Games are too hard and boring

Monolith · Post by **Monolith** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:57 am

Electronic Arts CEO calls games 'boring'
11:10AM Monday July 09, 2007

NEW YORK - Most video games are "boring" or too complicated, and game makers need to do more to appeal to casual players, according to the head of the world's largest video game publisher, Electronic Arts.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play," EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello told the Wall Street Journal in a story posted on its website.

Riccitiello became CEO at EA in April in his return to the game maker.

EA's former chief operating officer had left the company in 2004 to help found Elevation Partners, a media and entertainment buyout firm.

The video game executive criticized the industry for rolling out sequels to new games that add little from the previous version.

"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," he was quoted as saying. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."

The comments were made as the $30 billion ($NZ38.3bn) video game industry prepares for its annual gathering, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Santa Monica, California.

Anticipation is running high that cheaper hardware and a host of keenly awaited new games will fuel the strongest sales in years.

Link

And such a wise guy is the CEO of the world's largest video game publisher. Well, obviously he has never played any EA games because "rins-and-repeat" is what EA has been doing now for ages. Besides, while I do agree that most casual games are boring, I totally missed the "too complicated" part in almost any recent game I played. Probably because I played so many hardcore RPGs lately.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:34 am

Games are to boring - indeed - but that is because they often are dumped down, easy and a carbon copy of each other.
Games are not to hard, on the contrary.

Kipi · Post by **Kipi** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:31 am

Can't agree Xandax more.

I'm rather curious how the author finds new games difficult, when some goes even so far as to giving you exact location to everything, and even giving you advices how many steps you must take in certain direction to reach the goal/item/npc you are meant to find...

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:15 am

What happened to frustration?

I thought quite a lot of games these days (and of previous years) always border on frustratingly hard instead of mind-numbing hard. Surprising that no one ever brought this up before and instead, complained that games these days are either too hard or complicated or even both.

I may have come across some games that are complicated but they are far and few in between.

EA, from what I can tell and as far as I know, have a history of milking many hit titles including the Sims, SimCity, Lord of the Rings, Medal of Honour, Need for Speed and their famous sports titles to name a few. If EA is willing to take drastic action and do what Mr Riccitiello had mentioned in that article (and the [url="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118387245259860156.html?mod=home_whats_news_us"]Wall Street Journal version[/url]) in the first post, then I respect him. If they don't, then I consider him more as someone who uses empty words.

Me? I'll play the waiting game and see how this unfolds. Enough said.

clothes100one · Post by **clothes100one** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 11:45 pm

too hard NOT= boring

Mr. Pastorius · Post by **Mr. Pastorius** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:58 am

Yep, games are way too hard these days. Definetely. The market is flooded with hardcore DnD RPGs and adventure games filled with insanely difficult puzzles. Don't get me started on those realistic simulators where one single mistake can lead to a disaster.
What we need are more linear, dumbed-down twitch games with 'teh shineye graffix'. Preferrably first-person, because only through first-person can you truly experience 'immershun'.

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:39 am

Another new CEO who knows the gaming industry by the powers of his magnificent intuition, and is so kindly willing to share his brilliance with us. I wonder how long this boy wonder will last, once reality hits the fan?

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:46 am

Mr. Pastorius wrote: What we need are more linear, dumbed-down twitch games with 'teh shineye graffix'. Preferrably first-person, because only through first-person can you truly experience 'immershun'.

And since most games (no matter the genre, except RTSes) want to go first person, I might as well just stick to FPSes instead.

Red_X · Post by **Red_X** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:13 pm

Xandax wrote:Games are to boring - indeed - but that is because they often are dumped down, easy and a carbon copy of each other.
Games are not to hard, on the contrary.

That is why I spend more money on PC Gamer Magazines then I do on actual games. I dont want to waste my money on a games where the only difference between them is character names.

Monolith · Post by **Monolith** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 6:54 am

So you're wasting it on magazines which praise those games? Yup, makes sense.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 7:25 am

'Praise' is.. too kind. The whole conflict of interests with advertising ordeal is twice as bad with the magazines because they don't break even as easily as their competitor on the Internet. You hear about it all the time too, computer magazines going out of business and all. And you have to admit, it's a whole lot harder to avoid (page wide) advertising in magazines than it is on the internet.

xandie · Post by **xandie** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:58 am

Games are not...

That's why they are called games for they
entertain us...
Just keep yourself have the spirit of eagerness..
to learn those games...
They are fun...and not boring...:laugh:

NarutoAngel221 · Post by **NarutoAngel221** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:09 am

My unfinished games would be all role playing games, just thinking about the hours toward just fighting monsters to level up high enough to beat the game were to intimidating for me and i gave up trying to reach there ends before i ever started.

Loki[D.d.G] · Post by **Loki[D.d.G]** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 11:08 am

NarutoAngel221 wrote:My unfinished games would be all role playing games, just thinking about the hours toward just fighting monsters to level up high enough to beat the game were to intimidating for me and i gave up trying to reach there ends before i ever started.

RPGs have always been more about the thirst for finding out what happens next in the storyline rather than the combat or level grinding for me. If I was looking to get some real action, I would turn to an FPS like Half-Life. RPGs that require you speculate and think about the plot have always intrigued me.