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

[Machocruz]

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.

And on that note, let me leave you with an example of someone flailing about in "Tutorial: the Game," also known as Portal.

Beginners can start with simpler games instead of trying to jump into a more complicated game because everyone else is playing it. Every other hobby has products designed for varying levels of skill and/or experience, from neophyte to veteran.

 

[RealRT]

"The average player probably spends two hours to learn how to play the most basic game."

Says a lot about your target audience, EA.

Says a lot about their tutorial design, doesn't it?

Oooooh, you just reminded me. The tutorial in Mirror's Edge is fucking abhorrent.

 

[RaikuFA]

There goes EA saying something stupid again. It's not the worst thing they've ever said, though. They really need a guy on staff who gives their execs a good kick in the crotch every time they open their mouth at a public function. It would save their company a lot of grief.

Meanwhile, Atlus's idea of "more accessible" is to make a Virtual Novel dating simulator based on the collective psychological work of Carl Gustav Jung, and fill it with obscure mythological figures, including a giant penis monster riding a chariot.

Is it Growlanser?

 

[Poetic Nova]

Well done EA.

Another reason why I stopped bothering with your products since I figured out that NFSMW (2012) has a part of the map behind a fucking paywall (quite litteraly, there's a visible barrier untill you buy the 'dlc').

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh I love these EA blurbs.

"Every game is an RPG now," he said. "You wouldn't make a game without progression and levels and XP."

TRANSLATION: Story and challenging gameplay? Pah! We want none of that! Creating good, challenging content requires WORK and why should we work when we can make the player work for us by introducing grind?

I swear, most RPG systems I see now are less about pacing and more about forcing the player to do repetitive bullshit.

"And I think every game is going to be a social game...good ideas propagate."

So does syphilis but you don't see me singing its praises.

So to summarize: EA is dumbing all their games down even further, adding grind, and turning them into social-entrapment garbage for the purposes of viral marketing.

Basically, EA is becoming Zynga, only with the capacity to produce prettier graphics.

EDIT: Because I keep seeing this..

To all those using "You learned on simpler controls" as a defense: No, that's just plain wrong.

There's one huge mistake everyone that's asserting this is making: You're all forgetting that those of us that learned on simple 2-4 button game systems also grew up in an era where electronics entertainment was maybe 1/100th as prolific as it is today.

If someone is incapable of operating an Xbox or PS4 controller in today's already dumbed-down AAA games (complete with on-screen color-coded prompts and bread-crumbs), I shudder to think of how that person would struggle with day-to-day tech like smartphones and computer inputs (a keyboard has more buttons on it than any console controller ever will).

The only demographic where that argument might hold are those who are older than video games and never played much (if ever) before, but that demographic is constantly shrinking with the march of time.

Meanwhile, newer generations are growing up with early and frequent exposure to tech. I see far more children with smart phones and tablets today than I did kids with GameBoys when I was growing up. Personal computers are practically as universal as TVs and children are uncannily good at picking up the basic motor skills than adults.

With that kind of technical preparation, I seriously doubt that any future generation is going to struggle learning games just because of the controls.

You're scared they're going to be scared off out of frustration? I think eliminating all frustration and holding their hand like babies is even worse, because without (some) frustration, people have no incentive to improve.

All I'm asking of publishers (EA and others) here is for them to just show a little more respect towards their audience's intelligence.

 

[Asuterisuku]

If you listen to commentaries in Valve games they talk almost through the entire game about gradually teaching players new gameplay mechanics. And their games are better than anything EA has ever published.

So Mr. Hilleman, if it wasn't obvious up until now, you and your colleagues suck and making games.

The irony here being that they STILL publish and distribute Valve's games on console.

 

[Siege_TF]

I'm sure that's actually what he thinks, because the higher you get up the ladder with developers and publishers the farther you get away from the actual game aspect of games and closer to the product aspect.

That's a nice way of saying this guy doesn't know what he's ****ing talking about.

 

[ryukage_sama]

Games started with just a bi-directional joystick. I started with a 4-direction gamepad and two buttons (NES). Current console games have triple the inputs. I can understand the complaint that games are hard to learn for a novice (aka "noob"), but I doubt EA executives are the go to analysts for how games are learned from scratch. Even mobile games which are the first and only platform for millions of adults today, demonstrably great at teaching their players how to interface with games, show that EA doesn't know how to design for the bottom of the learning curve.

 

[wetfart]

If your game is "too hard" for people to learn, you're not doing a good enough job teaching them. There isn't a golden time limit for a tutorial. Look at something like Portal. That game is probably 75% tutorial.

It's this kind of weird thinking that leads to gutted "New Player Experiences" in games. Guild Wars 2 tried it not too long ago and all it did was leave new players confused and veterans angry.

 

[shiajun]

I'd like to be surprised at the level of navel-gazing mentality of "average gamers" displayed here, but I'd lie. The amount of simultaneous input required to move and interact with modern digital worlds in games is overwhelming for people who're used to using one finger to drag or poke a screen. I get that EA is saying just that, but EA is also showing their horrible trend for packing their games from start to finish with "awesome stuff", with no lull time or buildup. They don't design their games to add mechanics one by one. No, they want you to know everything right up front so you can jump in and socialize. If they're concerned that people, particularly new audiences, can't grasp the amount of stuff the games are piling up from the start, perhaps adding internet features, micro transactions and levelling up skill-trees isn't the right way to go. They're seeing their core audience diminish and pull away from their games, but they can't seem to design for anyone else but that core audience that already has some base acquired experiences in handling their control schemes. Something's got to give, and I surely doubt it's going to be neophite audiences' lack of familiarity to using a dual stick/12 button controller.

 

[Gatlank]

Tutorial: Press 'X' to say something smart.
Press 'O' to say something stupid.

EA exec presses 'O'.

Tutorial: Congratulations you pressed a button! Want to post your achievement on social media? Silly you, this is "the best EA always online game ever" we'll post it even if you dont want to.

EA exec: Yay! This is exactly what we needed. Still a bit hard in my opinion but its okay, cut the "Press 'X'" from the game and sell it later as dlc. Oh! And detach the tutorial from the game.
All those graphics and smooth motions to climatize the player in-game might be a overload of information for the brain.

 

[Fox12]

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?

I've seen this posted a few times. To be fair, those were two seperate comments by two seperate people. I don't necessarily mind making games easier to learn, since I hate tutorials anyway. It SHOULD be easier to jump into a game. You can compound difficulty later. I could complain about EA baiting casuals, but it's EA, that's what they do. I've decided it's a little silly for hard core gamers to complain about the decisions of a casual gaming company. We aren't their target audience anymore. In the meantime, I've got Fromsoft and Atlus to pacify me.

As for RPG mechanics and social media? Meh. I love RPG mechanics of they're well done, so no complaints there. If they're not well done then I'll ignore them. I couldn't care less about social gaming, but it's easy enough to ignore so far. Dark Souls even managed to make it work in a positive way. It's stupid to shoehorn anything into a game it doesn't belong, but it's possible for talented developers to make these things work.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

The thing about EA is that they assume their target audience is completely brain dead.

That's why they invented a form of Tetris where you can rotate, move and drop a block with one click/touch, because they thought even that much control might be too much for some to handle.

 

[Shiftygiant]

Oh EA, we haven't heard from you in a while. It's almost refreshing to hear them insult their new audience.

 

[sageoftruth]

As others have stated, it's entirely possible to make a game that's easy to get into but is very very challenging several hours into the experience. These guys fail at Learning 101.

 

[Scars Unseen]

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.

And on that note, let me leave you with an example of someone flailing about in "Tutorial: the Game," also known as Portal.

Beginners can start with simpler games instead of trying to jump into a more complicated game because everyone else is playing it. Every other hobby has products designed for varying levels of skill and/or experience, from neophyte to veteran.

Do they? It's my experience that people want to play what's popular. When I started playing games, most games were simple, but that is no longer the case.

This isn't a hobby that revolves around building a skill like woodworking, sewing, or model building. It isn't about an starting with manageable products so you can work your way up to larger more complicated ones.

Gaming is closer to watching movies. Despite the fact that there are skills involved, it's perceived more as entertainment than anything else. People don't play simplistic platformers or mobile games so that they can one day work their way up to flight sims and turn based strategy games. If they are playing simpler games it's because that's what interests them for some reason or another.

 

[Irridium]

He's not wrong. I'm betting most people started with the NES. or SNES. That thing had two face buttons, a D-pad, and a start/select button. Current controllers have a D-pad, four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, and two analog sticks which also serve as two more buttons. Shit's complicated for people who didn't have that learning curve stretched out over a few decades. Also keep in mind so many games nowadays try to "wow" people in the beginning, so they're trying to learn stuff while everything around them is exploding/going nuts.

Shit's hard for people who haven't been doing this their whole lives, cut people some slack.

 

[smithy_2045]

He's not wrong in the sense that games should be easy to learn, but hard to master. In an ideal world almost anyone is capable of picking up and playing a given game at a competent level, but practice and perseverance will make you a much better player. Most single player games these days seem to be almost the opposite, where it's hard to learn everything that you can do, but once you do it's extremely easy to use.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Sounds like EA is trying to be the new Facebook of crappy social casual games.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Will they just shut up with the excuses and/or lies already and start making good games? Please?