“We’re boring people to death…” says EA Chief Exec

BY: JEFF MURRAY  |  Casual Games

“We’re boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,” EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello told the Wall Street Journal.

Are we actually witnessing a regression of the consumer away from full immersion, hyper-realistic shaders and toward good ol’ fashioned game-play or have the big studios only just noticed the casual games market and are looking for their piece of pie?

‘Joe Public’ might well be discovering the experience of gaming for the first time in years or, perhaps for some, for the first time ever. When Joe was but a lad, gamers weren’t the socially accepted types they are today - they were the nerdy kids. Over time, gaming became a more socially accepted phenomena as ‘console-kids’ hit the Nintendos and Segas. Moving forward, there was a constant increase in game complexity as those kids matured to adulthood and many of them dropped gaming for more serious uses of time. Those who decided to ‘keep it up’ would have to go out of their way by paying x hundred dollars for the latest tech, controllers and titles.

Console gaming has now reached the point where the most popular titles are re-hashes of old ideas (to quote EA’s Chief Executive John Riccitiello again “For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat”) only this time with shinier graphics and funkier sounds. It’s an almost elitist console market dedicated to the people who go out of their way to spend money on the latest and greatest tech and to understand this new language of gaming convention to work their way through the games.

Sneaking quietly around in the background has been a growing community of Internet game players. As more and more developers realized that the browser could provide a home to smaller games, those ‘old school’ shooters and platform games found a place to live again in advergaming or hobbyist ‘games for fun’ sites. The audience grew from nerds like me to lunchtime work surfers to e-mail addicts and regular joes - all looking for that gaming experience you don’t have to fully commit to; the casual game.

The success of the Nintendo Wii signals a shift in the game industry nay - dare I say it - perhaps even a revolution against ultra-realism and immersion in gaming. The Internet and browser-based games have opened doors to new types of gaming experiences for the modern computer user and I think our wild world of advergaming may have been involved heavily in the birth of this new type of retro audience - an audience who care more about the experience than the aesthetic - those who want simple games, with awesome game-play and without the high level of immersion.

Just to clarify, I’m not classifying ’success’ as a certain type of consumer per se, but moreso the fact that this little oddity has found its place in the market and is surviving very well up against two technically superior consoles. I wouldn’t want to, for a second, try to place Wii owners into any particular category or box since I know quite a few ‘tech-heavy’ guys who own them and buck the marketing speak trend. We have to be careful not to judge the Wii purely on what Nintendo’s marketing people are telling us, of course, since they’re selling this console ‘for the family’.

Getting back to my opening comment from John Riccitiello, I find it kind of amusing that the word from the game industry is recognition of this ‘new’ market. We’ve been doing this for years and the ‘real’ game industry have been slow to pick up. Since the Wii launched, however, I don’t think that it is any coincidence that several major game companies have spawned casual game divisions. The Wii came at just the right moment in the trend shift and Nintendo couldn’t have done it better. Up against two huge selling next-gen consoles that look like they just landed from outer space, here’s a big white brick with an OK graphics capability and funny controller that is standing its own in the marketplace.

I think it will certainly be interesting to see what kind of presence casual games have at E3… and interesting to see if there’s an NHL2008, NBA2008, NFL2008, Need For Speed Mega Edition etc. ad infinitum in EA’s lineup!

As a quick addition to this post, I just heard that Steven Spielberg is rumored to be producing three or four titles with EA; one of which is rumored to be a puzzle game for the Wii… now that is bizarre, although if it’s true it’s certainly fuel to the ‘casual games gone crazy fire’. Watch for some expensive camera shots and cutesy things that go ‘waaa’!