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Simpler Sometimes Better In Videogames?
Thanks to NTSC-UK for their editorial discussing why more simple gameplay does not necessarily make a videogame worthless. The piece argues: "So why are there so many howls of derision when a game like Dead or Alive tries to make the concept of fighting entertaining with a button bashing, quick and easy style? [...] Just because an artificial intelligence can come back at you and outplay you on your own terms, is the game inherently more enjoyable?" The piece concludes by praising simple titles such as Super Monkey Ball and Wario Ware Inc., and suggesting: "The important thing, though, is that a game's worth cannot and should not be judged purely on its perceived 'depth' or complexity... there can be no argument that one game is better than another solely because it will take months to learn all there is to learn of it."
(Paraphrase)
The best GameCube games would only use the analog stick and the A button.
Oh, I forgot: She Kicks High...
Everything should be as simple as possible, but no more. How simple you can make a game really depends on the type of game. And whether you enjoy the complexity of the game really should be a reflection of the genres you enjoy. Do you like to spend your time immersed in the fantasy realm of an RPG, or do you just like to kick back every now and then for a short FPS session?
And some things are obvious. Should you have separate buttons for opening a door, opening a chest, and pressing a lever, or should you have one "do stuff" button? In this case, the answer is "No" of course.
Why do we play video games?
For fun.
It's a pretty obvious answer. And struggling through pages of manual text to get to the point of being able to proficiently play a game may not be considered fun to some people (though some PnP players may disagree... I also enjoy going through manuals sometimes). If there is a high learning curve, it just is a barrier to the real point of the game, fun.
On a similar note, there are just some people who do not get the point of RPG's and won't try them, probably because they won't try to learn the interface and the rules behind it and would rather play an fps which takes no time to learn (in most cases).
It's not just the gameplay that needs to be simplified, it's the control schemes more than anything. Let's take a look at a couple recent games-- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Sonic Battle. Same platform (GBA), same controller (obviously), but different genres. M&L is an RPG, known for having very simple controls (d-pad for menus, OK, and Cancel), but M&L's controls seem needlessly complex and somewhat overdone. Does the game really need separate buttons for Mario and Luigi each? In battle, it's a neat concept, but outside of battle it's really irritating.
Contrast that to Sonic Battle, a fighting game. Fighters are known for overly complex combo moves and unforgiving command sequences, but SB manages to avoid all of this. One button for attack, one for defense, one for jumping, and one for a super move. Much easier to pick up and play than, say, Mortal Kombat Eleventy-Billion.
I spent WAY too much time last night playing Enigma, a game that's included in the most recent Knoppix distro (+1 Linux Karma Whoring). Simple game-- use the mouse to control a marble, or several marbles. Very easy to learn and frustrating as hell (in a good way).
You can have a simple game, or a simple control scheme, or both. If you have a complex game, it might necessitate complex controls, but that doesn't mean the manual PDF must be larger than the size of the actual game.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
On the other hand, simplification doesn't always lead to a more fun game, either. Ion Storm took Deux Ex, a game greatly praised by gamers, got rid of all the complex parts and made Invisible War. What happened, though, is they got rid of most of the parts that made the first game so good. IW is nowhere near as good as the first game, and the lack of complexity has a lot to do with it.
"When we started working on Invisible War, we targeted the console from day one. This time it wasn't an afterthought. Every decision we made along the way considered that we would be running on a console. And I think you'll notice the difference." -- Matt Baer, Ion Storm
I almost exclusively buy games second-hand, which means i sometimes don't get a manual. One test of game design is whether a game is playable sans manual - lets mention Master of Orion 3 here...
I think games that are 'intuitive' and easy to pick and just play are getting thin on the ground on the pc, as it's easier just use lots of keys or some fancy mouse-driven system. I'm not saying that the consoles are neccesarily better due to their comparitive lack of control options, but that lack makes an intelligent system more of a necessity.
The trend (on the pc) to make the same games (FPS/RTS) and then just try to differentiate on minor details doesn't help much.
Games will generally always benefit from a more simplified control scheme. The easier it is for a player to jump into a work and play, the more potential fun and wider potential audience.
It doesn't always end up that way, which is an interesting loophole to that rule. I carried the torch for the "simpler=better" argument until I played R.A.D. (Robotic Alchemic Drive), which places you as the pilot to a giant robot in a very Japanese style fighting/adventure game. The premise of this game is like many other 3D robot games, with their control scheme being a large exception. The game treats the interface as thought the player is controlling a giant remote control toy, using L&R 1&2 for control of the legs (forward and back) and the analog sticks for control of the arms (left and right punches). Turning a standard 3D action titles' controls upside down provided me with the most entertaining experience in years. Half of the games challenge was learning to effectively control your larger, onscreen avatar, and it was a blast. Just for argument, there was an "easy" option for the game that reverted the controls to a simplified control pad = direction of the robot, etc. control system. However this took absolutely all the fun out of playing the game when used, because the main draw to the game was the experience of surmounting the more immediately challenge: that of your own motor skills.
So that just goes to show that in some cases simplicity is better, but it doesn't always apply. If the controls in R.A.D. weren't as logically placed, or as responsive, it may have turned out to be an ugly experience. In the instance of Deus Ex 2, this title is just another addition to a long line of games in one particular genre. A genre that has built upon its series' standards for many generations and players have come to expect certain things. The attempt to simplify this title was not so directly relevant to gameplay as the previous example, and instead was receive poorly due to expectations of those standards by series' fans.
(I think this is akin to an American driving a stick-shift in the US for most of his life, and then buying a new car only to find it's an automatic whose steering wheel is on the right-hand side. It may essentially be a much "simpler" control scheme, but our American driver has come to expect the standard he was raised on, and would probably reject it.)
I think the moral here is to not pigeonhole your designs, and experimentation is still a viable strategy in this medium.
I don't know about that...
When I played Final Fantasy X, I didn't touch the controller for *days*. (Endless Cutscenes)
I don't know which to envy more - the fact that you [apparently] have a job where you get to travel, or the fact that you have a girlfriend who could be expected to remember how to beat a level on a video game.
I think the best games are those that have an original CONCEPT, though they're not necessarily better because they're simple.
The most enjoyable games I've encountered so far are Pong, bzflag and Weichi/Igo/Baduk (A Chinese board game), and all three are games with relatively simple rules, but a very original concept. Tetris wasn't bad either, and follows the same pattern. The only game of these four to actually have anything that resembles an engine is bzflag, and it's a simple one at that.
A notable thing about Igo is that with its simple rules set and 19x19 board, it's actually more complex than modern games, and even more complex than chess. So sometimes less is more.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time has a pretty simple control system, but it can be challenging in learning how to use the Prince's abilities effectively. When there's 4 big sand creatures with swords as big as the Prince, you need to pull off some fancy stuff :D
I don't buy the fact that simpler games means better. They may be fun and have a lot of "twitch factor", but after some time you get tired of them. I think rather that games should only *start* simply. A lot of games (especially on PC) throw you with full control of the interface and drive you through a tutorial so that you can learn how it all works. Sure, its cool to have a lot of options, but it takes a lot of fun of discovery away.
Compare with, for instance, Super Metroid. You can do some basic stuff (run around, shoot some monsters) with the D-pad and one button, but to finish the game, you need to learn the rest of the commands. However, you learn them slowly as needed... I noticed that this "simple-to-harder" gameplay seems to be a design choice in a lot of big N games.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Personally, I like it when games are easy to pick up, but difficult to master.
My prime example is Soul Calibur II. Any newb can pick up this game and beat the computer with some button-mashing finesse. They might have trouble against an experienced player, but if two friends pick up a rental and proceed to smash each other with no thought as to what the buttons do, it can still end up being lots of fun.
However, each character has at least 100-150 moves, many have multiple stances, and more characters are unlocked as you play. This leaves room for a great deal of time spent mastering your character, developing combos, etc.
I think it is very important for a game to be both accessible to the casual gamer, as well as the hardcore, and this game does it well.