There should only be two criteria to a 'beginner' game:
1 - Relevant to their interests. For example, dont give someone a fantasy game if you know they loathe the genre.
2 - Solid tutorial or clear well defined help/controller layout screens. Remember, there's no such things as intuitive to a beginner, because they dont have the baseline which they're intuitively leaping from. So long as the game is clear about what the controls do, and what the player is expected to do, you have a beginner game. Luckily most games meet this criteria.
1 - Relevant to their interests. For example, dont give someone a fantasy game if you know they loathe the genre.
2 - Solid tutorial or clear well defined help/controller layout screens. Remember, there's no such things as intuitive to a beginner, because they dont have the baseline which they're intuitively leaping from. So long as the game is clear about what the controls do, and what the player is expected to do, you have a beginner game. Luckily most games meet this criteria.
