Elegant Game Design

One of the terms we throw around in my office when referring to games is the term "elegant". Now none of us are really game design theorists in the traditional sense, and the word isn't really used much in game reviews, but it is a very fitting description of some games. One of the blogs that I follow is PlayThisThing!. One of the writers there is Greg Costikyan, who contributed a chapter on Europa Universalis (one of my favorite games) to a book entitled Well Played 1.0, edited by Drew Davidson. You can read the book online here, although I recommend you go out and buy a copy for yourself if you really liked it (I did).

One of the other chapters is written on the well-known Advance Wars series of games for Nintendo's mobile Gameboy and DS platforms. Advance Wars is one of the best examples of elegant game design I can think of, and seeing that the chapter on elegant game design in Well Played 1.0 was writted on this game was quite reassuring.

First, let me define my terms. To me, an elegant game or system is one in which there is a great deal of complexity which is slowly introduced to the player or is immediately very understandable. Basically, elegant game designs will almost always be fairly complex but very easy for the player to parse, or are at least structured in such a way that players learn how to use the system fairly easily and are never frustrated by it. Occasionally, I might call an overly complex but not that hard to understand system elegant, but that would be pretty rare. (This might be the case with my Final Fantasy Tactics nomination below.) These systems should also be fairly intuitive to the player, and to some extent, make sense in the real world, or at least in the game world.

Elegant game systems should also be the aspects of games that stand out to the player as being truly interesting and entertaining. By their very nature, they are the most polished aspects of the game.

Of course, the next thing that came to my mind was a mental list of other "elegant" games that I have played over the past few years. I spent most of last week thinking about it, and came up with a pretty good list. I'm actually thinking about taking some of the ideas I've been tossing around and throwing them into a white paper, which would probably help to distill my thoughts even more, but in the mean time I can use this post as a bit of a rough draft. I also did some thinking on some of the mechanics that might fall into the category, so those are also on the list.

Generating the list was surprisingly difficult. It was also a little more eclectic than I imagined. My list of elegant games/game systems, in no particular order:

Advance Wars
Civilization: Revolutions
Braid
Portal
Soul Calibur (I've heard that Street Fighter IV should go here but haven't played it)
Vegas Showdown
Sim City 2000
Item System in Diablo II
Ability/Job System in Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy VII's Materia Systems
Gem System in the Free Realms TCG (No, really, I'm dead serious)
Mana in Magic: the Gathering
World of Warcraft's Talent System

I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff. Please flame me in the forums.

-Jon