Too Hard to Learn" For New Players

[Slegiar Dryke]

and some people wonder why to this day, I refuse to have a facebook or a twitter...................need I say more when people are saying "SOCIAL GAMES..........SOCIAL GAMES EVERYWHERE!!!!" *facedesks*

 

[garjian]

Richard Hilleman doesn't know the first thing about design it seems, and I'd hope a lot of the people he works with would say the same.

 

[StatusNil]

Tell you guys what, hand you dad/sibling/wife/whatever who has never played a game more complex than Angry Birds a controller and game and tell them to figure it out, see how long it takes. When my dad tried to play Smash Brothers Brawl (AKA Casual: The Game) with my younger sister (who is a gamer) it took a longass time for him to get beyond "up is jump and A punches people".

The entire gaming community sometimes needs to take a step back and remember that not everyone is a enlightened techno-Ubermensch like you. But they won't, because lets face it, looking at things from other perspectives is much harder than ranting and raging and mockery.

Uh, because game design should be based on such a low common denominator that ANYONE with no experience of the medium should just be able to pick them up and play immediately?

These are the fantasies of greedy executives who just want to move them units with no care for the quality of the experience. Or rather, get people hooked on "free" frustration engines that need to be sated with "micro" transactions, as seems to be the trend. People can learn to work a controller passably, I did. That is, if they are interested in that kind of an experience. It's what makes games... er, games.

 

[laggyteabag]

Are we playing the same EA games? I cant think of a single EA game that I have played in recent years that has taken me a long time to learn. EA games tend to be one of 4 genres: A shooter, an RPG, a driving game or a sports game. Unless you have never ever played a shooter, RPG, driving game or Sports game in your life, I cannot imagine that it would take a person 2 hours to pick up how to play the game, and even then, 2 hours is certainly pushing it.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Now I will be an asshole and I don't regret it even a bit, but if it's too hard for them and they don't want to spend time learning, they can kindly fuck off.
And there is no such game that is "too hard". There is only the player who is "too bad". Dark Souls wasn't even that hard. It was harder than the average game but smelling better than shit doesn't say much. So being harder than CoD, Mario, Dragon Age, Bioshock means nothing. Dark Souls was still too forgiving to be considered actually hard.

As for the social media, back in the days, we had this thing called local multiplayer or split screen multiplayer or even just multiplayer. It was way more social than posting a message on facebook.

But not like his word hold any actual meaning considering that EA is pretty much dead for me.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

EA's games too hard? I wanna meet the gamers that find it hard to grasp 'hit X to stab rat'.

...

Actually, no I don't.

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

 

[Mortuorum]

Man, so much condescension in this thread. Let me ask you, when was the last time you were a new player, or tried to teach a new player? Like any knowledge, video game mechanics mastery is an accumulated skill. Once you've learned the basics in one game, that knowledge benefits you in similarly designed games. The details may be different, but the basics usually aren't(unless they were designed by Derek Smart). But new players don't have that advantage, and so yes, learning takes longer even with a well designed title. Granted, EA's games aren't anything special in that regard, but yeah, new players take longer to learn a game. This shouldn't be a controversial idea.

Thanks for that. So much for the Escapist's new "enthusiast" editorial direction. When a columnist is troll-baiting as hard as Bogos is here, it's plain to see where the Escapist is going. (If you don't get what I mean, re-read the last two paragraphs.)

Hilleman's thesis is that EA's games are hard to learn for new players. He's right. Although it's unstated, most AAA games are hard to learn for new players. We've all grown up with the current first-/third-person twin-stick standard control set, so to us it seems natural. For someone new to videogames, it's very difficult and off-putting. Add to that the four cardinal face buttons, the start and back buttons, the d-pad, two triggers and two bumpers, and clickable thumbsticks, all of which may need to be used while still finessing the move/view sticks and the difficulty rapidly ramps to the point where someone who might have actually become a lifelong gamer gives up in frustration and disgust. (This is not a hypothetical case; I've seen it happen.)

So, if EA wants to spend R&D money on ways to bring new gamers to EA (and thus to gaming as a whole), it's a good thing. If new gamers aren't entering the hobby, PC and console gaming will eventually be the hobby of bunch of bitter old men. And that's not enough to drive AAA development. For everyone who bitches about how "the casuals" are stealing resources from "core" gaming, this is the reason.

While my point was specific about about console gaming, it applies to PC gaming as well. The WASD/mouse-look control scheme is almost as difficult to learn as the standard twin-stick controller setup, and some developers (particularly EA) seem to think that they need to bind a command to every key on the keyboard.

 

[loa]

The hell is it with suddenly blurting out that rpg elements and social stuff?
Wasn't 1 stupid thing quite enough to say? Did he remember he had a quota to fill?

 

[StatusNil]

We've all grown up with the current first-/third-person twin-stick standard control set, so to us it seems natural.

No, we ALL haven't. I was well into my thirties when I picked up mah PS3 and started playing Ass Creed on it. My previous experience was some split screen shooter on a friend's 360 that ended with my dude getting shot while rotating slowly in place, aiming at his feet. I didn't get any turns on it after that display of madd skillz. Yet somehow I got the hang of it when properly motivated. I'm not exactly GREAT at games, but it's not a competition for me.

What we have here is a fundamental misunderstanding about what games are. They are a participatory medium, more like playing music rather than listening to it. This is akin to demanding composers only write music anyone can play without taking a single lesson on an instrument.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

You should be able to teach the player all the skills they need within the first 20 minutes before pushing them into the game world. I remember being told that a gamer bought Fallout 3 but returned it within 2 hours as it was shit. Why did he think that? Because he played it like an FPS and got killed by everything instead of playing it like an rpg.

If we allow companies to make games based on these idiots opinions then games will be watered down and all we will get is mobile phone games ported to consoles and PCs.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

For someone new to videogames, it's very difficult and off-putting. Add to that the four cardinal face buttons, the start and back buttons, the d-pad, two triggers and two bumpers, and clickable thumbsticks, all of which may need to be used while still finessing the move/view sticks and the difficulty rapidly ramps to the point where someone who might have actually become a lifelong gamer gives up in frustration and disgust.

Problem is, those pads are the standard for all consoles - EA cant change that. So i really dont know what they can do about it apart from make games simpler. Remember when Moly made Fable 3 and went on about using only one button to do everything? That will be the future. Guess they could have say an auto jump mechanic for begineers where as more competent gamers have a jump button. Could that be a thing?

 

[A_Parked_Car]

Everything I read about AAA companies and the like makes me so happy that I no longer really care about that entire part of the industry. It wasn't any deliberate decision on my part either, the AAA industry doesn't make games for me anymore. I actually don't like RPGs. I think they're boring, but now it seems like 90% of AAA titles these days are either RPGs or have RPG-elements shoved into them.

Also, "too hard to learn." What? It took my dad, someone who barely knows how to use a computer, about 20 minutes to learn how to play Battlefield. Is he an amazing player? No, but he understands how the game works and enjoys playing it.

 

[Trishbot]

"Two hours to learn to play the game!"

... That might be because you can't play 10 minutes into Dungeon Keeper without running into a paywall.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

When your target audience for every single one of your games is absolutely everyone and their mother, I imagine there's going to be a large percentage of people who don't know how to play the game.

And I of course don't want social media integrated into any of my games. I don't care if John Doe just hit level 759 in Candy Crush "Saga".

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Executives .....still clueless after all these years....

(on a side note with no way to change button layout it took me a few days to get good at Halo 2 on the Xbox.....I had to learn to aim with the other thumb ><)

 

[Dalisclock]

2 hour tutorials are common? The only game that comes to mind for a 2 hour opening is KH2 and it was blasted for having such an atrociously long opening.

Well, let's not forget Final Fantasy XIII and it's 20 hour long tutorial....

Captcha: Heads up. I appreciate the warning but somehow I don't see too many people disagreeing with me on this point.

 

[mjharper]

If you have never played an FPS before, for example, it will take a while to get used to the controls. If he was talking about NEW players, the statement would be uncontroversial. But since he is supposedly talking about the AVERAGE gamer, then he is talking out of his proverbial.

Also,

In the same interview, Shadow of Mordor design director Michael de Plater chipped in that in the future, we will be seeing more and more RPG elements in non-RPG games. "Every game is an RPG now," he said. "You wouldn't make a game without progression and levels and XP."

I'm so fed up with the idea that "progression and levels and XP" make an RPG. They don't. Role-playing makes an RPG. And please don't tell me we're role-playing cops and robbers in Battlefield: Hardline. There's more role-playing in your average dating sim.

 

[pyrokitsune777]

I think he needs to just shut up and go back to passing out money to people who know what they are doing or at the very least turn the job over to someone who isn't a blind fool.

 

[KillerRabbit]

How does that sound? Sounds like the doomsday-sayers where right.

 

[xServer]

Two hours to learn? That would seem to be an indication of poor construction. Gameplay that is intuitive and fun should be the goal, with good story/complex tasks featured to make it worthwhile. All games don't need to be Bejeweled.

And the idea that everything will link back to a social platform just makes it easier not to buy your games, EA. If I wanted to play a social game I'd be playing WoW right now or one of the other online games that push for group dynamics. What I want is something that is good that I can play alone. Because, well, I like to play alone. Then if someone's being an asshole I know where to take my complaints.