Well, with the success of so many EA games, maybe they are onto something there?
I see an "I WIN!" button in EA Games' future
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
But.... there is good music, good TV and good movies. You just have to be more selective and beware of the over-hyped titles from studios and individuals with a known track record for catering to the masses.
What are you talking about?
TV is great .. the Flash, Arrow, House of Cards, Scandal .... it is the golden age of TV.
Movie is great ... all the marvel movies ...
.. if games can do as well as TV & movie, i will be very happy. It is not bad though ... there are some great games to play from mainstream stuff like D3 and Dishonored, to more indie like stuff like Life is Strange, and Gone Home.
TV is great on HBO, Netflix, FX, etc. and it continues to be shit on CBS, ABC and NBC where they produce all the heavily censored pablum for the masses... and btw, you forgot Fargo, True Detectives, and The Americans to name just 3 more.
I avoid HBO as I cant stand all the nudity and swearing. We keep things family rated in our home.
""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."'
Hey, some people had a hard time with: 'Press X to pay respects'
You have to remember what their target demographic is...
Sigh, I feel a new dumbing down of the games comming up... A chimp can already learn to play them but it seems that EA thinks their players are incredible stupid.
They also in their wisdom say: "Every game is an RPG now,".
In their defense... My experience is most people are too stupid to play most games these days. It's not that gamers have become idiots, it's that idiots have started to become gamers.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
Well in essence every dev has been tagging their game a rpg even though they do not play like a rpg should.
As to too hard,very laughable,i see this as Smedley type marketing.He knows full well they are like 8-10 year old minds needed to play these games he is just trying to cause a stir to get EA noticed.
I doubt he would know how to make a QUALITY tough game aside from the simple tools that anyone could do,like adding massive regen ,,yes really good job when devs do that,takes like 5 seconds of thought lol.
The funniest read is seeing the words progression,leveling and SOCIAL in the same sentence.
What games has this guy been playing because 99.9% are all ANTI SOCIAL designs,until end game which again proves amateur hour game design.So you have players solo 99% of the game then figure,oh yes they should make magnificent group elements at end game since they have not done it once up to that point.
Then let's design that end game so that it is all about gear and not skill,that way if someone new wants to join in and they don't have the gear you can flame them,yes brilliant for the SOCIAL.
All i have seen is terrible game designs ,oh yes and we can mention the push to so much PVP.Let's have players cursing at each other and creating angry scenarios instead of promoting FUN game play where players work together instead of against each other.
Oh and since i mention "work together",let's design these mmorpg's so that any grouping is FAKE,players still act alone inside these groups because devs are trying to remove ROLES in a ROLE Playing game ...roflmao,guess they forgot what title they put on their game before designing it.
Yep it has been amateur hour in most developer offices,maybe too much coffee and too much computer code to know what it takes to design a proper game under the title used.Soon Sports games will have levels gained for running to the store to get a loaf of bread.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well in essence every dev has been tagging their game a rpg even though they do not play like a rpg should.
As to too hard,very laughable,i see this as Smedley type marketing.He knows full well they are like 8-10 year old minds needed to play these games he is just trying to cause a stir to get EA noticed.
I doubt he would know how to make a QUALITY tough game aside from the simple tools that anyone could do,like adding massive regen ,,yes really good job when devs do that,takes like 5 seconds of thought lol.
The funniest read is seeing the words progression,leveling and SOCIAL in the same sentence.
What games has this guy been playing because 99.9% are all ANTI SOCIAL designs,until end game which again proves amateur hour game design.So you have players solo 99% of the game then figure,oh yes they should make magnificent group elements at end game since they have not done it once up to that point.
Then let's design that end game so that it is all about gear and not skill,that way if someone new wants to join in and they don't have the gear you can flame them,yes brilliant for the SOCIAL.
All i have seen is terrible game designs ,oh yes and we can mention the push to so much PVP.Let's have players cursing at each other and creating angry scenarios instead of promoting FUN game play where players work together instead of against each other.
Oh and since i mention "work together",let's design these mmorpg's so that any grouping is FAKE,players still act alone inside these groups because devs are trying to remove ROLES in a ROLE Playing game ...roflmao,guess they forgot what title they put on their game before designing it.
Yep it has been amateur hour in most developer offices,maybe too much coffee and too much computer code to know what it takes to design a proper game under the title used.Soon Sports games will have levels gained for running to the store to get a loaf of bread.
Never mind
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
The majority of gamers really have no clue about the subject, as evidenced by the significant amount of "only make games specifically for me and my level of gaming experience, or I'll belittle you" responses that this thread has.
Meanwhile anyone who's ever observed an actual game usability testing session understands the pain of watching less experienced gamers try to understand even the most basic concepts in games.
The widest audience isn't always the right move, but making games that a lot of players enjoy is definitely a safer bet. This carries the implication that those same players need to understand how to play, or they can't have fun.
But most gamers unsurprisingly have a very selfish view "make games only for me!" and aren't concerned with whether making games for them actually makes any business sense. Which results in a lot of useless insults being toss around by these gamers.
Of course the way to actually be the most selfish would be to drop the insults entirely and simply be an avid evangelist of good game design (design which manages to simultaneously be easy to learn and deep.) Only a fool is against something being easy to learn. But the ideal is "easy to learn, hard to master" and that's basically a win-win situation for everyone.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I hate running around without enough info for a main quest and lots of side quests npcs are along the way. For single players.
i can handle tough fights, puzzles, plat forming maybe racing but if the navigation is about being obscure to encourage exploration then that's no fun in a single player - not a fan of those sand box single player RPGs that do that intentionally. I hate feeling lost and needing to explore in a single player game. It might sound redundant for an RPG, but it could be realistic for an RPG if the world was unpopulated without any trade or cartographers bit it's not ...
for example getting a taxi but he can't take you to your destination because you have not run there. For a single player that's lame, and mmo not as bad.
so since the article covers single player RPGs I can say that's a positive - design better maps, maybe make the journey a puzzle but don't expect someone to run around without enough information with lots of clutter of obnoxious npcs.
For mmos it's standard to follow the quest marker, but... It would be nice for mmos if they designed the system to give enough info to find locations without an arrow or mini map.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
But.... there is good music, good TV and good movies. You just have to be more selective and beware of the over-hyped titles from studios and individuals with a known track record for catering to the masses.
What are you talking about?
TV is great .. the Flash, Arrow, House of Cards, Scandal .... it is the golden age of TV.
Movie is great ... all the marvel movies ...
.. if games can do as well as TV & movie, i will be very happy. It is not bad though ... there are some great games to play from mainstream stuff like D3 and Dishonored, to more indie like stuff like Life is Strange, and Gone Home.
TV is great on HBO, Netflix, FX, etc. and it continues to be shit on CBS, ABC and NBC where they produce all the heavily censored pablum for the masses... and btw, you forgot Fargo, True Detectives, and The Americans to name just 3 more.
F2P mobile and FB shit is the main focus of game development these days because it's easy money. That and the incremental refresh of franchises. Games like Darkest Dungeon are the exception not the rule. Luckily there is enough volume to give us a lot of exceptions to choose from.
I guess it depends on what you are looking for on TV.
There have been a lot of movies made about dark and depraved things happening. None of it was censored even though I was just a kid. I'm not sure if that was a good or bad thing. A lot of this stuff was made in the 60s all the way to the late 90s. It reminds me of Ultima Online where people could get away with anything they wanted to get away with.
These days everything is censored massively on standard TV and everything is politically correct. This isn't a bad thing, but it definitely plays to the masses. It's a good thing for me as it means I watch less TV and I watch a lot less movies.
One thing I have found is that TV stations like PBS (which have actually been around forever) show all kinds of quality content that you can actually learn from. Sadly these types of TV shows are watched by a niche crowd. Now that I'm older I wish I had watched more documentaries. It's sad how many things I saw on TV that were entirely incorrect depictions of things from history. They were generally depicted a certain way to make a lot of money.
Games today are kind of like TV. They are heavily censored in most cases and the stories are very toned down to please the masses of people. This usually results in very boring stories to me. As we have seen on this message board most people are more interested in talking about certain game mechanics then the actual game, lore, story, races, etc. If there was ever some kind of knowledge to be gained by playing games it's long since passed IMO.
Personally I don't think that we actually need games. I feel like people today are very dependent on entertainment and they don't have to worry about it because there is an overabundance of it (bad or not). People have so much entertainment they don't have time to imagine anything on their own. Most of us could probably make up our own games that are just as good. They might not be video games per say, but most games today started as board games or text based games of some sort. I'm willing to bet most people would have more fun entertaining themselves then playing most of the games being released today. Maybe that is why Facebook and Youtube are so popular. People can entertain themselves with things like recording friends and family doing silly things and posting it. When I was growing up I didn't do things like that, but I did spend a lot of time alone and entertained myself pretending with toy action figures, blocks, legos, and other things. Perhaps it is better just to build your own things as best you can at some point. Your imagination is somewhere that developers can't invade and try to manipulate you based on monetary values.
Sigh, I feel a new dumbing down of the games comming up... A chimp can already learn to play them but it seems that EA thinks their players are incredible stupid.
They also in their wisdom say: "Every game is an RPG now,".
In their defense... My experience is most people are too stupid to play most games these days. It's not that gamers have become idiots, it's that idiots have started to become gamers.
Theres this channel on Youtube called "Teens React" or something to that affect. They once had them "Teens React to Super Mario Bros." <- Yeah... the original one on the NES.
These kids couldn't figure it out. Getting past the first stage was a chore and major victory if they even made it. It was extremely frustrating to watch.
Watching them play Mega-Man was even worse. To be fair - Mega Man is actually kind of hard, even if you know what you're doing. But still. It literally takes 20 seconds to understand what is and is not possible in those games, and they couldn't figure it out.
I don't think it's because they're stupid, really. I think it's because they've never had a reason to actually do some thinking on their own. They don't have any imaginations that make any coherent sense, because they don't know how to use their brains. And they value the most ridiculously non-essential things in life that aren't relevant to anything pertaining to humanity.
Kids haven't always been like this. This is a new thing that's been cropping up just in the past 10 or 15 years. I have my own thoughts about why this is happening, but this isn't the place to discuss that. My point is - I don't think they are stupid. They have the capacity to use an otherwise functional brain... but they don't know how.
Meh, games should be CUSTOMIZABLE. If you have a keyset you like to play shooters with or a keyset you like to play MMOs with, it should be easy to have the MMO adopt that keyset for you.
In their defense... My experience is most people are too stupid to play most games these days. It's not that gamers have become idiots, it's that idiots have started to become gamers.
Theres this channel on Youtube called "Teens React" or something to that affect. They once had them "Teens React to Super Mario Bros." <- Yeah... the original one on the NES.
These kids couldn't figure it out. Getting past the first stage was a chore and major victory if they even made it. It was extremely frustrating to watch.
Watching them play Mega-Man was even worse. To be fair - Mega Man is actually kind of hard, even if you know what you're doing. But still. It literally takes 20 seconds to understand what is and is not possible in those games, and they couldn't figure it out.
I don't think it's because they're stupid, really. I think it's because they've never had a reason to actually do some thinking on their own. They don't have any imaginations that make any coherent sense, because they don't know how to use their brains. And they value the most ridiculously non-essential things in life that aren't relevant to anything pertaining to humanity.
Kids haven't always been like this. This is a new thing that's been cropping up just in the past 10 or 15 years. I have my own thoughts about why this is happening, but this isn't the place to discuss that. My point is - I don't think they are stupid. They have the capacity to use an otherwise functional brain... but they don't know how.
Mega man was over the edge (that thing where you had to keep your map in the sun for 2 hours were just insane), but Super Mario wasn't even one of the harder games back then.
Intelligence might not be the problem here, more something like not having to work to get the good stuff. The whole "everybody gets a price mentality".
Good luck in life kids, work suck and is far harder than Super Mario.
But I honestly think that a MMO that starts easy and slowly gets the difficulty up works, Wow does this but not until raiding. Doing the same thing in the open world should work as well, make the first half of the game easy and then seriously ramp up the difficulty.
Making the games easier and easier will just make the problem worse. People needs challenge to grow.
Sigh, I feel a new dumbing down of the games comming up... A chimp can already learn to play them but it seems that EA thinks their players are incredible stupid.
They also in their wisdom say: "Every game is an RPG now,".
In their defense... My experience is most people are too stupid to play most games these days. It's not that gamers have become idiots, it's that idiots have started to become gamers.
Theres this channel on Youtube called "Teens React" or something to that affect. They once had them "Teens React to Super Mario Bros." <- Yeah... the original one on the NES.
These kids couldn't figure it out. Getting past the first stage was a chore and major victory if they even made it. It was extremely frustrating to watch.
Watching them play Mega-Man was even worse. To be fair - Mega Man is actually kind of hard, even if you know what you're doing. But still. It literally takes 20 seconds to understand what is and is not possible in those games, and they couldn't figure it out.
I don't think it's because they're stupid, really. I think it's because they've never had a reason to actually do some thinking on their own. They don't have any imaginations that make any coherent sense, because they don't know how to use their brains. And they value the most ridiculously non-essential things in life that aren't relevant to anything pertaining to humanity.
Kids haven't always been like this. This is a new thing that's been cropping up just in the past 10 or 15 years. I have my own thoughts about why this is happening, but this isn't the place to discuss that. My point is - I don't think they are stupid. They have the capacity to use an otherwise functional brain... but they don't know how.
Good post and I agree.
It's never been more important than it is today for parents to monitor and intervene when kids are being sedated -- deliberately so -- to turn them into more easily manageable citizens of tomorrow.
My son (who is now a 30 yr. old indie game programmer with an MSc in Computer Science) cut his gaming teeth on Link, Zelda and FF... if kids in "Teens React" are struggling with Mario, I'd hate to see what they do with those early console RPGs.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Never played a hard EA game. Not saying I have not enjoyed some of them but if EA makes their games cater to bad gamers I am not sure how that will do for them. I personally have played a game and failed and it just made me want to take another run at it. IMO what EA should be working is how to teach, shorten that learning curve. Make the start short fun and easy to learn and add to it quickly. Who said starting areas could not be fun?
Originally posted by Nanfoodle Never played a hard EA game. Not saying I have not enjoyed some of them but if EA makes their games cater to bad gamers I am not sure how that will do for them. I personally have played a game and failed and it just made me want to take another run at it. IMO what EA should be working is how to teach, shorten that learning curve. Make the start short fun and easy to learn and add to it quickly. Who said starting areas could not be fun?
The two first games that EA released simultaneously in the early 80's, Archon and MULE (both classics) were anything but dumbed down. In the 80's hard and smart were still cool.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Originally posted by Nanfoodle Never played a hard EA game. Not saying I have not enjoyed some of them but if EA makes their games cater to bad gamers I am not sure how that will do for them. I personally have played a game and failed and it just made me want to take another run at it. IMO what EA should be working is how to teach, shorten that learning curve. Make the start short fun and easy to learn and add to it quickly. Who said starting areas could not be fun?
List all the EA Games you've completed on the hardest possible difficulty setting. (And/or the PVP games where you were #1 ranked in the world.)
Without any context or evidence, saying that you've "never played a hard EA game" is rather meaningless.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Nanfoodle Never played a hard EA game. Not saying I have not enjoyed some of them but if EA makes their games cater to bad gamers I am not sure how that will do for them. I personally have played a game and failed and it just made me want to take another run at it. IMO what EA should be working is how to teach, shorten that learning curve. Make the start short fun and easy to learn and add to it quickly. Who said starting areas could not be fun?
List all the EA Games you've completed on the hardest possible difficulty setting. (And/or the PVP games where you were #1 ranked in the world.)
Without any context or evidence, saying that you've "never played a hard EA game" is rather meaningless.
Never said I was ranked #1 in any game ever. We are talking the context of EA saying their games are to hard to learn for most gamers. I dont see it, there games are not that kind of hard. Most can be learned in 10-20 min of play and some not even that. Makes me wonder what test group they are using to say most find their games to hard. I cant point at one of their games that takes 2hr to learn. Can you? Really 2hrs?
Originally posted by Nanfoodle Never played a hard EA game. Not saying I have not enjoyed some of them but if EA makes their games cater to bad gamers I am not sure how that will do for them. I personally have played a game and failed and it just made me want to take another run at it. IMO what EA should be working is how to teach, shorten that learning curve. Make the start short fun and easy to learn and add to it quickly. Who said starting areas could not be fun?
List all the EA Games you've completed on the hardest possible difficulty setting. (And/or the PVP games where you were #1 ranked in the world.)
Without any context or evidence, saying that you've "never played a hard EA game" is rather meaningless.
Couldn't you flip that idea around and say that people could start with the games on easy. Usually I have to turn the games up to maximum difficulty to get any challenge if I want it. If the easy difficult is still to difficult that is fairly sad. I realize as other posters have said that perhaps they mean the actual learning of the game, but most games these days made by EA use controllers and have a fairly simple interface because of it. How hard could it be to learn the controls? They games all have options menu's that tell you exactly what each button does. On top of this there are tutorials at each spot to tell you exactly what to do there. It's all a little sad. Does everyone really want to follow tutorials? Yes they will guarantee your success, but the success is someone else's. Wouldn't it be more fun to come up with your own ideas on how to do things in a game. It's not like you can hurt yourself trying to do things in a video game.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Originally posted by nerovipus32 EA are basically saying their customers are dumb. what absolute cunts EA are.
There is a difference between dumb, and unwilling to waste time on learning merely button layouts of a game.
Yes, that is true. A good game should be easy to learn the basics but hard to master. Kinda like Chess. Good examples are computer games like CIV and for that matter the Empire games.
But most games today don't have a zillion weird keys like many did on C-64 and Amiga. They are already incredible easy to learn so to most of us it sounds like they want the games so easy that your dog can play with you.
If a game is both easy to learn and easy to master we will tire of them in a few weeks or even days. But I guess we always can pay another $50 to get a new game then.
What are "the basics" of a mmorpg? The analogy using Chess is that if you know how the pieces move then you know the basics. Can we analogously say that if I know the WASD keys to move, the space bar to jump and the number keys to use abilities that I know the basics?
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
Never said I was ranked #1 in any game ever. We are talking the context of EA saying their games are to hard to learn for most gamers. I dont see it, there games are not that kind of hard. Most can be learned in 10-20 min of play and some not even that. Makes me wonder what test group they are using to say most find their games to hard. I cant point at one of their games that takes 2hr to learn. Can you? Really 2hrs?
For me? No.
For the average player? Yes, absolutely.
I've been in the industry 15 years and seen countless usability sessions where random people are brought in to play games, and you always end up experiencing the pain of watching them constantly fail to learn things (even though Rise of Nations in particular was outstanding at teaching players how to play through course of playing.) But since you don't know me and haven't seen usability testing firsthand, you may decide to think this is all a lot of nonsense. (It isn't of course, but you have very little hard evidence otherwise.)
One of the more compelling bits of logic to someone who doesn't understand is the notion that EA isn't motivated to lie and is motivated to understand how people are playing their games and where the failure points are.
Some things to keep in mind:
"2 hours" doesn't name a specific game or demographic. But it clearly wasn't something simple like Pac-Man Championship Edition. It was probably an RPG or strategy title, as there were definitely Rise of Nations participants who didn't get all the concepts by the end of a 2 hour session.
The point of usability studies is to make improvements. When you're comparing the time it took you to learn, you're comparing the time it took to learn the game after those improvements. It's a little like taking a cross-country flight for a few hours and then laughing at the people who historically took ~100 days (Oregon Trail.) The reality is that in both cases you made the trip faster because of others' innovations.
Actual videos of game usability sessions would be the best evidence of what I'm saying, but companies seem to be hesitant to show their games at their worst, and you also want participants to feel comfortably anonymous. Blurring out faces seems trivial, so I'd guess it's mostly the former problem (showing games at their worst) which explains the lack of usability footage online. But basically they're summed up as: regular people spending multiple hours trying to figure out concepts you thought were completely obvious (but you obviously were wrong about, so you'll have to redesign the feature or the UI if multiple participants struggle with the system.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Couldn't you flip that idea around and say that people could start with the games on easy. Usually I have to turn the games up to maximum difficulty to get any challenge if I want it. If the easy difficult is still to difficult that is fairly sad. I realize as other posters have said that perhaps they mean the actual learning of the game, but most games these days made by EA use controllers and have a fairly simple interface because of it. How hard could it be to learn the controls? They games all have options menu's that tell you exactly what each button does. On top of this there are tutorials at each spot to tell you exactly what to do there. It's all a little sad. Does everyone really want to follow tutorials? Yes they will guarantee your success, but the success is someone else's. Wouldn't it be more fun to come up with your own ideas on how to do things in a game. It's not like you can hurt yourself trying to do things in a video game.
Well the other poster did make a good point that "ease of learning" is a different concept from "this game is easy" (referring to a game's challenge.)
But apart from that, yes it makes a lot more sense for the veteran player to be the one to have to change things. They're obviously the more experienced gamer, and it's more appropriate to demand that they change the difficult than the average inexperienced gamer.
Nobody wants tutorials, which is part of why the game rules themselves need to be so simple and obvious (because the less intuitive the rules, the more the game must teach players through a heavy-handed method like a tutorial.) That doesn't mean the game overall has to be simple (Chess' rules fit on a single sheet of paper, yet it's quite deep.) Just that it needs to be very easy to learn.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Never said I was ranked #1 in any game ever. We are talking the context of EA saying their games are to hard to learn for most gamers. I dont see it, there games are not that kind of hard. Most can be learned in 10-20 min of play and some not even that. Makes me wonder what test group they are using to say most find their games to hard. I cant point at one of their games that takes 2hr to learn. Can you? Really 2hrs?
For me? No.
For the average player? Yes, absolutely.
I've been in the industry 15 years and seen countless usability sessions where random people are brought in to play games, and you always end up experiencing the pain of watching them constantly fail to learn things (even though Rise of Nations in particular was outstanding at teaching players how to play through course of playing.) But since you don't know me and haven't seen usability testing firsthand, you may decide to think this is all a lot of nonsense. (It isn't of course, but you have very little hard evidence otherwise.)
One of the more compelling bits of logic to someone who doesn't understand is the notion that EA isn't motivated to lie and is motivated to understand how people are playing their games and where the failure points are.
Some things to keep in mind:
"2 hours" doesn't name a specific game or demographic. But it clearly wasn't something simple like Pac-Man Championship Edition. It was probably an RPG or strategy title, as there were definitely Rise of Nations participants who didn't get all the concepts by the end of a 2 hour session.
The point of usability studies is to make improvements. When you're comparing the time it took you to learn, you're comparing the time it took to learn the game after those improvements. It's a little like taking a cross-country flight for a few hours and then laughing at the people who historically took ~100 days (Oregon Trail.) The reality is that in both cases you made the trip faster because of others' innovations.
Actual videos of game usability sessions would be the best evidence of what I'm saying, but companies seem to be hesitant to show their games at their worst, and you also want participants to feel comfortably anonymous. Blurring out faces seems trivial, so I'd guess it's mostly the former problem (showing games at their worst) which explains the lack of usability footage online. But basically they're summed up as: regular people spending multiple hours trying to figure out concepts you thought were completely obvious (but you obviously were wrong about, so you'll have to redesign the feature or the UI if multiple participants struggle with the system.)
It isn't just gaming that has this problem. There is a design philosophy of teaching your users how to use your software that cuts across the software industry. People shouldn't be shocked by this.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Comments
I see an "I WIN!" button in EA Games' future
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
=-)
Hey, some people had a hard time with: 'Press X to pay respects'
You have to remember what their target demographic is...
In their defense... My experience is most people are too stupid to play most games these days. It's not that gamers have become idiots, it's that idiots have started to become gamers.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
Well in essence every dev has been tagging their game a rpg even though they do not play like a rpg should.
As to too hard,very laughable,i see this as Smedley type marketing.He knows full well they are like 8-10 year old minds needed to play these games he is just trying to cause a stir to get EA noticed.
I doubt he would know how to make a QUALITY tough game aside from the simple tools that anyone could do,like adding massive regen ,,yes really good job when devs do that,takes like 5 seconds of thought lol.
The funniest read is seeing the words progression,leveling and SOCIAL in the same sentence.
What games has this guy been playing because 99.9% are all ANTI SOCIAL designs,until end game which again proves amateur hour game design.So you have players solo 99% of the game then figure,oh yes they should make magnificent group elements at end game since they have not done it once up to that point.
Then let's design that end game so that it is all about gear and not skill,that way if someone new wants to join in and they don't have the gear you can flame them,yes brilliant for the SOCIAL.
All i have seen is terrible game designs ,oh yes and we can mention the push to so much PVP.Let's have players cursing at each other and creating angry scenarios instead of promoting FUN game play where players work together instead of against each other.
Oh and since i mention "work together",let's design these mmorpg's so that any grouping is FAKE,players still act alone inside these groups because devs are trying to remove ROLES in a ROLE Playing game ...roflmao,guess they forgot what title they put on their game before designing it.
Yep it has been amateur hour in most developer offices,maybe too much coffee and too much computer code to know what it takes to design a proper game under the title used.Soon Sports games will have levels gained for running to the store to get a loaf of bread.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Never mind
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The majority of gamers really have no clue about the subject, as evidenced by the significant amount of "only make games specifically for me and my level of gaming experience, or I'll belittle you" responses that this thread has.
Meanwhile anyone who's ever observed an actual game usability testing session understands the pain of watching less experienced gamers try to understand even the most basic concepts in games.
The widest audience isn't always the right move, but making games that a lot of players enjoy is definitely a safer bet. This carries the implication that those same players need to understand how to play, or they can't have fun.
But most gamers unsurprisingly have a very selfish view "make games only for me!" and aren't concerned with whether making games for them actually makes any business sense. Which results in a lot of useless insults being toss around by these gamers.
Of course the way to actually be the most selfish would be to drop the insults entirely and simply be an avid evangelist of good game design (design which manages to simultaneously be easy to learn and deep.) Only a fool is against something being easy to learn. But the ideal is "easy to learn, hard to master" and that's basically a win-win situation for everyone.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I hate running around without enough info for a main quest and lots of side quests npcs are along the way. For single players.
i can handle tough fights, puzzles, plat forming maybe racing but if the navigation is about being obscure to encourage exploration then that's no fun in a single player - not a fan of those sand box single player RPGs that do that intentionally. I hate feeling lost and needing to explore in a single player game. It might sound redundant for an RPG, but it could be realistic for an RPG if the world was unpopulated without any trade or cartographers bit it's not ...
for example getting a taxi but he can't take you to your destination because you have not run there. For a single player that's lame, and mmo not as bad.
so since the article covers single player RPGs I can say that's a positive - design better maps, maybe make the journey a puzzle but don't expect someone to run around without enough information with lots of clutter of obnoxious npcs.
For mmos it's standard to follow the quest marker, but... It would be nice for mmos if they designed the system to give enough info to find locations without an arrow or mini map.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
I guess it depends on what you are looking for on TV.
There have been a lot of movies made about dark and depraved things happening. None of it was censored even though I was just a kid. I'm not sure if that was a good or bad thing. A lot of this stuff was made in the 60s all the way to the late 90s. It reminds me of Ultima Online where people could get away with anything they wanted to get away with.
These days everything is censored massively on standard TV and everything is politically correct. This isn't a bad thing, but it definitely plays to the masses. It's a good thing for me as it means I watch less TV and I watch a lot less movies.
One thing I have found is that TV stations like PBS (which have actually been around forever) show all kinds of quality content that you can actually learn from. Sadly these types of TV shows are watched by a niche crowd. Now that I'm older I wish I had watched more documentaries. It's sad how many things I saw on TV that were entirely incorrect depictions of things from history. They were generally depicted a certain way to make a lot of money.
Games today are kind of like TV. They are heavily censored in most cases and the stories are very toned down to please the masses of people. This usually results in very boring stories to me. As we have seen on this message board most people are more interested in talking about certain game mechanics then the actual game, lore, story, races, etc. If there was ever some kind of knowledge to be gained by playing games it's long since passed IMO.
Personally I don't think that we actually need games. I feel like people today are very dependent on entertainment and they don't have to worry about it because there is an overabundance of it (bad or not). People have so much entertainment they don't have time to imagine anything on their own. Most of us could probably make up our own games that are just as good. They might not be video games per say, but most games today started as board games or text based games of some sort. I'm willing to bet most people would have more fun entertaining themselves then playing most of the games being released today. Maybe that is why Facebook and Youtube are so popular. People can entertain themselves with things like recording friends and family doing silly things and posting it. When I was growing up I didn't do things like that, but I did spend a lot of time alone and entertained myself pretending with toy action figures, blocks, legos, and other things. Perhaps it is better just to build your own things as best you can at some point. Your imagination is somewhere that developers can't invade and try to manipulate you based on monetary values.
Theres this channel on Youtube called "Teens React" or something to that affect. They once had them "Teens React to Super Mario Bros." <- Yeah... the original one on the NES.
These kids couldn't figure it out. Getting past the first stage was a chore and major victory if they even made it. It was extremely frustrating to watch.
Watching them play Mega-Man was even worse. To be fair - Mega Man is actually kind of hard, even if you know what you're doing. But still. It literally takes 20 seconds to understand what is and is not possible in those games, and they couldn't figure it out.
I don't think it's because they're stupid, really. I think it's because they've never had a reason to actually do some thinking on their own. They don't have any imaginations that make any coherent sense, because they don't know how to use their brains. And they value the most ridiculously non-essential things in life that aren't relevant to anything pertaining to humanity.
Kids haven't always been like this. This is a new thing that's been cropping up just in the past 10 or 15 years. I have my own thoughts about why this is happening, but this isn't the place to discuss that. My point is - I don't think they are stupid. They have the capacity to use an otherwise functional brain... but they don't know how.
Meh, games should be CUSTOMIZABLE. If you have a keyset you like to play shooters with or a keyset you like to play MMOs with, it should be easy to have the MMO adopt that keyset for you.
Mega man was over the edge (that thing where you had to keep your map in the sun for 2 hours were just insane), but Super Mario wasn't even one of the harder games back then.
Intelligence might not be the problem here, more something like not having to work to get the good stuff. The whole "everybody gets a price mentality".
Good luck in life kids, work suck and is far harder than Super Mario.
But I honestly think that a MMO that starts easy and slowly gets the difficulty up works, Wow does this but not until raiding. Doing the same thing in the open world should work as well, make the first half of the game easy and then seriously ramp up the difficulty.
Making the games easier and easier will just make the problem worse. People needs challenge to grow.
Good post and I agree.
It's never been more important than it is today for parents to monitor and intervene when kids are being sedated -- deliberately so -- to turn them into more easily manageable citizens of tomorrow.
My son (who is now a 30 yr. old indie game programmer with an MSc in Computer Science) cut his gaming teeth on Link, Zelda and FF... if kids in "Teens React" are struggling with Mario, I'd hate to see what they do with those early console RPGs.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The two first games that EA released simultaneously in the early 80's, Archon and MULE (both classics) were anything but dumbed down. In the 80's hard and smart were still cool.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
want 7 free days of playing? Try this
http://www.swtor.com/r/ZptVnY
List all the EA Games you've completed on the hardest possible difficulty setting. (And/or the PVP games where you were #1 ranked in the world.)
Without any context or evidence, saying that you've "never played a hard EA game" is rather meaningless.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Never said I was ranked #1 in any game ever. We are talking the context of EA saying their games are to hard to learn for most gamers. I dont see it, there games are not that kind of hard. Most can be learned in 10-20 min of play and some not even that. Makes me wonder what test group they are using to say most find their games to hard. I cant point at one of their games that takes 2hr to learn. Can you? Really 2hrs?
Couldn't you flip that idea around and say that people could start with the games on easy. Usually I have to turn the games up to maximum difficulty to get any challenge if I want it. If the easy difficult is still to difficult that is fairly sad. I realize as other posters have said that perhaps they mean the actual learning of the game, but most games these days made by EA use controllers and have a fairly simple interface because of it. How hard could it be to learn the controls? They games all have options menu's that tell you exactly what each button does. On top of this there are tutorials at each spot to tell you exactly what to do there. It's all a little sad. Does everyone really want to follow tutorials? Yes they will guarantee your success, but the success is someone else's. Wouldn't it be more fun to come up with your own ideas on how to do things in a game. It's not like you can hurt yourself trying to do things in a video game.
I see an "I WIN!" button in EA Games' future
So wait, you are going to make us push an I win button. OMG!Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
What are "the basics" of a mmorpg? The analogy using Chess is that if you know how the pieces move then you know the basics. Can we analogously say that if I know the WASD keys to move, the space bar to jump and the number keys to use abilities that I know the basics?
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
For me? No.
For the average player? Yes, absolutely.
I've been in the industry 15 years and seen countless usability sessions where random people are brought in to play games, and you always end up experiencing the pain of watching them constantly fail to learn things (even though Rise of Nations in particular was outstanding at teaching players how to play through course of playing.) But since you don't know me and haven't seen usability testing firsthand, you may decide to think this is all a lot of nonsense. (It isn't of course, but you have very little hard evidence otherwise.)
One of the more compelling bits of logic to someone who doesn't understand is the notion that EA isn't motivated to lie and is motivated to understand how people are playing their games and where the failure points are.
Some things to keep in mind:
Actual videos of game usability sessions would be the best evidence of what I'm saying, but companies seem to be hesitant to show their games at their worst, and you also want participants to feel comfortably anonymous. Blurring out faces seems trivial, so I'd guess it's mostly the former problem (showing games at their worst) which explains the lack of usability footage online. But basically they're summed up as: regular people spending multiple hours trying to figure out concepts you thought were completely obvious (but you obviously were wrong about, so you'll have to redesign the feature or the UI if multiple participants struggle with the system.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well the other poster did make a good point that "ease of learning" is a different concept from "this game is easy" (referring to a game's challenge.)
But apart from that, yes it makes a lot more sense for the veteran player to be the one to have to change things. They're obviously the more experienced gamer, and it's more appropriate to demand that they change the difficult than the average inexperienced gamer.
Nobody wants tutorials, which is part of why the game rules themselves need to be so simple and obvious (because the less intuitive the rules, the more the game must teach players through a heavy-handed method like a tutorial.) That doesn't mean the game overall has to be simple (Chess' rules fit on a single sheet of paper, yet it's quite deep.) Just that it needs to be very easy to learn.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It isn't just gaming that has this problem. There is a design philosophy of teaching your users how to use your software that cuts across the software industry. People shouldn't be shocked by this.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"