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An EA executive thinks that the games of today are too hard to learn, stating that the average gamer spends two consecutive hours just learning how to play the most basic games. Last night at the D.I.C.E summit in Las Vegas, EA Chief Creative Officer, Richard Hilleman, commented on game difficulty during a group interview.
“Our games are actually still too hard to learn,” Hilleman said during an on-stage interview with other developers. “The average player probably spends two hours to learn how to play the most basic game.”
He went on to add that “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”.
This all came in response to a statement by the interviewer, who said that he would prefer that controller and button maps would stay the same across franchises and established series.
A little later in the interview, Shadow of Mordor design director, Michael de Plater, said that he expects to see more games begin to incorporate RPG elements:
“Every game is an RPG now. 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.”
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KitGuru Says: I'm not sure I agree with the idea that today's basic games are too hard and can take two hours to learn. Although I imagine coming to grips with a controller or mouse and keyboard could be difficult for someone new to the gaming medium. What do you guys think? Are games these days too difficult?
Is he serious? Games are TOO DARN EASY nowadays…
totally agree…
It’s EA, common sense and sense of reality were never their forte. Which ever studio or AAA title IP they bought over, they have more or less ruined.
hard? he probably hasnt played them
I think most people missed the point of the statement.It’s the games controls that are hard to learn since they often change, and not the game itself.
Games of today are hard? When i started playing, the norm was Trial and Error. Took me four to five trial and errors on Planescape : Torment back in the day, when the internet was in it’s infancy and there were no walkthroughs. Not to mention for example IL-2 Sturmovik, where i had absolute zero knowledge of airplanes and how they work, and took me one week just to learn to take off and not to crash the moment i was airborne. The problem today is that people have no patience to discover a game.
WASD to move, r to reload, G to grenade, middle click to melee, E to use. NOTHING has changed. And even if that was the issue thats exactly why we have customisable controls on both pc and consoles
Remapping buttons is hard work 🙁
Should stick him in front of Dark Souls 2. He might just curl up and die at how it doesnt hold his hand the entire way through.
totally agree with peoples statements, games are TOO EASY these days. Auto healing behind cover, hand holding throughout, AI team mates that dont die so they can be your cannon fodder. Nah ty. I’ll still to the older classics that actually make you think.
EA is a troll, always has been. This is another reason why gamers need to stop supporting them. They release half finished games and release stupid comments like this.
The reason it takes 2 hours to “learn” is because the make tutorial levels that take 2 hours to bloody complete -_-
Button mapping to stay the same? That’s stupid. What would be nice is if we could remap the damn buttons on controllers like we can do for keyboards on PC.
hard?, these days, i always play games on the hardest difficulty (minus a few obvious ones of course, cough cough darks souls 2, im bad at that game) because they are just a breeze no challenge at all, not like they used to be especially some arcade games like defender etc
yeah and most of them you can’t skip
Even if you forget about old style turn based rpgs and evil side scrolling platformers and just concentrate on controls, does this guy not realise that since they stopped printing proper manuals we all know to go to control options and look at default to get all the info we need within 15 seconds?
2 hours to learn a basic game is a huge exaggeration, but I think I get what he means. To me very few games take a bit too much to learn, but I can see my father needing a lot of time to get going on much simpler games, so I guess it depends on the target audience.
But even more regular gamers often will not continue a game if they feel for instance that the tutorial is too complicated, they might expect to be done with it in 10 min and get into the game, so when it lasts hours like in some tactical games like Endless Legend it can be overwhelming and they’ll just decide to play something more immediate.
Also, by reading these comments, I think the people misunderstood what the EA executive said. He said “games are too hard to learn”, he did not say the difficulty is too high. For instance, Dark Souls is a very hard game, but it is pretty easy to learn, the mechanics and controls are not complicated.
Maybe they should take a look at The Binding of Isaac and ask themselves why a flash game is more fun to play than a Battlefield game. (Hint: it’s called difficulty).
When so many games are coming out of Steam every day, I’d rather use my limited time on games that don’t require hours just to learn how the mechanics work. So excuse me if I don’t have the patience to spend a week to learn how that airplane works, if I could spend that week playing a dozen of other good games instead.
The guy lives in San Francisco and looks like Tommy Chong. Maybe he’s speaking for himself?
I respect your opinion even if it was intended sarcasm or not. They should place a disclaimer then if you don’t have time to learn to play, try somewhere else. Complaining that a game is hard to learn, is another step in the direction were games will be targeted more for the casual audience. I relax more with a hard game, from the mechanics to difficulty than with a game that treats me like an idiot.
There are a lot of amazing games that are easy to pick up and play, just because a game has easy mechanics does not mean it is treating you like an idiot. If the main point of a game is, for instance, to tell a story, adding complex hard to learn mechanics to it might just subtract from the game instead of improving on it (of course it depends on the game).
In genres like turn-based strategy games a certain degree of complexity and learning process is necessary, but in most of them adding unnecessary mechanics just for the sake of it is wrong and it will just drive players away. There are very hard games that still maintain a simple core gameplay, look at Dark Souls, you only need 5 minutes to get into it and learn how to play it.
There are a lot of amazing games that are easy to pick up and play, just because a game has easy mechanics does not mean it is treating you like an idiot. If the main point of a game is, for instance, to tell a story, adding complex hard to learn mechanics to it might just subtract from the game instead of improving on it (of course it depends on the game).
In genres like turn-based strategy games a certain degree of complexity and learning process is necessary, but in most of them adding unnecessary mechanics just for the sake of it is wrong and it will just drive players away. There are very hard games that still maintain a simple core gameplay, look at Dark Souls, you only need 5 minutes to get into it and learn how to play it.
I don’t see “learning” as a bad thing. It is a challenge games from the past ate not only fun but are really challenging ehich required “mental will and capacity” for crying out loud we already have enough kids on COD I used to remember Medal of Honor lecturing me about World War 2
Arma 3 would have to be one of the most difficult to learn just by learning all the mapped buttons.
Really? Most games are really easy to learn by just mashing buttons for 2 minutes. If you’re still unsure, read the controll settings. If developers are using recources on this, they are only wasting their time. They have enough pressure from their publisher.
We just need one button.
press F to play
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Gary ‘Gazza’ Keen They refer to all games and not only FPS games, for us experienced gamers is easy for people new to computers it’s confusing to have almost the exact same game requiring you to learn keys again, now it’s easyi knoe it, but i remember in the 1990 were you had to learn the controls before trying to play, FPS allways had the same controls.
Mike Morris And For you Sir. I have no trouble with keymaping, but instead of being an arrogant douche i can acknowledge that for a non FPS player/newbie it can in fact be overwelming having to learn keys again for basically the same game…i Play arma once in a while so i can say i have no problems with strange keymapings…
And i also agree when refering to the game itself it is in fact too easy, i remember for example deslta force were you had to actually think before making a move…
LOL =p
personally i know EA as a franchise acquirer followed by a prompt franchise kill order. RIP original C&C universe.
I dont imagine anyone 20 + starting to play video games.
Sounds like EA wants more quicktime events…