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

The Last Remnant

I'm not going to do a full-on review, because I haven't finished the game yet, but I've been playing quite a bit of the Square Enix game The Last Remnant, which was recently released on the PC. I've been on an anti-complexity kick lately, and this game gave me a bit of an opportunity to talk about when complexity reduction can go too far.

Now I'm sure noone would actually accuse Square Enix of crafting a game that is altogether too simple. The game's steep learning curve is noted in almost every review I've read of it. But I think they made some decisions with specific mechanics that aren't quite right in terms of rewarding players for understanding the implications of some of their game systems.

The Last Remnant is a somewhat traditional JRPG which eschews a traditional combat system for a system like the one in ogre battle, with a significantly less complicated tactical map. Players control several groups of units, each of which can be assigned general commands, rather than specific commands. Which specific moves each group uses is determined by the game's AI, though with many commands players will see what actions the units will take when they assign the command.

Personally, I think the combat system works very well overall. For the most part, the game's AI makes good decisions, although sometimes I find myself wishing that my healer took the heal action instead of the high damage character which acted right before the healer. I feel like this specific instance happens alot, but other than that, the AI is pretty good about taking actions for units.

Outside of combat, however, I feel that the game is unnecessarily complex, given that players have so little control of their units' progression. Throughout the game, the only unit that you get to really have full control of is the main character. Your other units' skills and equipment selection are fully automated, though you can prevent your units from using certain skills in combat.

All of this would seem okay to me, if it wasn't for the fact that the item system in the game is so unnecessarily complex. You can create and modify your own items using items that enemies drop in battle. However, it is almost never worth doing this, because I always find myself looking for at least 1 necessary component to improve my weapons, and whenever I find a new weapon that I can finally craft, a better one has become available in one of the game's many shops. On top of that, since these items still cost some gold to create, I generally find that trying to collect and build items isn't really worth my time and effort. While this may change as I progress further in the game, the item system, because of its complexity, really isn't worth bothering with. In other words, there is no tangible benefit to trying to understand the system.

On top of that, since you only control the equipment of your one character, and that character only has five item slots, all of this crafting information is largely useless. The only character that you can improve through active item crafting is the main character, and by the end of the game, he is only one of thirty active units in your army at any one time. Your other units will take items from you to improve their equipment from time to time, and will sometimes ask you to take them to acquire an item, but this requires no actual understanding of the item system to do, and only requires you to look around for mobs that drop the particular item they are looking for.

All of this is frustrating to someone who enjoys complexity as I do. But still, if Square was looking to create a beginner friendly game, they should have just made all of the equipment purchasable in the store without forcing players to acquire specific components for all of it. If they were looking to create an exciting, highly complex system for players like me, they should have allowed me to customize the equipment of all of my units, and perhaps given me the option of auto-managing the equipment of other units. The system that is in place in the Last Remnant has the downsides of both, and the upside of neither.

In short, if game companies are worried about a game's item management system being too complex, just add in an auto-manage feature, or leave it out of the game entirely. It is such a shame that such an interesting item system isn't worth experimenting with.

-Jon

Complexity in Games

I've been thinking a lot about complexity in games, specifically board games, recently. Several individuals that I have been speaking to (and whose opinions I value) on the matter are of the opinion that all of the best games can be explained in a sentence or less, and that all of them have shallow learning curves.

Now, call me a masochist if you will, but nearly all of my favorite games have steep learning curves. This may be the economist in me, who is a fan of all sorts of modeling and game theory, but there is just something special about sitting down for an hour with a game and figuring it all out. Many of my games, not surprisingly, fall into the simulation and puzzle categories.

I specifically take issue with the idea that people love rolling dice. There is something interesting about leaving your fortune in the hands of lady luck, but I find that it is always overshadowed by frustration when your carefully laid out strategy is demolished in a heartbeat due to a few bad rolls of the dice.

Not that I prefer games that are all strategy. Players should be able to balance off of each other (this is why I prefer 4 player games to 2 player games). Players should be able to walk away from every game session with a sense of accomplishment (I may have lost the game, but man, I laid the smack down on Mike when he tried to invade Africa!). And luck can have a proper role in games. I think that Catan and Vegas Showdown are two games which handle their luck elements very well.

-Jon