• EA Exec: "Our games are too hard"
    128 replies, posted
[quote] "Our games are actually still too hard to learn," Hilleman said during during an on-stage interview with other developers. "The average player probably spends two hours to learn how to play the most basic game." "And asking for two hours of somebody's time--most of our customers, between their normal family lives...to find two contiguous hours to concentrate on learning how to play a video game is a big ask," he added. [/quote] [URL="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-exec-our-games-are-too-hard-to-learn/1100-6425141/"]Source[/URL] :pwn:
[quote]"And asking for two hours of somebody's time--most of our customers, between their normal family lives...to find two contiguous hours to concentrate on learning how to play a video game is a big ask," he added.[/quote] It's the funniest, strangest sinking feeling, to know that you're slowly slipping out of the "target audience" crosshair...
Yeah, too hard to like.
...Really?
I'll preface this by saying that I like easy games. I don't play them for the challenge and don't find 'hard' or 'difficult' to be very fun. Rage inducing, yes, fun, no. Fuck off, EA. There has to be some challenge to the game. Even someone like me who usually puts the game on 'easy' wants [i]some[/i] substance to the combat, and it's undeniable that a lot of gamers seem to have a hard-on for games that fuck them in the ass every other step. The popularity of Dark Souls is a testament to this, as it's an entirely average at best hack'n'slash if you strip out its insane difficulty.
it's okay to ask for your consumer's time, jesus. if i buy a $30-$60 game, i damn well expect to put some time aside for it!
[QUOTE]"Our games are actually still too hard to learn," Hilleman said during during an on-stage interview with other developers. "The average player probably spends two hours to learn how to play the most basic game." "And asking for two hours of somebody's time--most of our customers, between their normal family lives...to find two contiguous hours to concentrate on learning how to play a video game is a big ask," he added. [/QUOTE] I agree. It's really hard to get good at a game when it's half-finished.
[QUOTE=Gamerman12;47087984]it's okay to ask for your consumer's time, jesus. if i buy a $30-$60 game, i damn well expect to put some time aside for it![/QUOTE] You gotta give him one point: Games these days have about 6 hours of content in them, so one-third of your game basically being a tutorial is problematic. :v: [QUOTE]"Every game is an RPG now," he said. "You wouldn't make a game without progression and levels and XP. And I think every game is going to be a social game...good ideas propagate."[/QUOTE] According to EA, the future is grinding. Thank dog Star Citizen is not having any RPGish character skill tree shit. Player skill is the big determinant.
Or maybe your target audience has the thinking capacity of a slug. I don't mean to call casual gamers (or anyone) idiots, but damn man if "too hard" is a legitimate criticism why not just make all video games play themselves for you. Part of the reason I enjoyed the Ninja Gaiden series was the game started kicking my ass and just wouldn't stop. I got so angry at this that I kept fighting and fighting until before I knew it I beat the game.
I have a friend who pretty much only plays cod or battlefield and one time I let him play the last of us. You could tell what he usually plays since he just rushes through the levels without exploring anything and doesn't really bother thinking much strategy when fighting people, or even try something different when he keeps dying at the same fight again and again. This kind of attitude will create more players like him and developers will have less and less incentive to create detailed environments.
One thing I always notice is the latest games are always too fucking easy. Having difficulty sliders from "blink and you're dead" to "you're a godlike bullet sponge" just makes it a joke too
But that's what happens when you hire chimps for game testers, EA. As if people who play games have enough of a problem with you.
The only hard thing is to comprehend how EA, and Ubisoft, manage to release a game which still requires months before completion, demand $70, and doesn't have the courage to make amends with the next. They're literal scammers.
[QUOTE=Gamerman12;47087984]it's okay to ask for your consumer's time, jesus. if i buy a $30-$60 game, i damn well expect to put some time aside for it![/QUOTE] My rule of thumb for buying games is for every dollar I spent, I expect to put at least 1 hour into it. So if I pay $60 for a game, I won't consider it worth my money until I've put at least 60 hours into it. I personally think this is a very good rule of thumb for me, and has yet to let me down. Some notable examples: FarCry 3: Spent $7.50 (Steam sale), have 60 hours in (meaning it would have been worth full-price for me, though just barely) Xcom Enemy Within: Spent ~$40 (about $9 for Enemy Unknown, and $30 for the expansion), have 164 hours in it. FTL Faster Than Light: Spent $3 (Steam sale :v:), have 165 hours in it. Killing Floor: Spent like $15 on it (I can't even remember), have 245 hours in it.
He means 'too hard to learn' rather than actually difficult. Because for the most part the difficulty of their games are pretty fucking easy in regards to singleplayer. I assume these statements are aimed towards campaigns, anyway. And with how just about every game and their mother play alike nowadays with so much homogenization across the industry, it shouldn't even be difficult to learn if a Battlefield campaign plays just like a Call of Duty campaign, and all you mainly do in both is walk, sprint, point, click and hide behind waist-high walls while the jelly fades off your eyes. Other games are more arguable, but then something like the first Dead Space teaches you the movements right off the bat, then pretty much goes "GO FOR THE LIMBS" several times before literally putting a tutorial message about it in your face; you don't really see anyone complaining about those games being too hard to learn, certainly. I'm more worried about the Shadow of Mordor comment about how every game has RPG progression nowadays. Because they're tapping into that sort of mobile phone 'progression makes people care' mentality, even if it's the most abstract methods possible to explain why getting an upgrade via phone menu or an electric shock to the brain now makes it so you can carry ten bullets in your pockets rather than five or shit like that. When every game starts doing it, especially Ubisoft games, it all.. mulls together.
Press x to win is still too hard? Damn.
Buy the "super easy difficulty" dlc, only $14.99!
the sims 4 makes me break a sweat
yeah it's really hard to keep people's attention for 2 hours movies should all be split into 22 minute episodes
When you design a game for the target audience of consoles what you typically get are casual players who sometimes find it hard to adapt to anything complex, these are the kind of people who take enjoyment from basic games like you find on facebook. From a business prospective, it's sadly in EA's interests to target the "casual" gamers due to the market ratio of them compared to passionate\dedicated gamers who play alot of games.
I grew up on cheat codes. And then I learned that the harder the game, the better. (Within reason!) If the game is too easy it's boring as fuck. The challenge is the entire point of the game. With no challenge in gaming, there is no point in playing them. (With the exception of more plot oriented games) The excitement comes from having to concur a challange. If everything was handed to you because of how easy it is, then it's boring as shit. There is nothing wrong with dying 4, 7, 25, 1000 times in a game, as long as it feels well paced and doesn't feel artificially difficult. But if you're never dying because you're never challenged then the game is unfairly easy.
"Our mistake has been that we're trying to make video games for people who care about video games." I feel like Titus's dad in that bit where young Chris is going to stick the penny in the electrical socket.
only thing that annoys me about this trend, is that it might end up polarizing gaming between both too little difficulty and too much, since on one side of the spectrum you got "SOCIAL GAMING IS THE FUTURE! :downs:" and the other you have folks who think "fun is not necessary :downs:" why can't companies use difficulty settings, its not like they're something new ffs.
Was it just because I was a kid or were the games of yesteryear far more challenging and yet still approachable? Zelda, Mario and Metroid on SNES are good examples. Pretty much all of the big hits I can remember were more difficult than 99% of the crap out these days and far funner too.
Casual gaming is always going to make more money than hardcore gaming by nature- there aren't going to be that many hardcore gamers. Let EA lower their standards more and more, and then they'll be usurped from their already-faltering position as one of the last major hardcore companies by another developer. It's not like we like most of their shit, anyway.
Let's take a different perspective here. A large group of gamers these days are young adults or adults that are employed full time. They have a reasonable amount of disposable income, but not a heck of a lot of time between work, house maintance, and doing social things. There's a reason why TV shows and movies are 20-30 minutes long, or 2-3 hours, instead of 5+ hours. For most folks, they have other commitments that disrupt large blocks of time. 2 hours to learn the ropes of a game, for someone perhaps new to a genre, is long for a casual gamer. When you compare it against the 10 minute or less learning curve of the huge mobile gaming scene. It's a smart business decision to target a larger demographic. It also leaves out the smaller demographics for smaller game studios, which is a good thing in general. It's when a company wants to target both niche and mainstream demographics, or transfer between them, a lot of backslash occurs... Which, this thread is a great example of.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;47088039]My rule of thumb for buying games is for every dollar I spent, I expect to put at least 1 hour into it.[/QUOTE] That's ridiculously optimistic and you're just setting yourself up for failure. You're basically restricting yourself to squeezing playtime out of a game to "make it feel worth it", as only a fraction of games on the market will provide anything close to $1/hour of gameplay. A game should be worth it if you enjoyed it, not based on how much you played it. I paid ~£18 for Transistor, it took me 5 hours to finish it. By your metric it wasn't worth £18, but the game was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Don't use play time as an indicator of game quality or whatever, it's stupid. Well, unless the game is like an hour long and cost you $500.
[QUOTE=Angus725;47088082]Let's take a different perspective here. A large group of gamers these days are young adults or adults that are employed full time. They have a reasonable amount of disposable income, but not a heck of a lot of time between work, house maintance, and doing social things. There's a reason why TV shows and movies are 20-30 minutes long, or 2-3 hours, instead of 5+ hours. For most folks, they have other commitments that disrupt large blocks of time. 2 hours to learn the ropes of a game, for someone perhaps new to a genre, is long for a casual gamer. When you compare it against the 10 minute or less learning curve of the huge mobile gaming scene. It's a smart business decision to target a larger demographic. It also leaves out the smaller demographics for smaller game studios, which is a good thing in general. It's when a company wants to target both niche and mainstream demographics, or transfer between them, a lot of backslash occurs... Which, this thread is a great example of.[/QUOTE] the problem is, the western gaming industry keeps killing the mid-sized devs by buying them and forcing them to make crap/running shit to the ground for a quick buck, EA absorbing westwood and killing CnC is an excellent example of that, maybe the advent of digital distribution might prevent similar things from happening again, but still. but yeah, i'd be happy if the "big players" went after mobile and left the more serious devs/publishers take over niches. would also help if the small/mid-size devs stopped making horrible business decisions :v:
I think I paid less than $5 for Amnesia and it was a wonderful game that lasted me two nights. (mostly because I crawled the entire time but still)
[QUOTE=hexpunK;47088123]That's ridiculously optimistic and you're just setting yourself up for failure. You're basically restricting yourself to squeezing playtime out of a game to "make it feel worth it", as only a fraction of games on the market will provide anything close to $1/hour of gameplay. A game should be worth it if you enjoyed it, not based on how much you played it. I paid ~£18 for Transistor, it took me 5 hours to finish it. By your metric it wasn't worth £18, but the game was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Don't use play time as an indicator of game quality or whatever, it's stupid. Well, unless the game is like an hour long and cost you $500.[/QUOTE] Imagine taking the guy to an expensive restaurant, or a movie...
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