Complexity in Game Design

My Travian game is coming to a close, ie nearing its one-year mark. I've been poking around at other browser games to assess the competition, thinking about switching, and it reminded me of one of the lessons of game design that I picked up long ago.

I remember playing Warcraft 2 and thinking, "you know, this game would be even better if it had even more upgrades and building types and everything."

A few years later, while playing Kohan, I realized that I was very wrong. WC2 was so awesome because it wasn't any more complex. Kohan (another real-time strategy game) had a different, but relatively straightforward, combat model. It didn't add more building types, or more troop types, or more upgrades -- it just configured armies differently than WC2.

Complexity is great for World of Warcraft because people play that game for thousands of hours. Yet at the lower levels, the game starts out very simple. Starcraft, currently enjoying years of professional play in Korea, isn't any more complicated than Warcraft 2. Chess is much simpler than both.

What makes a game fun is the interplay of choices. With a ton of choices, sometimes randomness sets in and dominates play. "Is unit A better than unit Z732? What about Z731, or Q986? Gah there's so many, forget it! Just build unit A!?" It's difficult to figure out a good strategy (or to be happy with the strategy you chose) when combinations start spiraling up.

Warcraft 2 and Kohan and Starcraft all found a balance with a small number of troops and buildings. Even then, they gradually added all their options in over the course of the game. They don't throw new players into the deep end (the full game); they work up to it over 30 hours or more.

It's like getting decent at chess and thinking, "ok, now that I've learned how all these pieces move, what I need now is more pieces! A larger board!" What makes chess interesting isn't those new pieces; instead, the game changes. The focus shifts to strategy and positional play, thinking ahead and mind games, learning the books and the endgames.

Part of Travian's appeal is its simplicity. If the game got too much more complex -- twice the number of buildings, more complex combat, etc -- then it would be a much harder game to get into. Part of its appeal is its chess-like simplicity. Even in that simplicity there is a lot of interplay, since so much of the game works on an exponential curve.

Good designs are simple designs. Let the fun be in the interplay of a handful of archetypes, not in the mindless proliferation of abilities and powers and resources and buildings and technologies...