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"EA CEO: 'We're boring people to death' "We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play."
That's one of the things Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told The Wall Street Journal in a story that ran today. The recently restored executive was referring not necessarily to EA's own titles, but to a greater trend in the industry that sees the same games made again and again, with little in the way of innovation.
"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," Riccitiello said. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."
While Riccitiello's company is known for releasing annual installments of series like Madden NFL and Need for Speed, it is also spending some of its resources on games that will court the casual market and other nontraditional audiences, as opposed to $60 epics that require 40 hours or more of gameplay to finish. In addition to Will Wright games like The Sims and Spore, Electronic Arts is also helping to bring out original properties like Boogie, Crysis, and Army of Two. It also has partnered with filmmaker Steven Spielberg for two forthcoming titles--a Wii puzzle game and a futuristic action title for the PS3 and 360."
That's one of the things Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told The Wall Street Journal in a story that ran today. The recently restored executive was referring not necessarily to EA's own titles, but to a greater trend in the industry that sees the same games made again and again, with little in the way of innovation.
"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," Riccitiello said. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."
While Riccitiello's company is known for releasing annual installments of series like Madden NFL and Need for Speed, it is also spending some of its resources on games that will court the casual market and other nontraditional audiences, as opposed to $60 epics that require 40 hours or more of gameplay to finish. In addition to Will Wright games like The Sims and Spore, Electronic Arts is also helping to bring out original properties like Boogie, Crysis, and Army of Two. It also has partnered with filmmaker Steven Spielberg for two forthcoming titles--a Wii puzzle game and a futuristic action title for the PS3 and 360."
It seems likely they'll be some version of Spore on the Wii. Will Wright said that it was intended to be released on all platforms in some form. I suspect it'll be like The Sims, the PC gets the full experience and everything else gets spin-offs.
I want Spore to come out on Wii.
EA's becoming a lot better in that respect, well for wii it is anyway. Mysims looks rather excellent and Boogie looks.... original.
Any time anyone at EA comes out and says that kind of thing I applaud them, because they know they're talking about their own company seeing that EA is the world's largest publisher.
However, there is a flipside. Any 12 year old with their first ever console is going to be blown away by their first games which might include Halo 4, Metal Gear Solid 5, Gran Turismo 6, Pro Evo Soccer 9, Super Smash Brothers Fisticuffs and Ridge Racer 8. And oddly enough there's a new generation of 12 year olds released every year.
Catering for the older crowd of gamers is always going to be a difficult issue seeing as we've played all the previous ones. We're the ones that gripe about innovation and the older we get the more we gripe. Fortunately, consoles technology rather than developers are going a long way these days to helping in this area given that we can download past glories and relive our 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit eras on any of the next-gen consoles.
20 years from now we'll probably have consoles which, like the ZX81s of the old days, will allow us to make our own games and slap them up on a Marketplace for download by anyone who wants them, in the same way that todays social websites allow us to instantly share user-created content like video and music.
This is where console manufacturers are moving in the right direction. Rather than developing console-integrated tools to allow us to concentrate on console gaming they're releasing console-integrated tools that allow us to instantly share user-created content like video and music, which PCs already do, but games these days include both those types of content, and these console-integrated tools are just the forerunners of console-integrated dev kits that will allow us to do the same thing with our source codes.
There's still a lot of innovation left to come with existing hardware though. It only takes one bright spark to develop an on-rails game where no vertical axis is needed so that you can use the right-analogue stick and a few shoulder buttons to wield a Great Katana in every possible direction and you've got yourself a decent samurai game requiring fast reflexes and skill. Harry Potter on the Wii is an obvious example of wand-waving to cast magic, but I have a sneaky suspicion they'll dumb it down a bit due to the game's target audience. Stick that type of control in for an Oblivion type game and you've probably got a hit.
And I'm still waiting for that data glove.
Makes me think that overall it's not just the developers' fault, it's a hardware issue too.
However, there is a flipside. Any 12 year old with their first ever console is going to be blown away by their first games which might include Halo 4, Metal Gear Solid 5, Gran Turismo 6, Pro Evo Soccer 9, Super Smash Brothers Fisticuffs and Ridge Racer 8. And oddly enough there's a new generation of 12 year olds released every year.
Catering for the older crowd of gamers is always going to be a difficult issue seeing as we've played all the previous ones. We're the ones that gripe about innovation and the older we get the more we gripe. Fortunately, consoles technology rather than developers are going a long way these days to helping in this area given that we can download past glories and relive our 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit eras on any of the next-gen consoles.
20 years from now we'll probably have consoles which, like the ZX81s of the old days, will allow us to make our own games and slap them up on a Marketplace for download by anyone who wants them, in the same way that todays social websites allow us to instantly share user-created content like video and music.
This is where console manufacturers are moving in the right direction. Rather than developing console-integrated tools to allow us to concentrate on console gaming they're releasing console-integrated tools that allow us to instantly share user-created content like video and music, which PCs already do, but games these days include both those types of content, and these console-integrated tools are just the forerunners of console-integrated dev kits that will allow us to do the same thing with our source codes.
There's still a lot of innovation left to come with existing hardware though. It only takes one bright spark to develop an on-rails game where no vertical axis is needed so that you can use the right-analogue stick and a few shoulder buttons to wield a Great Katana in every possible direction and you've got yourself a decent samurai game requiring fast reflexes and skill. Harry Potter on the Wii is an obvious example of wand-waving to cast magic, but I have a sneaky suspicion they'll dumb it down a bit due to the game's target audience. Stick that type of control in for an Oblivion type game and you've probably got a hit.
And I'm still waiting for that data glove.
Makes me think that overall it's not just the developers' fault, it's a hardware issue too.
"EA CEO: 'We're boring people to death' "We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play."
That's one of the things Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told The Wall Street Journal in a story that ran today. The recently restored executive was referring not necessarily to EA's own titles, but to a greater trend in the industry that sees the same games made again and again, with little in the way of innovation.
"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," Riccitiello said. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."
While Riccitiello's company is known for releasing annual installments of series like Madden NFL and Need for Speed, it is also spending some of its resources on games that will court the casual market and other nontraditional audiences, as opposed to $60 epics that require 40 hours or more of gameplay to finish. In addition to Will Wright games like The Sims and Spore, Electronic Arts is also helping to bring out original properties like Boogie, Crysis, and Army of Two. It also has partnered with filmmaker Steven Spielberg for two forthcoming titles--a Wii puzzle game and a futuristic action title for the PS3 and 360."
That's one of the things Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told The Wall Street Journal in a story that ran today. The recently restored executive was referring not necessarily to EA's own titles, but to a greater trend in the industry that sees the same games made again and again, with little in the way of innovation.
"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," Riccitiello said. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."
While Riccitiello's company is known for releasing annual installments of series like Madden NFL and Need for Speed, it is also spending some of its resources on games that will court the casual market and other nontraditional audiences, as opposed to $60 epics that require 40 hours or more of gameplay to finish. In addition to Will Wright games like The Sims and Spore, Electronic Arts is also helping to bring out original properties like Boogie, Crysis, and Army of Two. It also has partnered with filmmaker Steven Spielberg for two forthcoming titles--a Wii puzzle game and a futuristic action title for the PS3 and 360."