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View Full Version : Fewer Mechanics, Better Game



Gazza_N
17-04-2008, 06:48 PM
I've heard from many people that the ideal game is the one that has everything. It's a game where players are constrained by nothing. These people believe in a sandbox where their very imagination is the only boundary. They believe in game with no limits.

On the surface, this game sounds great. Who wouldn't want an infinite number of play mechanics? Who wouldn't enjoy the complete freedom of the ultimate kitchen sink game? But ironically, a title with too many avenues of influence becomes less of a game and more like life. This game would be horrible.

Of course, this game isn't feasible. The scope of its game world reaches well beyond what technology can accomplish. But what if we collapsed this game world into one small room, keeping the infinite game mechanics? What if we could do anything we want in this tiny space? Would it be fun? No. Because it's not this theoretical game world's sheer size that dulls it. The huge set of game mechanics is the villain, and its downfall is that there's just too much to do.

But wait! There's more! (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3621/fewer_mechanics_better_game.php)

An interesting read, although I'm unsure as to whether I agree with everything he says or not. Are games like Bioshock really overcomplicated? Comments?

dislekcia
17-04-2008, 08:10 PM
I was wondering when this was going to come up ;)

I've read the piece and to some extent I agree, although on certain of the conclusions I disagree immensely... I do think that a game with endless features is going to be far too complicated to enjoy in a traditional sense, but then again you get people who have tons of fun playing Dwarf Fortress or that Space Station Docking Simulator (which happens to send me to sleep in record time).

Also, the rationale behind Bioshock being too complex doesn't sit well with me. Bioshock is actually a simple system under all those plasmids, your character stats and how much damage you can do to enemies. That's the system you're min-maxing and learning during play, that's where the fun is coming from. I think that the game would have felt too complex if every single enemy had worked on completely different systems (like having to shock a big daddy, followed by whacking it with a wrench to break the armor and then fire incendiary bullets into the cracked armor sections - and that kind of fidely was never needed anywhere else in the game). At its core, Bioshock is a "use gun on man" game, except sometimes you get guns that look like your hands and fire bees...

And finally, I detest the 7-slot short term memory limitation bullcrap. Screw that. People can handle much more information than that, it just has to be presented properly.

It's true that an RTS game with hordes of units isn't well suited to rapid decision making, but that's a classic case of context becoming blurred, rather than a failing of the human condition. I agree that game designers should strive for simplicity in how their systems are presented and elegance in maintaining coherence across those systems, but I don't think we should try to present simpler and simpler systems. Sometimes a system needs to be complicated to create enjoyment, other times not.

-D

Gazza_N
17-04-2008, 08:49 PM
I laughed - the grand irony is that Bioshock was criticised for being dumbed-down. I shudder to think what the author thinks of great games like System Shock or Deus Ex. Not to mention turn-based games like Civilization, where complexity is part and parcel of the game's appeal.

Otherwise, I agree with dislekcia. I think that the trick isn't to simplify the game mechanics, it's to make those mechanics easily and clearly accessible to the player. In other words: Interface, interface, interface. Imagine what a brain-nullifying horror Sins of a Solar Empire would have been without the relatively simple interface it has.

Evil_Toaster
17-04-2008, 08:54 PM
I laughed - the grand irony is that Bioshock was criticised for being dumbed-down. I shudder to think what the author thinks of great games like System Shock or Deus Ex. Not to mention turn-based games like Civilization, where complexity is part and parcel of the game's appeal.

Otherwise, I agree with dislekcia. I think that the trick isn't to simplify the game mechanics, it's to make those mechanics easily and clearly accessible to the player. In other words: Interface, interface, interface. Imagine what a brain-nullifying horror Sins of a Solar Empire would have been without the relatively simple interface it has.

I'm still scared of Master of Orion 3's interface. :(

dislekcia
18-04-2008, 02:19 AM
Oddly enough, I don't find Sins of a Solar Empire's gameplay busy at all... I tend to minimise the planet info display thing as soon as I get into a new system because it bothers me. It might just be all the RTS experience, but I really don't have any problems keeping track of what forces I have where and which research I'm doing... Then again, I've learned to keep track of things like that in "less friendly" interfaces on much shorter timescales. Sins feels like so much of a break from my usual RTS play that I'm loathe to call it an RTS (but I'm getting onto another topic here).

Personally I feel that the Sins icons could have been made a lot clearer. Things like background types to indicate ship or building, different icon sizes to represent either health or ship size (captial ships would be larger icons, etc). Maybe that's why the interface on the left bothers me: It feels inefficient because there's so much more tacit info it could give you at a glance without having to spend time learning what it all means beforehand. Plus the ship icons themselves are very tough to tell apart - at least I find them tough to identify.

Also, I have very few clues as to what's going on in the underlying system in the game. I don't know at a glance how well something is going to do against something else because combat takes so long to resolve that I find I don't internalise results. It's very different to seeing a napalm-spewing tank crisp your infantry in half a second, you remember that! Whereas in a title like Bioshock you know when you're doing damage to an enemy, which is essentially as complex as the system behind the game gets.

Feedback, context and coherence. Those are the important tenets of design for me.

-D

Gazza_N
18-04-2008, 10:17 AM
Feedback, context and coherence.
Can't argue with that. :)

Miktar
18-04-2008, 10:57 AM
@Dis: So play the game more.

dislekcia
18-04-2008, 12:56 PM
@Dis: So play the game more.

I plan to. I just don't have the time to play a 2 hour game right now... Plus I want to play multiple games in a session to try out new things or different approaches to resourcing and stuff. That's just completely prohibitative at the moment :(

-D

Darcnyss
21-04-2008, 05:50 PM
ADOM (or most other Rogue-likes) has an exceptional amount of commands that it uses. To some people it might get a bit over-complicated, but I absolutely love everything you're able to do in that game. Yes, I do get annoyed at times when I can't remember the key combinations for certain actions, but my annoyance with the command setups doesn't even come close to my enjoyment of the game as a whole.

On the other hand, I've also played a few games that are just overly complicated in their mechanics, so I guess it's a bit of a double-edged sword and all depends on implementation...

Kensei
21-04-2008, 09:22 PM
Game mechanics have to make sense in a game.

Remember most users look for the easiest route to gain the upperhand - mainly action gamers (Strategy gamers are another breed). And it is good and well to have a character that can do a 10 hit combo and finishing move, but to get it he needs to press Down, Up, Crouch and immediately tap Jump three times to get it. By the time they have spent the time trying to pull off this move, they could have just punched the enemy with a normal attack.

But you need to cater for both audiences - I remember games where you can't jump (I am looking at you JRPGs), the most idiotic thing ever in a game. The SWAT games are forgiven because the levels are designed in such a way that you don't need to jump anywhere... same for most of the Rainbow Six games... In fact, they have a very good mechanism for gamers, providing 'intuitive' actions.

Bioshock was not overly complicated... and any one who says that is likely to not have played an FPS since Quake 1.

Karuji
27-04-2008, 10:21 AM
Personaly i like game systems that are abit complex (or just plain complex). Where you actualy have to have some (or alot of) understanding to play the game.
Not just i buy gun and shoot people.

But then again this is coming from a RPG/JRPG fanatic (yes i do like certain fps's and quite alot of rts's)

But really in the end it depends on the gamer. Casual gamers shall proberbly never truely enjoy or perhaps not even like games with the complex systems in them. So from the comecial point of how much money is this game going to make then perhaps fewer mechanics are better.

Ultimately its like asking which is darker grey or another grey it all depends on the shade.

dislekcia
27-04-2008, 04:09 PM
I think the general consensus is that complexity in your gameplay is a good thing. However, complexity comes at a price: You have to design the appearance and manageability of that complexity very, very well or it will kill your game. The "easy to learn, hard to master" holy grail is very tricky to get right.

And I think everyone agrees so far that complex gameplay doesn't have to mean complex input systems or overly complex user feedback. That seems to be the major problem when people think of complexity: Interface and control issues.

-D

Gazza_N
28-04-2008, 11:33 AM
Remember most users look for the easiest route to gain the upperhand - mainly action gamers (Strategy gamers are another breed). And it is good and well to have a character that can do a 10 hit combo and finishing move, but to get it he needs to press Down, Up, Crouch and immediately tap Jump three times to get it. By the time they have spent the time trying to pull off this move, they could have just punched the enemy with a normal attack.

I would argue that fighting games give awesome incentive to nail combos, because they give you a firm advantage in terms of damage. Plus you get some great visual feedback in the form of sparkly eyecandy and/or giblets to pay off for your trouble, not to mention bragging rights when pulling off a particularly tough combo. Why else did we spend hours trying to nail a Fatality in Mortal Kombat when we could just use a bland old uppercut to finish our opponent off? There're tangible rewards that make it worthwhile in the end.



But you need to cater for both audiences - I remember games where you can't jump (I am looking at you JRPGs), the most idiotic thing ever in a game. The SWAT games are forgiven because the levels are designed in such a way that you don't need to jump anywhere... same for most of the Rainbow Six games... In fact, they have a very good mechanism for gamers, providing 'intuitive' actions.

I think you've just answered your own question. ;) Is not being able to jump really detrimental to gameplay, or does it just kill the immersion? There's a difference. As you yourself have argued, as long as there's consistency in the game world, the mechanics are solid. Consistency doesn't necessarily equate to realism, especially not in JRPGs. ;)

Squirly
28-04-2008, 05:59 PM
I read this article a couple of days ago and it enraged me, for want of a better word.

The guy comes across as trying to sound smart, when in actual fact he's talking out of his ass half the time.

"The human brain can handle 7 things at the same time"..... SO? What "things", first of all - are 7 weapons in a FPS too much? I doubt it. Do you consider walking forward and sideways (read "strafing") as 2 things?

ABCDEFG - 7 letters.
ABC DEF GHI JKL MNO PQR STU - 7 bunches of 3 letters each.

Now what?

In short, this guy's saying that if you put too much into a game it'll confuse us which is how we end up with the lobotomized kind of "action-insert-genre-here" games that make up the market nowadays. It's not RPG - it's ACTION RPG!

Bioshock is too complex, when it's basically a retarded version of an older game, System Shock 2. A game that many look back on to be genre-defining and mind-exploding.

So I think that this guy should shut up and go back to the first game he ever played (which sounds like it might've been Bioshock) and leave those with more than 5 connected brain-cells to enjoy their Civs and Fallouts and so on and so on.

Squirly
28-04-2008, 06:00 PM
Did I mention that I hate that guy?

Man, what a ****.

dislekcia
28-04-2008, 08:20 PM
I read this article a couple of days ago and it enraged me, for want of a better word.

The guy comes across as trying to sound smart, when in actual fact he's talking out of his ass half the time.

"The human brain can handle 7 things at the same time"..... SO? What "things", first of all - are 7 weapons in a FPS too much? I doubt it. Do you consider walking forward and sideways (read "strafing") as 2 things?

ABCDEFG - 7 letters.
ABC DEF GHI JKL MNO PQR STU - 7 bunches of 3 letters each.

Now what?

In short, this guy's saying that if you put too much into a game it'll confuse us which is how we end up with the lobotomized kind of "action-insert-genre-here" games that make up the market nowadays. It's not RPG - it's ACTION RPG!

Bioshock is too complex, when it's basically a retarded version of an older game, System Shock 2. A game that many look back on to be genre-defining and mind-exploding.

So I think that this guy should shut up and go back to the first game he ever played (which sounds like it might've been Bioshock) and leave those with more than 5 connected brain-cells to enjoy their Civs and Fallouts and so on and so on.

The concept is the much reviled "7 +- 2 item short term memory theory" and has been frequently misapplied and misinterpreted anywhere you find people that went to university and want to sound smart.

The basic idea of the theory is that most people can keep track of between 5 and 9 distinct but similar items at the same time. That limit is supposedly hard-coded into how our brains work, but has so far only been found in a few tenuous studies that really only do observational data gathering. No concrete brain structures that pertain to this theoretical limit have been observed. Also note that 5-9 is a huge margin of error and that the definition of "item" is wonderfully vague.

The theory is supposed to come into play in situations where you would have to remember which of 10 or so of the same type of unit in an RTS are either heavily damaged, have had their abilities recharge, or both. If you subscribe to the 7-item theory, then most people would have problems picking the right units after they've moved around the map a bit and maybe changed positions a few times.

Personally, I don't hold with the idea.

-D

01DT!m3r
02-05-2008, 09:51 AM
To put the theory into practice you should get a game called anctome . Google it it should be easy to find .