On Complexity, Depth, and Skill

[christian]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_comple ... and_skill/

it is misleading to think of these three attributes as fundamentally separate, because it is complexity that gives rise to depth, and depth that makes skillful play possible. It is logically impossible for us to conceive of them separately, as they are in fact related in an exactly linear fashion: Each new meaningful[1] rule makes a game more complex, and gives the player some extra work to do in order to learn it. Each new rule interacts with the existing rules in new and increasingly complicated ways, creating an ever-widening realm of possibilities which the player is called upon to grasp. The better he grasps them the more capable he becomes in using them to his advantage, and thus the more skillfully he can play.

[christian]

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=5760#p5760

What makes you think that all rules are equal? I.e. that all rules affect the level of complexity of a game equally? Obviously, that's not true. I made the distinction between 'meaningful' and 'meaningless' rules, but of coure there are degrees of meaningfulness. Go may have few rules, but those rules, and the realm of possibilities which they create by interacting with each other (i.e. the game's depth), is much greater than the realm of possibilities created by the rules of something like, say, Lost Odyssey, which has millions of rules, most of them completely meaningless (and many of the rest even going as far as to cancel out complexity created by other rules and sets of rules!).

So this is the point where you go wrong (along with practically everyone who writes about games today):

It seems to me that some games with simple rulesets can nonetheless have a lot of depth.

There is nothing "simple" about the ruleset of Go, just as there is nothing simple about the ruleset of Mushihime-sama or KOF XI. Just because you can easily recite something (a poem, say, or a ruleset comprised of six rules) doesn't mean you understand it.

So when some journalist hack writes that a "simple" game has "a lot of depth", all he is doing is abusing the terms 'simple' and 'depth'. A simple game is by definition shallow, and a complex game by definition deep. If we start calling simple games 'deep' then our whole terminology becomes meaningless -- which is of course what these people are doing on purpose in order to muddy the waters and hide in them their own ignorance. Since they cannot even begin to understand complexity, their adoption of doublespeak helps ensure that their readers have no chance of doing so either.

[christian]

The RLD Handbook: Sometimes it's not about the metrics - Depth & Complexity - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LukeMcMi ... lexity.php

To delve into this one, I’m going to look at two games from the same developer which have the same mechanics but different levels of complexity; Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga.

From this alone, you can already tell where this discussion is going to go.

Emphasis added.

I think that there is a lot to take away from depth and complexity analysis of the games we like. Here are some of the pointers for me. Some taken from this analysis, some taken from reflecting on my own gaming experiences;

• Reducing complexity can actually increase depth as it often creates more flexibility for the player to enact strategies of their choice.
• Complexity and Depth are two fundamentally different cognitive skills. They do not have the same cognitive cost. If we use Maslow, and assume that depth is more focused in the cognitive domain of analysis and complexity is more based on the cognitive skill of remembering. Games which are deep, require higher order cognitive skills to achieve their goals. (NB. this does not make deep games "better" games, but rather may say more about whether a certain type of games meets a certain type of players preferences.
• Even if a game is deep, it may not be “good.” (whatever that means). This can be partly attributed to what a player is looking to gain from a game and what they are willing to invest, versus their fundamental preferences for genre and medium.
• Depth and/or complexity are not the same thing as difficulty.
• Time is not a consideration of evaluating depth and complexity. It is a way of understanding difficulty.

The last and probably most important lesson learnt from this analysis can only be answered when coming back to pondering if Decathlete is a deep game? If we use the approach I used in this document then Decathlete is neither complex, nor is it deep. But you know what? I don’t care!

Confusion all around. And when he arrives at a conclusion he doesn't necessarily care for, he tosses it out saying "I still had an absolute blast! ... you can still have an enjoyable game experience even when a game is low complexity and little to no depth."

But should we be concerning ourselves with the minimum? The least common denominator? Especially when it concerns the very core, affecting absolutely everything about the game that you are making? The better questions to be asking are, how far can we go? Can we do better? Where can we improve? Which is the better game? And why?

It's pretty easy for a game, any game, to come across as a winner, when there is no competition, and the only question to ask is, "Was it fun?"