The other day, spurred by positive reviews/word of mouth and also the promise of some online matches with a good mate, I purchased FIFA 10(PS3). Now before I continue I should warn you that I havent seriously played any football games since the N64 days with ISS64 and FIFA 98.
Much to my surpise I found that the controls of the new FIFA, at least to me, where a fair bit complicated with different layers and subtleties of interaction. For the first time in my gaming days I thought to myself: should I bother? I know its a great game but do I have the patience and time, to learn the interface to a deep enough level? Afterall I could be using that time to play NSMBWii or Flower.
At this point I pondered about how important a minimal interface is for non-gamers, occasional gamers, or simply gamers that dont have a lot of time, when deciding to invest money/time on a game.
When you want to be entertained or educated by other media you dont have to learn anything. Perhaps more importantly you dont want to learn anything. You come home from work and you're tired and all you want is to switch off, not go through lengthy tutorials.
Now perhaps my choice of game is not ideal to illustrate this point as there are other genres, RTS's, flight sims, etc, with much more complicated controls. In some cases learning some of these games is like doing a course which might be allright for some but makes these games more niche if you will. I simply use FIFA 10 only as an illustrative example of an experience that happened to me.
The point of this post is that it became clear to me how besides other factors, e.g. price and marketing, the choice of minimal-familiar interface is perhaps one of the most important factors in the succes of the Wii and its highest selling games.
How do you guys feel about this?
Have you found that the learning curve of a game is a factor when you decide what games to play?
Have your attitudes towards this changed in time?
More importantly, am I turning into an old and senile gamer?
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