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[Miziziziz]

Just some thoughts I had, wrote them down, let me know what you think:

There are two main parts to every game’s mechanical design: complexity and fun.

Complexity is required to have fun; the goal in design is to maximize fun and minimize complexity.

Here’s an example:

Controls add the most complexity to a game, so it’s best to as much as possible reduce the amount of buttons your game uses.

Let’s say you have a platformer with three buttons for moving left, moving right, and jumping (set to the arrow keys). You want to add in some way to activate things like doors and moving platforms. In terms of minimizing-complexity/maximizing fun a poor design choice would be to add an Activate button (commonly ‘E’ in most games). A good design choice would be to add pressure pads you can jump on to activate things; it accomplishes what’s needed without adding another button.

Personally, I think the best games are the ones that have (if I assigned numbers to fun and complexity), say, 20 complexity and 100 fun, instead of 100 complexity and 200 fun.

EDIT: think of "complexity" as 'things you have to learn' and "fun" as 'good complexity'.

[hmm]

Interesting thoughts. 'Fun' and 'complexity' may not be the most appropriate terms though.

It reminds me of how some designers describe 'elegant' game design: fewer rules, more depth. Depth actually refers more complexity - few rules giving rise to a complex and interesting array of situations. This is different to 'complicated', meaning composed of elaborate parts (or at least, thats how I see it). Kind of splitting hairs and being pedantic here... sorry.

Overall though, totally agree. As a player and designer, excess complication is frustrating.

[starsrift]

Interesting thoughts. 'Fun' and 'complexity' may not be the most appropriate terms though.

It reminds me of how some designers describe 'elegant' game design: fewer rules, more depth. Depth actually refers more complexity - few rules giving rise to a complex and interesting array of situations. This is different to 'complicated', meaning composed of elaborate parts (or at least, thats how I see it). Kind of splitting hairs and being pedantic here... sorry.

Overall though, totally agree. As a player and designer, excess complication is frustrating.

I was considering something to say but hmm said it very well. Complexity is fun, but excessive rules are not. Players are actors and agents of change in your game world, a player feels success when they know their actions have results - and the more results that occur, the better.
The more actions that a player has to make to get those results can easily feel like impediments.

[Alevice]

Considereing the sucess of mobas, in particular dota2 has one hell of a learning curve despite the aparent simplicity, i think we underestimate the lack of desire for tons of rules.

[Alec S.]

As with everything in design, It Depends On The Game.

Sometimes a game benefits from complexity.  Sometimes it benefits from simplicity.  Sometimes what seems simple is actually complex.  Sometimes what seems complex is actually simple.

A game with simple controls can be complex, and a game with complex controls can be simple.

Take for example platform games.  You've got move left, move right, and jump.  But when you move, there's acceleration and friction.  When you jump, there's vertical force and gravity.  Maybe if you hold down jump longer, you jump higher, up to a certain amount.  So what seems at first simple is actually fairly complex.  But you internalize the complexity.  You get a feel for the acceleration and the friction and the arc of the jump. 

In a strategy game, on the other hand, there might be a lot more rules, but once you've learned them, you actually know and understand the rules explicitly.  The calculations in a strategy game are simpler than the calculations would be in a platformer if you actually tried to do them.


There are some games where the fun comes from the complexity.  Dwarf Fortress, or Europa Universalis, for instance.

As to your example, what makes pressing a button on your controller/keyboard more complicated than moving over a button in the game?  They're both interactions you are adding to the game, and, if you've been doing your job right, they'll both become second-nature to the player pretty quickly.  And if you're game is going for a sense or realism or verisimilitude, putting a pressure plate might detract from the experience more than making you interact directly with a door.

There is certainly something to be said for elegance in design, and removing superfluous complexity that doesn't lend to the experience.  But complexity can often contribute to the overall experience of a game, and, furthermore, not all complexity is created equal.  It's not as simple to quantify as you make it out to be.  You can make a one-button game that is a lot more complicated and hard-to-manage than a 4-button game.

[Miziziziz]

Good discussion points everyone, and pedantism is appreciated. I guess better than complexity would be "things that must be learned"

I should say I have an extreme bias for good learning curves; things that frustrate me are badly made tutorials, and games where it's a struggle to figure out controls and mechanics.

My example of the platformer was a bit unrealistic, but I mean it in terms of if you were to extend it to a much more complicated game with lots of buttons. In that situation it would probably be best to try to reduce buttons as much as possible.

But yeah, it depends on the situation. Good design is about finding the most intuitive solution.

Considereing the sucess of mobas, in particular dota2 has one hell of a learning curve despite the aparent simplicity, i think we underestimate the lack of desire for tons of rules.

True, but then you have HotS, which is extremely simplified for a moba and incredibly popular. </exception>

Take for example platform games.  You've got move left, move right, and jump.  But when you move, there's acceleration and friction.  When you jump, there's vertical force and gravity.  Maybe if you hold down jump longer, you jump higher, up to a certain amount.  So what seems at first simple is actually fairly complex.  But you internalize the complexity.  You get a feel for the acceleration and the friction and the arc of the jump. 

This is my favourite design in a game: when things are simple at first, but have a lot of complexity underneath.
I mulled things over a bit, and, to clarify my thoughts in the original post, I think of "complexity" as 'things you have to learn' and "fun" as 'good complexity'.
So, what you described there is what I would call 'good complexity'.

btw, thanks for the discussion, this is really bringing up some interesting stuff for me and offering new perspectives.

[valrus]

Maybe it's better to think of them in terms of complexity and complicatedness.  Go has just about the most simple rules you could have, but a lot of complexity emerges out of that.  Chess is a little more complicated (since there's various pieces, special rules for those pieces, special interactions), but it's got a lot of complexity beyond that, too. 

On the other hand, hmm, take something like BANG!  BANG! is fairly complicated, in the sense that there's a lot of stuff going on and interacting, and special cases you have to remember about how cards are interpreted w.r.t other cards... but it's not really a complex game at all.  (That's not to knock on BANG!, but once you know what the cards do there's not much more you're gonna learn about BANG! as a system.)

Not that all complexity is necessarily good, especially in a computer game where the rules can be hidden from the player, or cause sufficiently complex interactions that they player cannot possibly follow it.  Like, I could build a city-builder with an advanced and elegant economic model under the hood, but that produces effects that the player can't understand or control.  "Why did my whole city become a slum?" "Economics!" "What can I do next time to do better?" "Nobody knows!"  So complexity can also negate the game you're trying to make, if it's not learnable complexity.

[JWK5]

Complexity means more to consider, simplicity means less to consider. It has been my experience that the most fun (at least for myself) is had when there is "simple complexity". That is, there are less "parts" to consider but there are a great deal of possibilities in how they can be used. What this does is opens the game up to the inexperienced and allows its basics to be learned quickly but provides the experienced with a plethora of tools that can be found with experimentation and discovery.

[s0]

There is certainly something to be said for elegance in design, and removing superfluous complexity that doesn't lend to the experience.  But complexity can often contribute to the overall experience of a game, and, furthermore, not all complexity is created equal.  It's not as simple to quantify as you make it out to be.  You can make a one-button game that is a lot more complicated and hard-to-manage than a 4-button game.

yeh. also elegance doesn't equal "fun". there are games that are elegantly designed that i personally find boring (the majority of recent mario games for instance) and there are unelegant and unwieldy games that have entertained me for hours on end (crusader kings 2).

[Miziziziz]

yeh. also elegance doesn't equal "fun". there are games that are elegantly designed that i personally find boring (the majority of recent mario games for instance) and there are unelegant and unwieldy games that have entertained me for hours on end (crusader kings 2).

woah, damn, good point

[DXimenes]

I think I get what you're saying, but maybe you slipped a little bit into reductionism.
More buttons don't necessarily add complexity, as fewer buttons don't necessarily keep it simple. To prove my point, I'll give an example.

Have you ever played Papers, please? You control the whole game using only a single button on your mouse and its fucking hard! You have to drag the papers around, put them in the right corners, give the guy papers for him to sign, take pictures... whew! Wouldn't it be much better design if there were hotkeys to help you do it?
No!
Why?
Because the developer wanted it to be hard, to be frustrating, because Papers, please is about being an underpaid border controller and feeling bad because your family and parakeet will starve to death and perish in the cold of Artrotska. And that makes it brilliant design.

In a platform game, sure, you can choose make everything about pressure pads in a platform game instead of a button, but what if you want many many many mechanics that involve interaction with the scenery?
Open a door? Pressure pad. Lower a platform? Pressure pad. Stop the flow of water with a dam so you can access a new area? ressure pad. Launch a rocket? Pressure pad.
Look at how much flavor you're missing if you remain juggernaut about keeping the controls "as simple as possible" when you could just put a context sensitive action button and make the game feel so much deeper. This way the character could push buttons, pull levers, operate number-pads to input a passcode on the wall, spin a combination lock, and all these are only ways that he can open different themed doors.

Elegant design definetely is about cutting irrelevant elements, but what defines what's irrelevant?
Feel trumps game simplicity any day for me. Maybe you want your game to feel a little bit more baroque, and that will actually make it a better game.
This "form follows function", "less is more" approach is very easy to misinterpret and hard to accomplish correctly.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to make a couple of reccomendations.
Read Emotional Design by Donald Norman and;
Take a look at this TED talk by Richard Seymour.

[hmm]

@ DXimenes Great TED talk. Thanks.

I'd agree with the idea that what matters most is the player's experience, not necessarily the elegance of a design. Simplicity/elegance is just something that some designers aim for, and it has an impact on player experience.

As with everything in design, It Depends On The Game.

Indeed.

[DXimenes]

I make a point of trying to answer people that I feel are prone to the "single answer" approach when in discussion forums because it is very disappointing for me to see that certain concepts - terribly outdated concepts from the 60s, that have already evolved and been reinterpreted - sometimes are still standing in the way of better games, and therefore of better game design and game designers. I've seen this happen many times, especially with people that have technical programming/engineering backgrounds.

(not saying it's the OP's case. I'm just making assumptions given his first post and am likely wrong, but was worried anyway)

Yes, definetely. Elegance - in the OP's definition - is a good quality to strive for if it serves a purpose in your game.
But complexity and "excess" in design don't always equal wastefulness.
Take, for example, the Art Nouveau style. It definetely is "excessive" in it's use of form, but isn't it's emotional and graphic impact precisely because of it?

I don't think that this definition of elegance should be a cornerstone for a professional, even less a criteria for judging whether a game is well or poorly designed.
If your point with elegance is that "it's your cup of tea and what you like working with", great it's awesome to have a plurality of approaches in the market. Just make a point to exercise temperance and not use it as your one and only "ruler" to measure the goodness of something.

Even bad design is a tool for good designers

[Miziziziz]

I started making games two years ago and feel like I'm just now starting to 'get' how to design games well; this is the first time I've tried to verbalize thoughts I've had about design. I feel like I can make games that are mechanically sound and fun in that sense, but I'm still completely novice when it comes to mood and evoking emotions in games, so I appreciate all the tips you guys are sharing. Will definitely check out the TED talks.

My current game has a very minimalist design, so I've been thinking a lot about simplification and cutting stuff down lately.
For my next game I want to focus more on mood rather than mechanics.

The parts of game design that fascinate me the most right now is how learning works; learning curves, how players understand goals, etc. and I want to develop a better understanding of this learning. Does anyone have suggestions for articles or videos on this kind of thing?

[Alec S.]

Here are some good places to start:

http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465









It's also worth mentioning that Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, once put what you're talking about in the following way: "All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth."  Now, while, as I said, I don't agree that this is the end-all-be-all design philosophy, or that there can't be good games that are hard to learn, it is I think a fairly good way to phrase it, and a good thing to at least keep in mind when thinking about games.

[gimymblert]

I'm totally making a distinction between complex and complicate

- A straight line from A to B is simple
- A twisted line from A to B is complex
- A maze is complcated

The difference between simple and complex is stimulation or effort, Too much complexity is tedious or tiring. But even complex stuff can be simplified down to a single principle, the twisty road is still a single line, you have to adjust moment to moment the direction instead of holding it until the end, but you are guarantee to reach the end, you can't be lost.


The difference with complication is that now you have to keep track of a number of decision, in a maze you must remember which turn lead you where, which path you took, and how to backtrack to point where you reach dead end, ie it involve memory and decision, you can get lost because you can forgot what you did.

However if you add understanding and anticipation you have depth, and how many step ahead you must think define how deep a mechanic is.

Complexity is useful to add texture, for example in early level you want to ramp up complexity more than complication and depth to keep the player stimulated while teaching the basics.

So the example with the door is more complicate than complex, instead of adding a button on the controller or in the world (something to remember how to use) you can simply use contact (ie building on movement) taking the door or not became an avoidance problem.

In fact simplifying control generally mean overloading function, for example move can mean accelerating, taking, entering, attacking, protection etc ... (see sonic or zelda 1).

[gimymblert]