EA: ‘Games are too tough to learn’

An Electronic Arts exec believes video games today are more often than not too difficult to learn if players are new to the franchise or even the medium itself.

Speaking at the DICE Summit, the publisher’s chief creative officer Richard Hilleman discussed the length of time required to get into the average game, according to GameSpot.

"Our games are actually still too hard to learn," he said. "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 consumers, between their normal family lives… to find two contiguous hours to concentrate on learning how to play a video game is a big ask."

Michael de Plater, creative director on Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor, said he expects even more games to adopt RPG mechanics.

"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."

Earlier this week, de Plater discussed how Shadow of Mordor’s famous Nemesis system was inspired by real-world sports.