EA Executive Cites Need For More Innovation

The Wall Street Journal has comments from John Riccitiello, EA's new CEO, who has an interesting observation: maybe we should make more original games. "In his first in-depth comments since taking the job in April, John Riccitiello says he worries that the Redwood City, Calif., company and others in the industry make too many games that lack innovation. He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court 'casual' consumers and to experiment more with new sales approaches -- outside the norm of selling $50 to $60 discs with 40-hour games that he says few players ever finish. 'We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,' Mr. Riccitiello said in an interview." Perhaps looking beyond yearly updates to established franchises might be a way to go too. We've seen EA form a casual studio, re-organize the flowchart, adopt the Wii wholeheartedly ... does anyone see EA actually reinventing itself, or is this too little too late?

Comments

That word doesn't mean what you think it means

[hal2814]

"many games that lack innovation. He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court 'casual' consumers and to experiment more with new sales approaches -- outside the norm of selling $50 to $60 discs with 40-hour games that he says few players ever finish. 'We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,'" (emphasis mine)

So EA's idea of being innovative is copying Nintendo's recent targeting of casual gamers?

Franchises can be exploited and still..

[xtracto]

Perhaps looking beyond yearly updates to established franchises might be a way to go too.

Franchises can be good. The fact that you have got a character, universe or general idea does not mean you can not innovate over it. Just look at the Mario franchise and all the games that have exploited it, from standard side scrolling games to puzzles and strategy (mario is missing, mario picross, mario & yoshi) to football (super mario strikers) etc. The devil is in the details, which are the ones that define the gameplay. Or what about exploiting the Final Fantasy VIII universe with another type of gameplay ?

After SimCity 2000 came out, I saw a lot of side games available which "interacted" with your worlds. The one I bought was one where you could drive /inside/ your city (or a representation of your city). I found it quite cool, as I could play one game (SimCity) and after I got bored of building my dream city I could just fire the other and destroy my city driving and launching missiles. That is the same franchise (SimCity) but exploiting different kinds of gameplay!