"Please gaming Gods, help me"

A top executive from EA Games has suggested that most video games are still too difficult for the average person to learn. We suspect that this statement is going to go down like a lead balloon, but we reckon that chief creative officer Richard Hilleman, who was speaking at the 2015 DICE Summit, may actually have a point.

"The average player probably spends two hours to learn how to play the most basic game," he told an audience at the event. "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."

We honestly think that he's got a point. Pass a DualShock 4 to any non-gamer in your family and they'll instantly struggle to wrap their head around the controls – and that can take weeks of practice to overcome. Even this author occasionally struggles to acclimatise to different control schemes, and your humble host is lucky enough to play more games than most.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like a simple thing to solve. We suspect that the majority of you reading this will represent a more 'hardcore' mindset, and thus will demand more depth from your games. However, that complexity leads to the problems outlined above – but we need to introduce new players to the industry if the medium's ever going to grow.

We suppose that, in some ways, smartphones and tablets have solved this issue to a degree, as virtually anyone can understand and enjoy Candy Crush. But at the same time, if we want traditional console games to remain relevant, we need to find a way to ensure that the people playing those titles are able to successfully graduate to controller-based experiences.

[source gamespot.com, via playstationlifestyle.net]