Tuesday, July 10th 2007
![Electronic Arts](https://tpucdn.com/images/news/ea-v1723408558483.png)
EA Chief Says Games Boring People to Death
Electronic Arts new Chief Executive, John Riccitiello, who started in April, worries that his company as well as others in the video game industry lack innovation. He says they need to push more aggressively to attract the casual gamer and change the routine of selling $50 - $60 discs that take 40 hours to play that few ever finish. We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play," Mr. Riccitiello said in an interview. He adds that there are exceptions like "Guitar Hero" and "World of Warcraft" but for the most part the industry has been rinse and repeat. Mr. Riccitiello's comments come as the industry prepares for this year's E3 Conference.
Source:
Wall Street Journal
73 Comments on EA Chief Says Games Boring People to Death
20-40 hours is awesome, if the story catches you. And I get not everyone is up for 100 hours of Final Fantasy/Elderscrolls/whatsoever. Just that hardly any game has a good story nowadays. Gears of War? Yeah, nice eyecandy but story fails so hard.
And of course you do not necessarily need a good story to sell a game, but it helps. (CS anyone?)
Maybe EA isn't so bad after all. I can't wait to see some of the games they're coming out with that aren't "rinse and repeat", unless of course he's just confessing an industry crime :shadedshu .
i wan't shitty gfx games that last for hours
aka: games without end :)
Edit: On actually RTFS, leave the damned lengths alone. Just bring something original to the table ...
Shooting things is fun.....always has been. As a US citizen, a huge portion of my income is taken from me every year and spent on our Armed Forces, just so they can shoot and shoot and shoot...and so on....and they really kill people, not just bots in a game.
I have found that a boring game...such as BF2...can be much much more enjoyable when the player can customize the weapons. For example, tweak the scope settings on the sniper rifle so you can see 1 mile away; tweak the round quantity in the magazine so you now have 250 rounds rather than the measly 5 or 10. Tweak the damage level of each bullet so you can take out helicopters in only 10 shots. Tweak the amount of C4 you carry so you can truly demolish all enemy artillery and intel targets without replenishing ammo. Tweak the sound of your rifle to your liking. Tweak the velocity of the bullets, so they drop as gravity requires.
Of course all the above tweaks are considered to be cheats in BF2 multiplayer, but are they really? If everyone knew how to customize and the game allowed it, then no one would have a major advantage. However, everyone would keep tweaking to find the next advantage....and the tweaking effort would consume a huge amount of time.
If a player can customize their game play experience, they will be much more devoted to the game, for a longer period of time.
Regards,
jtleon
As if thirty hours of god mode and all weapons console games isn't already bad enough.
"If a player can customize their game play experience, they will be much more devoted to the game, for a longer period of time."
If they want such an option, than they can write the 'tweak' trainer themselves ;)
Thank the makers for Oblivion, which has been the game I come back to time and time again after trying out countless others. I still haven't finished the main quest even.
*new feature in Halo 6* You can now hold a grenade between your legs and duel-wield submachine guns! Wowzers!
One more thing... I do not mind if they make the games look awesome for those that can afford $600 video cards, but please allow them scale down so that my kids can play them on their PC. I guarantee that if World of Warcraft or even the Sims 2 needed a $200+ video card to be playable, then neither one would be in the all-time top 10 list.
Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 do NOT support widescreen - it stretches to fit. You can hack it, but its really using a 4:3 ratio and chopping off the top and bottom (while still keeping the hud/GUI on screen)
Good God I'd be an EA fan boy for life...
widescreen gives you a different viewable area on screen.
Giving a widescreen option to a game where a large majority of players will be using 4:3 gives you an unfair advantage.
And it requires modifying the game engine sometimes.
Its not a problem for like.. say a racing game.. but a FPS can allow you to see stuff you shouldn't normally.