When you look at games and how they develop over time, there’s a natural tendency to see ever increasing complexity. Picture an old Atari 2600 controller. It was a joystick with one button. Now compare that to an Xbox 360 controller. The360 has two control sticks, a d-pad, two triggers, two bumpers, four buttons, a start button, and a select button. (At least, I think that’s what it has. I’m going off of a picture of one I found on the Internet.) That’s two elements for the Atari and thirteen for the 360.
Aside: I'm not sure how formalized the Hasbro/WotC/MicroSoft arrangement is. Maybe it's just spouses working there and a large % of their staff crossing over. Either way it's become noticeable that everything is Silverlight, Xbox, etc. over there.
True that an Atari controller had a joystick and a button. If we're counting buttons though, the original Nintendo, Intellivision and Colecovision had substantially more than that.
You also don't use all the buttons on a 360 controller for every game. They're there to provide versatility, rather than demonstrate everything has become that much more complex. In fact if you looked at the newest XBOX system - The Kinect (or the Playstation Move, or even the Wii) you'd see that the trend in videogame controllers is not that they're becoming more complex -- it's the opposite. They're moving towards more naturalistic, and immersive control systems. So this point about game controllers having a natural tendency to become more complex over time is objectively wrong.
If you look back at last week’s article, you see a similar rise in the complexity of D&D. With each passing year, the game has become more complicated. So what’s going on here? As the title of this column indicates, I think we’re seeing an overall rise in player skill, more established tropes of gaming, and a better network of tutoring and knowledge. Our collective gaming brain has grown larger and larger, and therefore seeks out deeper, more complex games.
Wow.
The games are getting bogged down in complexity, taking longer to run, and losing gamers to other media... but it's because we're just so smart. And our brains are so big.
...
All of those factors point to why we’ve seen a steady increase in complexity over time. As a group, we’ve mastered the rules and started to seek more options. We’ve assimilated various tropes and mechanics to the point that they’re intuitive, providing a foundation for more mechanics to rest upon.
Mastering the rules, aka System Mastery, was something added to the game by Ryan Dancey during the 3e/d20 era. It was a smart business strategy because it sold more books since all players needed to master the rules instead of relying on the DM to take care of the rules for them. While it was a clever business choice and it's lots of fun for the right group of people it's not something that naturally occurred over time, or that all games 'evolve' towards. It was a conscious design decision with it's associated pros and cons.
Legends & Lore: Poll #3 Results
Your fighter loses all his or her feats, skills, powers, and non-weapon proficiencies. Yet, your standard swing with a sword/shot with a bow is effective enough that you don’t feel overshadowed by any of the other characters in the group. How do you feel about that?
I’d be bored doing the same thing over and over again, round after round in a fight: 40.7%
I’d miss the mechanics that made my fighter unique compared to other fighters: 30.4%
I’d be happy that I can have an effective character without the complexity: 14.5%
As long as my character is equivalent in power to the rest of the party, I’m fine: 10.5%
I’m not concerned about the mechanics or balance, so I don’t care: 3.9%
Setting aside selection bias and the possibility of people voting multiple times we're still left with a terribly flawed bit of statistics here. The questions are leading (over and over again, round after round, OMG can you believe how awful this choice is?) and they're comparing different things at the same time. And yet despite this they still don't tell the story presented above.
The results actually say that 59.3% would NOT be "bored doing same thing over and over again, round after round in a fight". Half of that group would like mechanics that made their fighter "unique compared to other fighters" and the other half didn't care about that.
These surveys / results remind me of the great quote by Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
And now the Joesky tax for too much "Blah Blah Blah..." :)
Victorian Medicinal Compounds
Add a name (Crowley's, Lovecraft's, McGillicuddy's, etc) and roll 1d12 on the table below:
• 1. Blood Bitters
• 2. Carbolic Salve
• 3. Herb Tablets
• 4. Intestinal Evacuant
• 5. Liniment
• 6. Lung Balsam
• 7. Nerve Syrup
• 8. No. 9 Tonic
• 9. Pepsin Tablets
• 10. Petroleum Emulsion
• 11. Snake Oil Liniment
• 12. Water Rubinat
14 comments:
I also remember my favorite game for the Atari 400 computer - Star Raiders. Yes, it used the simple Atari joystick with one button - but it also used around 20 different buttons on the keyboard as well.
Excellent analysis, Stuart
"Mastery" and "complexity" are not linked concepts. "Mastery" means: I understand the whole game system (or at least those parts that concern my character) and don't have to rely on someone else to help me.
"Complexity" is driven by the core value sought by most TRPG players and it should increase over time. However, the problem has become that complexity in the game system has increased over time without delivering much reward for that complexity.
In the CCG genre, every 2-3 years you do a "reset", and you tear the game down to a low baseline of complexity from which it slowly rebuilds as expansions are released. I think RPGs need to do something like this as well.
Big Dancey is watching you!
He must have a really good Google alert set up because he is lightning fast to show up when his name is mentioned.
@Mike: The first videogame I ever saw was "Moon Lander" on some desk sized computer my friends Dad at their house. The keyboard controls for this game were incomprehensible to me at the time. :)
@Greg: Thanks
@Ryan: True - you can have a game that's simple to learn, hard to master - and those are often seen as the mark of a really enduring game (Chess, Go, etc).
I'm not sure what you mean about complexity as a core value sought by TRPG players… do you mean complexity as in a rich, immersive world and complex narrative environment? I don't think you mean complex rules for the sake of complex rules… that doesn't seem like something the majority of people are looking for.
I agree that the business model used by CCGs of base product > expansions added until it gets to heavy > reset back to base product, makes sense for a lot of RPG publishers. Although that's not necessarily what the players want. I also wonder if it really makes sense to keep doing that with the same product or if it wouldn't be smarter to launch *new* products. FFG's Mansions of Madness isn't Arkham Horror 3e for example - although I can imagine a TRPG company having done something like that.
Ever increasing complexity by catering to your most hard core fans was the biggest cause of the downfall of wargaming. Squad Leader was the best selling wargame of all time. It's success lead to add on after add on until it became the monster known as ASL. How many people do you know that still play that?
Today's renaissance of board games is mainly due to the publishers dialing the complexity way down and focusing on playability.
Catering to the most hard core fans is also what nearly killed the comic industry as well.
100% agreed about board game companies having the right idea about complexity + playability. :)
I think gamers do like the growth-cutback-regrowth cycle. The people it really annoys are those who think that length of experience with the game should equal "win" (or at least "noticeable advantage").
Everyone else seems to cope just fine. As long as the "new version" is better designed than the previous version, you mostly get near unanimous adoption. The disconnect comes when "better designed" means "targets a different audience". Sometimes that's OK and the game grows as a result (but leaves a cadre of disheartened players behind who feel betrayed that "their game" was changed). Sometimes that's bad news if the expected new target market fails to materialize.
I felt 3.0 was at the edge of what was sustainable for human-moderated tabletop play. I feel that 3.x is too complex and that a lot of the game systems go unused due to people simply being saturated with the complexity.
I'd love to see a version of 3.x done at a lower level of complexity than 3.0. I think there's a sweet spot there that would make a lot of people enjoy the game much more than they do now.
As long as the "new version" is better designed than the previous version, you mostly get near unanimous adoption.
What's considered "better designed" is often quite subjective though. OD&D, AD&D, and AD&D 2e are the same game system and they unquestionably improve in "design" between editions. I think retro clones of OD&D have proved popular because the original game was rather poorly presented.
These were all the same restatement of a single game though, rather than a new system. I had friends who never bought 2e not because of any real dislike of it, but because they already owned 1e and didn't see the point. Sort of like how most people don't buy multiple editions of Monopoly or Scrabble I suppose.
With 3e it was substantially different and "better designed" from a certain point of view… but one that wasn't unanimous. I've heard Gary Gygax didn't care much for it when he was given a sneak peek and that he said he didn't consider it D&D. The continuing, and perhaps growing, number of gamers in the "Old School" scene suggests 3e was only subjectively better depending on your personal tastes.
I have friends who think it's the best edition of D&D ever, while I prefer things a bit more streamlined (as you're suggesting as well). I think TSR D&D and 3e D&D are both "better designed" but for different things.
I felt 3.0 was at the edge of what was sustainable for human-moderated tabletop play. I feel that 3.x is too complex and that a lot of the game systems go unused due to people simply being saturated with the complexity.
I agree. Late 3.x had really gone too far and to sustain it I think you needed something like Pathfinder which was that 'cutback' you mentioned without creating a new product. I wanted to like 4e but it's past that comfortable point of complexity for me as well.
What about Castles & Crusades? Isn't that supposed to be d20/3e with the level of complexity scaled back to the TSR era versions of D&D?
Maybe YOU should publish your own RPG that's 3e-ish but scaled back in complexity from there. That'd be very interesting to see. I've heard they have this Open Game License thing you could use. ;-)
Stuart whips out the OGL joke...
rofl
Pathfinder is a cut back in complexity to 3.0? Or a slightly simpler 3.0?
I've not cracked it open, so I really don't know.
"We’ve assimilated various tropes and mechanics to the point that they’re intuitive, providing a foundation for more mechanics to rest upon."
i.e. We've integrated game design concepts from wildly popular MMOs to make new editions more relatable to young adults with little other gaming experience...
I think this is a great analysis, but having been initially introduced to D&D through 2e and knowing nothing else; I found that a lot of things didnt really make sense until I went back and read 1e.
It seemed that designers felt theyd gottten a little out of hand with the previous edition and decided to "nerf" everything for 2e.
It seemed like 2e hit the chopping block hard
@Ka-Blog! It's more the complexity of 3.5 in one book. Pathfinder is not a new game per se, but a destillation of the entirety of 3.5 with a lot of options in the base classes. And some simplifications. It was planed for beeing somewhat backwards compatible to 3.5 all along. And that does it quite well. But it has certainly more complexity as 3.0.
For me it's really the ramp up to the complexity that has been done away with. First level characters in a well designed and accessible game should be only slightly differentiated (i.e. Cleric, Thief, Fight, Magic User) and take about 5 minutes to make (without software!).
I think complexity is fine, but at low levels characters should remain simple to build. This allows for characters to actually develop during play rather than emerging fully competent and formed at level one. Also, the option to start characters at, say, level 10 exists for characters that need to start off play with advanced character development.
Essentials made a bit of a trip back in this direction but it's still a far cry from 'roll up a character and go.'
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