[Monolith]

Electronic Arts CEO calls games 'boring'
11:10AM Monday July 09, 2007

NEW YORK - Most video games are "boring" or too complicated, and game makers need to do more to appeal to casual players, according to the head of the world's largest video game publisher, Electronic Arts.

"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 in a story posted on its website.

Riccitiello became CEO at EA in April in his return to the game maker.

EA's former chief operating officer had left the company in 2004 to help found Elevation Partners, a media and entertainment buyout firm.

The video game executive criticized the industry for rolling out sequels to new games that add little from the previous version.

"For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," he was quoted as saying. "There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before."

The comments were made as the $30 billion ($NZ38.3bn) video game industry prepares for its annual gathering, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Santa Monica, California.

Anticipation is running high that cheaper hardware and a host of keenly awaited new games will fuel the strongest sales in years.

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And such a wise guy is the CEO of the world's largest video game publisher. Well, obviously he has never played any EA games because "rins-and-repeat" is what EA has been doing now for ages. Besides, while I do agree that most casual games are boring, I totally missed the "too complicated" part in almost any recent game I played. Probably because I played so many hardcore RPGs lately.