"Necessary Complexity" in Online Games

Massively is running a story about Google's short-lived virtual environment, Lively. The article examines why Lively shut down so quickly, and how its simplicity and its attempts at user-friendliness did more harm than good. Quoting: "The idea here is that any interactive system has a certain amount of complexity, usually involving the number and type of tasks which can be performed. Obviously, it is detrimental if the interaction interface is more complicated than it needs to be. That just makes things harder. What's a little less obvious is that reducing the complexity of the interaction interface too far makes things harder as well. Either it makes it hard to perform the tasks, or it reduces the number of tasks which can be performed. ... ideally the interaction interface needs to be of an order of complexity that is coupled to the order of complexity of the number and type of possible tasks. If it rises above that or falls below that, performing tasks becomes harder. Performing tasks with an oversimplified interaction-interface is like trying to make coffee with one hand tied behind your back. Overcomplicating it is like trying to instruct five people to build a shed, when none of you have any language in common."

Comments

Lively was an excellent example...

[Klootzak]

Of a very well built piece of software (after they fixed the lack of caching) that did nothing new or interesting, aside from let some University Conveners try and impress the female students in their subject.

It looked to me like someone at Google wanted to create a 3D graphically-enhanced version of IRC, isn't that what IMVU already did?
I mean jeez, WoW players were doing that (in addition to maintaining their virginity) WAY back...