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

[Lunar Templar]

PPFFFFBWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA````

EA games to hard to learn? For who? Infants? people who lack basic motor function? cause I doubt the 'average gamer' has any issue processing the information in any of EA's games.

But then, this IS EA we're talking about, they don't know they're ass from a hole in the ground on a good day.

 

[small]

Wow... just wow.

For a couple of reasons: 2 hours to learn to play a game is not much. Anyone who thinks taking two hours to learn a game is looking at it completely wrong. They don't mean 2 hours to learn WASD and left mouse to click... they mean two hours to become proficient at the game. I can safely say that I got better throughout my entire experience of Shadows of Mordor. I was much much better with the controls and combat at the end than I ever was at 2 hours. But if a lot of people are some kinds of savant and mastered the game 10 minutes in, then why the hell do you even play games.

Social features in everything. Go for it but I have never ever ever ever used a social feature of a game. I don't post my scores to websites and I certainly could not care less about comparing myself to other players. I also don't don't feel an overwhelming need to have RPG elements in everything. Some games it's great I supposed. But a lot of games are fine without them. Many they do not fit in. And it depends on what kind of RPG elements we are talking about. EA's shitty weapon unlocks per level they do in BF games is so old and dated and annoying. Nothing is worse than having to grind to a gun you like to use.

I don't pay much attention to anything executives say though. They are not concerned with the actual games, only the money they lead to. I'm sure these are the same types of guys who came up with that horrendous Dungeon Keeper mobile game.

and the people who fund and direct development of games. dont forget that

i honestly wonder what their solution is to games being too complicated, i can hazard a guess its simplifying things further, more commands mapped to a single key or button. sometimes i miss the days of manuals

the rpg elements leads back into more profits, people have to grind, they get that feeling of achievement and accomplishment as well as opening the door for dlc, etc they can sell to increase progression, level up dlc, time saver dlc (im looking at you ubisoft)

makes sense they are going to go more social orientation, love it or hate it people live their lives on social media and want to share everything, apparently not everyone is antisocial like me and avoids facebook, etc like the plague

 

[Recusant]

EA-
I have not forgotten Spore. As a result, you'll sooner see Osama Bin Laden getting US citizenship than see me buying another one of your games. But in the name of improving the health of the industry, let me offer the following bit of logic, which you seem to have missed:

There are twenty four hours in a day. Always have been, always will be. Yes, the hours are slightly longer than they used to be, but not on any appreciable scale. If it's taking a player two of them to learn your game, then either you have an unusually slow gamer or a remarkably poorly designed game. Try increasing your sample sizes. Also, if two hours is too long to spend learning to play a game, you should know that when you say things like

"And I think every game is going to be a social game"

We spend a lot more than two hours envisioning the kind of hell we'd send the people who say it to.

 

[Doom972]

I can't think of any EA that I played that required 2 hours to learn how to play. I was kind of disappointed to see how much Dragon Age: Inquisition was dumbed down. I think that the execs should focus on money and PR and let the developers concentrate on what makes a good game.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think this is yet another reason to stay clear of EA. Not that I needed another one.

 

[Scrythe]

"Modern games are way too difficult."

- Someone clearly born after 1990.

 

[Mik Sunrider]

Sims City of 2013 ... the game that was built because the 'leaders' of the gaming world thought they knew what gamers wanted and gutted a great game to produce ... well that. I have a weird idea when I et the urge to be social while playing a game, it is called having my friends met up and we all play at the same game at the same time. Sorry I know I am a weirdo; didn't mean it to come out so strongly.

And the two hour thing; if I am bored with the game because, you know, it sucks, two hours is about all I will give it. Want people to finish your games, don't make them suck.

 

[CrystalShadow]

This is true up to a point.


If you think otherwise, how long have you been a gamer? Do you remember what the first game you played was like?

For that matter, if you're old enough, you probably remember stuff like the NES controller. 4 buttons, and a directional control... And often you didn't even use all the buttons that much.

Contrast this to modern games with effectively 12 buttons and 4 analog axes of control and you can see the complexity has gone through the roof. (Especially with some games needing to resort to context sensitive actions, or multi-button combos to even map everything down to just 12 buttons)

If you cannot see how it may be difficult for new gamers to understand, then you've probably been blinded by your own level of experience, and cannot actually truly see things from the perspective of a new player.

That's not to say dumbing down games will help any, but it does show you need some less complex games to ease the barrier to entry.

If you start with something simple, and get the hang of that, you can probably cope with something more demanding later on.
But if you are expected to jump in the deep end right from the start, you may look at it and end up going "This is too hard, I give up" And go do something else instead...

 

[crimson5pheonix]

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.

 

[Malbourne]

I'll never stop learning how to play games! It's what drives me to keep going.

Oh, wait, you mean literal tutorials? Well, I can play those for hours, too. It's still fun like a game, innit?

 

[FalloutJack]

I barely managed to get through reading this. Doesn't matter what your claim is, EA. It's your fault.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I have a feeling EA have settled in their role as the shittiest game company around. That they're just so comfortable saying stuff like this and knowing full well what the backlash will be. Hell, I'd even wager that these statements are *calculated* to generate enough publicity, keeping themselves in the limelight for something at least. Because damn, they're good at stirring the hornets nest. He doesn't even have (or need) a single reference or shred of evidence for such a claim, which could very well be the case if you were just starting to play games for the first time IN YOUR LIFE

 

[omega 616]

I'm all for making games tutorials shorter... fucking sick of doing them. I, like most of you, have been gaming for over a decade.... how many times have you been told what the crouch button is while at the same time there is a thing you have to crouch under? How many times have you been how to fire a gun, just before enemies emerge? Then be told how to reload? Ok, now everybody, what's the button to jump on pc? ... did the class just say space?

Ok, you might get a game that messes that basic formula up or a game that uses the whole fucking keyboard but put tutorials in just them games. Players new to the genre will have to suck it up ...

Recently duke nukem was free on ps+, I downloaded it and my god ... that game is just here you go, get on with it. Took me 10 mins to figure out how to get off the roof .... 30 mins to get into the theater! How did I learn to fire and stuff? Pressed buttons till I figured it out.

As for social thing? ah fuck. I can't stand them. Always competing against friends or sharing progression. The worst sin is making social trophies etc ... like those kill a member of the dev team or somebody who has or revive/trade 100 times (looking at you borderlands).

 

[Vigormortis]

You know, he's right. Some of the best games ever made took hours to teach players how to play.

But, Mr. Richard Hilleman, do you know what those games didn't do? They didn't hand-hold the player through this long, drawn out, slow-progression-based "tutorial" to show them how to play the game. They didn't force the player to sit through a long slog of non-fun until they passed some kind of "test" to prove they could play the game "properly".

No, the best games let the players PLAY THE FUCKING GAME while they learned. The game's designers built the "tutorial" into the level design and the narrative. They taught the players what they needed to know in steps, all the while letting the player progress through the story.

So, Mr. Richard Hilleman, the goal isn't to simplify your games, thus shortening the "tutorials", but rather to engage your players with fun and compelling gameplay WHILE you're teaching them how to play. The goal should be to make your game design more clever, not simpler.

You make those two hours fun. You don't just try to make the non-fun parts slightly shorter.

 

[Nurb]

EA wants to transform gaming into mobile/facebook garbage where you're charged money for every aspect and they don't care what you think.

 

[VondeVon]

Sims 4 was definitely 'too hard for new players' but that wasn't because it was so amazingly complex, no - it was because the UI was so poorly designed.

And those 'tips' that you couldn't shut up or switch off? Forty hours in and they'd still be going off like I didn't know what walls were.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Then what happens when you've alienated all the core players with these "good ideas"?

 

[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.

 

[seditary]

If you're unable to make the learning phase of a game enjoyable, I have no confidence in your ability to make any part of the game enjoyable.

Also do they not notice the correlation between 'all games will have RPG and social elements in them' and 'games are too hard to learn for new players'. Hell I've been gaming for over 25 years and sometimes even I say 'fuck this' when I open a menu/map in some games these days to be overwhelmed with 600 buttons and menus.

Just lol.

 

[JLF]

This statement would suggest that the EA execs main expertise is completely in economics and general business management, not game development. This is something a lot of developers, game reviewers and gaming enthusiast have pointed out time and time again that a good game needs a engaging tutorial/learning process. In this article content it sounds like the Execs want easier and less involved games (e.g. pacman style games, with only two ghosts) which sounds sad and depressing. This will not be good for the company's sales figures.

A new Dragon Age game with better graphics but with linear story progression and the gameplay consisting of quicktime events. Something like Azuras wrath just a bit easier??