Tonight at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, Electronic Arts chief creative officer Richard Hilleman spoke about how video games today are often too hard to learn for new players.
"Our games are actually still too hard to learn," Hilleman said during during an on-stage interview with other developers. "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 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.
Hilleman's comments came in response to a statement from interviewer Pete Holmes, the comedian, who said he would prefer that controller layouts and button maps stay the same for future installments in established series and even across franchises.
Also on-stage for the interview was Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor design director Michael de Plater, who said he thinks we'll see more and game games adopt RPG systems in the future.
"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."
