Sid Meier: Too Much Complexity Can Kill Genres

[IanDavis]

Sid Meier: Too Much Complexity Can Kill Genres

The famed designer doesn't want strategy games to go the way of the flight simulator.

My boyhood love of flight simulators hit its peak when I learned how to lob thermonuclear warheads in a ballistic arc over mountain ranges in F-22 Lighting 2. However, that flame was smothered in the hours I spent trying to work the true-to-life radar system in Falcon 3.0. It's a fantastic sim, but perhaps just a bit too detailed for my taste. Apparently I wasn't alone, as the genre is a refuge for the hardcore-only these days. In [a href=http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/26/sid-meier-interview-ace-patrol-civs-evolution-and-the-future-of-strategy-games/]an interview with PC Gamer[/a] Sid Meier notes that trend towards complexity, and how he doesn't want it to kill off strategy games, like it did flight sims.

"Back when I was young, we used to make flight simulators," the legendary designer reminisced. "They kept getting more and more complicated. The cockpit started taking over more and more of the screen, and what you saw outside got less and less... But with every generation, some people said, this is getting to be too much for me, I won't buy it anymore. Eventually it just out-complexified itself."

To avoid this, he notes that a core doctrine of the Civilization series has been to remove a feature for every new one added. "With Civ, we're actually deliberately keeping the complexity at the current level, because that seems to be what people enjoy."

That's not to say that complex games are bad, but that a rush in that direction can undermine a potential audience. "You have to convince people they like strategy," Meier says. "It seems a little daunting at first, when you hear about Civ... But once you get them to try it, they see how it works and what kind of fun it is."

Source: [a href=http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/26/sid-meier-interview-ace-patrol-civs-evolution-and-the-future-of-strategy-games/]PC Gamer[/a]

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[Tireseas_v1legacy]

While I'm not as big a fan of Civ V as I was with its prior installments, I think it's taking the right approach with its methodology: keep the core game simple, add complexity with DLC (religion, spying, tourism, etc.).

 

[AldUK]

Not sure I agree with this statement. Paradox have been making far more complex and in-depth strategy games for some years now and they seem to be doing just fine.

 

[Denamic]

Not sure I agree with this statement. Paradox have been making far more complex and in-depth strategy games for some years now and they seem to be doing just fine.

There's a balance to be had. Some great games are not that complex, as there are great games that are complex. But remove too much complexity, and you get Fable 3. Add too much complexity, and it becomes a chore to play.

I enjoy 'organic' complexity, like in Kerbal Space Program. Nothing complicated about rocket science. Add more rocket and you're golden. But there is great difficulty in landing stuff without exploding. Sure, landing on Mün isn't that much of a hurdle, as it's close and barely has gravity, but once you're going to Duna or beyond, shit gets real. You'll need to actually build space fueling stations. You'll need to actually launch the space station in parts, then assemble them in orbit. Now, the game's no longer about having a 10:1 rocket to other shit ratio any more.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I 'unno, I reckon he's got a point. Even at it's most feature-rich and 'complex', Civilization is just really a set of really quite basic calculations interacting with each other. Simple elements adding up to more than the sum of its parts. You could probably say the same about Paradox games - it's probably possible to analyse individual mechanics as fairly simple, but then there's the interaction with all the others on top of it.


There's a reason that Civ has a much wider playerbase than Dwarf Fortress; that's meant to be a neutral statement, I know it seems to some that accessibility = casualisation (personally I couldn't disagree harder), but I find myself agreeing. Civilization is like a gateway to strategy games that you never really 'grow out of' despite moving onto others, if you like that kind of thing.

 

[Azwrath]

Not sure I agree with this statement. Paradox have been making far more complex and in-depth strategy games for some years now and they seem to be doing just fine.

To be fair, it does take you 2 days to learn the basics so you can start playing a Paradox game, tho that might be caused by their horrible tutorials or lack there of (here's a hint for Paradox: hints are not tutorials!)

Keep in mind, that, this is coming from someone who has been playing a lot EU4 and CK2 ever since i discovered them 3 months ago. I love those game for their complexity, their depth. But most Paradox grand strategies are usually a niche product for a niche market, with modest development budgets and that is why they are doing so good.

Which is why i can't really figure out whether old Sid here is trying to argue for under the hood complexity or he's trying to convince us of the benefits of "streamlining" games so they can reach a "wider audience" or as i like to call it, the slow genocide of gaming. Because personally i have not seen a trend towards complexity in the last 10 years. Quite the opposite.

 

[Grabehn]

I've never understood stuff like this, going to the extreme with something is never good, complex for the sake of it doesn't sound like a good idea at all, which is why most "complex" games tend to be considered niche, yet the good ones have a reason for their complexity and usually explain the basics in a good way. In the same way "appealing to everyone" never works. Didn't thought that was a secret.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I wonder if people confuse complexity with depth. A deep game system doesn't need to be uber-complex to succeed. Its a hard balance to achieve, but I feel a game of any type whether be it strategy, simulation, action-adventure, fps, RPG, or other needs to be accessible to players without making them feel like they need to spreadsheet their strategy to play properly.
Complexity can actually detract from depth, bogging down a game with minutiae that can be scaled back without becoming too shallow.
I make this argument from an MMO standpoint, which may not be popular for some but I'll use the example of World of Warcraft pre- and post-Cataclysm. The talent trees were, pre-Cat, riddled with too many useless skills (especially pre-Wrath) to a point where only cookie-cutter builds with a few skill points left over to put into talents that really didn't matter to play-style. Also certain talent specs were useless in endgame raiding because the damage output or healing range was too low to be considered viable. I remember having to spec either Marksman or Survival (depending on patch build) as a Hunter because no matter what Beast Mastery was useless, which left me unable to use my favorite pets which only BM would allow. Early Wrath may have had the most variable talents as you could hybrid-build a character, but ultimately it wasn't viable endgame-wise because the cookie-cutter builds had the most use which meant that all those other talents were useless and took up space.
Now with Mists revamp of the talent tree, cutting it down to non-spec related talents that you choose for your personal playstyle, there's more depth to character usage. The cookie-cutter builds still exist but the output on all fronts are incremental differences so you can actually choose your talents without fear of being rejected by all but the most elitist of guilds. I feel that there is still room to grow in WoW's talent tree, and balance between specs is still patch dependent but there is much less difference between output than in the previous builds. That my friends is depth.
Depth without complexity. Depth to my standards is being able to customize your playstyle without having to conform to a standard determined by spreadsheets or dps/hps/threat meters. In MMO terms at least.
With strategy games, one should be able to use units based on how you wish to wage your war. There shouldn't be one way to use a particular race/faction/whatever, while at the same time you shouldn't have to worry about managing too much minute details. Again, too much complexity steals the depth and bogs down the gameplay.
There's a reason why in companies and government there are different levels of management, people who handle minutiae the higher ups do not have time for. When you give all the power to one source, and expect them to handle everything, it will collapse under the weight. Too complex, no depth and the system cannot function.
So sometimes streamlining a too complex system can work, when it trims the fat useless crap and leaves the useful deep things thus making gameplay deep without being too much to handle.
I hope I'm being clear, and I hope you folks get the point. There are minds out there that can handle super-multitasking but not all of us are focused enough to do so, and making games so niche that only a select few can play them doesn't mean the games are great, it means they're locking out other people because they don't fit a criteria. There is such a thing as too hardcore, and that my friends is elitism. Elitism breeds contempt and makes gamers who flock to that a bad example, especially if we want acceptance in the rest of the world. We have to be able to let new players in without making them feel overwhelmed by details and at the same time challenging them with depth, not complexity.
Challenges make for growth and better players, but complexity leads to frustration and a sense of inferiority leading us to a place where we lock others out.
There will be levels that some players cannot reach, but it should NEVER discourage a person who is genuinely interested in the game just because they're unable to ascend from the plateau they've reached. All players should feel welcome regardless of skill level and we should, if we really care about equality, make them feel that way even if they're not up to our own standards.

 

[cerebus23]

I loved flight sims till jane's went out of business/stopped making games.

Loved gunship on my old commodore 64 then 128d also.

His og pirates! game was the one would keep me up half the night as teen playing into the wee hours of the am just because i lost utter track of time in that game like few other since.

There are a few apache sims in some sort of state of something, one site not been updated in forever, but somewhere there is a flight sim being made that can be as good.

 

[Squilookle]

Some of my favourite games have been that 'inbetween' sweet spot between too-complex sim and too-simple arcade. For example:

GTA->Driver->Gran Turismo
Blazing Angels->Crimson Skies->IL-2

Then again, I like examples from both ends of the spectrum too so maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.

 

[Entitled]

Not being exactly as popular as CoD isn't a synonym of being killed.

More series have been killed by simplification, than complexity. They get to keep their franchise title, and games do get released under their logo, and still played by millions, while they lose all the values for which their first version was played.

Meanwhile, simulators, or Paradox strategy games might be complex, and niche, but so what? They do what their audience wants them to do, they do it well, and they still make ends meet from what audience they do have.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

it's a ballancing exercise, really... some complexity can help a game if there isn't too much of it.

But yes, while I think that there IS an audience for super-complex games that next to no one can get into, I also agree with Sid. I could never get into strategy games because of how complex (and often poorly explained) they are. Yet I'm convinced that I am able to like strategy games. I enjoy Civ 5 and I LOOOOOVED Xcom: Enemy Unknown.

I think that the difference between Xcom and other strategy games is the way Xcom manages to ease you into itself. I like to use the dad with a new bike analogy here. Why most strategy games give you a massive manual on assembling bikes, then give you a disassembled bike in a box and leave you alone with it, Xcom gave you a fully functional new bike, taught you how to ride it, gave you a push until you started getting a hang of it and then roundhouse kicked you in the teeth and laughed at you.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I dunno.

Get my team killed in Rainbow 6, stupid game. Get my team killed in SWAT4, which is a much more thoroughly realistic game, yeah, that always felt like the game was mocking me. That's something I'm much more likely to care about.

 

[holyshaman]

i think the DMC reboot was too complex with its combat system not in its self but when you want that SSS rank it gets very complicated when you need to switch between demon, angel and normal attacks its plus switching weapon for demon/angel on the fly. it is not that bad because of the game being casual but in some point it is just too much.

 

[IrateDonnie]

I feel the same way about the COD series.COD4 & MW2 was ok but every one since then has felt like they tried cramming too much stuff into MP. I still haven't figured out Ghosts kill streak rewards, although I've only played online for one round & got frustrated with it

 

[DaViller]

Considering the sucess of dota 2, lol etc. I think people realy like complex games. I surely enjoy the hell out of them so I gues it all comes down to how well you se complexity. If your good at it you can happily pile it up and it'll still be fine.

 

[Abomination]

What makes me like Paradox's grand strategy more than Civilization is how Paradox games feel more like a "story" than Civ does.

In Paradox the mechanics are used to further the setting and how society operated in the era it is set. In Civilization the setting and how society operated is just flavor for the mechanics.

 

[Estelindis]

Personally, I an a huge fan of the added complexity of the best Civ IV mods - especially Fall from Heaven II, with its amazing magic, hero and Armageddon systems, with every civ and religion having at least one unique mechanic. I can't even remember the last time I played vanilla Civ.