People often say that, when it comes to games, the simple ideas are the best. Well, I think that's misleading. Simplicity is important, it's true. The player has to understand the game they're playing, and the simpler it is, the easier it is to do that. However, simpler is not always better. There are more important things.
I'm going to take as an example the arcade game 'Mole Attack'. The player stands in front of a grid of holes, moles periodically pop up from these holes and the player hits them on the head with a soft mallet, scoring a point for each solid hit. You can't get much simpler than that, right? Ah, but wouldn't it be simpler if the moles popped up in the same order each time? No fast-and-slow timing, no crazy unpredictable orders, just one-per-second starting in the top. And then the game is too easy.
Simplicity alone is not enough. What we really want is Emergent Complexity.
This is a term for when several systems, which may individually be quite simple, interact with one another to produce a more complex whole. In our Mole Attack example, in addition to the 'bash the mole' mechanic, we can add a mix of predictable and randomised patterns and a slowly increasing speed to make it more difficult (but not impossible) for the player to predict their targets. This interaction of simple systems is the true holy grail of game design. It keeps the game accessible, since the player can easily understand what's going on, but it also makes the game more varied, interesting and (potentially) easy-to-play but hard-to-master.
As another example, look at one-on-one fighting games. Early examples like Karate Champ featured two evenly-matched opponents with the same skill set. Complexity arose from the different attacks available, but every fighter was the same so things were a bit bland. Later games, such as Yie Ar Kung Fu, increased the enemy variety to keep things interesting. The Street Fighter franchise perfected it: each character uses the same basic rules, but the differences in speed, power and range of their attacks introduces variety. Couple that with the fact that you now need strategies not just to fight character X, but to fight character X using character Y, and you have much greater emergent complexity for a relatively small increase in the complexity of individual gameplay systems.
Example:
Karate Champ: 1 PC x 1 NPC, 1 combination
Yie Ar Kung Fu: 1 PC x 11 NPCs, 11 combinations
Street Fighter 2: 8 PC x 12 NPCs, 78 combinations
The same basic concept can be extended to many genres. Take JRPGs. A badly-designed JRPG can be phenomenally dull - just a sequence of trading blows until one side runs out of health. It only gets interesting when other mechanics are introduced. A recent example is card-based brawlers like Slay the Spire, in which each attack is chosen from a random selection of options rather than a fixed list. Now, tactics rely not only on choosing the right action, but in organising your deck of cards so that the actions you need are more likely to arise at the time you need them.
I'm going to take as an example the arcade game 'Mole Attack'. The player stands in front of a grid of holes, moles periodically pop up from these holes and the player hits them on the head with a soft mallet, scoring a point for each solid hit. You can't get much simpler than that, right? Ah, but wouldn't it be simpler if the moles popped up in the same order each time? No fast-and-slow timing, no crazy unpredictable orders, just one-per-second starting in the top. And then the game is too easy.
Simplicity alone is not enough. What we really want is Emergent Complexity.
This is a term for when several systems, which may individually be quite simple, interact with one another to produce a more complex whole. In our Mole Attack example, in addition to the 'bash the mole' mechanic, we can add a mix of predictable and randomised patterns and a slowly increasing speed to make it more difficult (but not impossible) for the player to predict their targets. This interaction of simple systems is the true holy grail of game design. It keeps the game accessible, since the player can easily understand what's going on, but it also makes the game more varied, interesting and (potentially) easy-to-play but hard-to-master.
As another example, look at one-on-one fighting games. Early examples like Karate Champ featured two evenly-matched opponents with the same skill set. Complexity arose from the different attacks available, but every fighter was the same so things were a bit bland. Later games, such as Yie Ar Kung Fu, increased the enemy variety to keep things interesting. The Street Fighter franchise perfected it: each character uses the same basic rules, but the differences in speed, power and range of their attacks introduces variety. Couple that with the fact that you now need strategies not just to fight character X, but to fight character X using character Y, and you have much greater emergent complexity for a relatively small increase in the complexity of individual gameplay systems.
Example:
Karate Champ: 1 PC x 1 NPC, 1 combination
Yie Ar Kung Fu: 1 PC x 11 NPCs, 11 combinations
Street Fighter 2: 8 PC x 12 NPCs, 78 combinations
The same basic concept can be extended to many genres. Take JRPGs. A badly-designed JRPG can be phenomenally dull - just a sequence of trading blows until one side runs out of health. It only gets interesting when other mechanics are introduced. A recent example is card-based brawlers like Slay the Spire, in which each attack is chosen from a random selection of options rather than a fixed list. Now, tactics rely not only on choosing the right action, but in organising your deck of cards so that the actions you need are more likely to arise at the time you need them.
