Depth and Complexity

I remember attending a GDC talk one year where the speaker spent about five minutes talking about complexity in games. To demonstrate complexity creep they showed a screenshot of World of Warcraft for a level one character. You have a few buttons, one or two quests, and very little else. The next screenshot was a max-level raiding character with an ocean of buttons and addons. The speaker observed that “the complexity of this interface parallels that of a commercial jet plane.” He was not wrong. It is amazing how well World of Warcraft manages to ramp up the complexity of the game without overwhelming the player.

A considerable number of designers would talk about the importance of creating depth in a game without increasing complexity. Some of the people listening will nod and smile here—they will also have no idea what the difference is. The majority of designers who regurgitate the “increase-depth-but-do-not-increase-complexity” mantra throughout the course of their design projects will shit up their design with so much complexity you have to wonder if they even know what it means.

So let’s unpack the difference a little through some illustrative examples.

Bejeweled is a classic casual game that has reasonable depth and not much complexity. You swap gems on a board of tiles. If you create a matching set of three or more gems, they will disappear and new gems will drop down from the top. It does not take long for the average new player to get familiar with this mechanic and not much longer afterwards to master it. You would not expect people to play much more than five or ten minutes and be done with the experience.

People played this game for much more than five or ten minutes because they increased the depth of the game over time. The game of Bejeweled will start off with four or five colors of gems on the board. After you have made a number of matches the number of different colored gems goes up slowly. Each new color of gem decreases the likely matches, and the game gets harder. You do not consciously notice the new gems being added into the game and the difficulty starts to ramp up. This is a great example of increasing the depth of a game.

Let’s fast forward five or ten years and talk about the spiritual successor to Bejeweled: Candy Crush. Candy Crush essentially possessed the same match-three mechanics as Bejeweled. It was much more successful for a variety of reasons. Candy Crush initially possesses the same depth structure as Bejeweled. It is different because over time it gradually increases its complexity.

It is important to note the increase is gradual. Unlike the original Bejeweled, Candy Crush is broken up into levels with specific objectives. Every 20 levels there is a hard progression gate and they introduce new types of candies and blocks over time.

Each of the new candies that gets added to the game creates a new mechanic. Some of them will block players from making swaps on the board. Some of them will change over time. Each new mechanic requires the player to think about how to complete the level objectives differently due to the new obstacle added.

The previously mentioned World of Warcraft also increases its complexity gradually. You get a new power every few levels, slowly increasing the number of buttons you have to press and the number of game mechanics to think about. The game is very complex by the time you get to maximum level and start learning elder play patterns.

Two other great games that possess considerable depth are Minecraft and Terraria. It does not take much time for the player to become familiar with the mechanics of both games that will persist all the way through to the end. In the case of Minecraft, making potions and magic items is probably the most complex thing you will need to master in order to defeat the final boss. In the case of Terraria, you will need to master creating combinations of items to get all of the buffs/powers possible in a limited number of inventory slots while you battle bosses in carefully constructed arenas.

Adding depth to games as a designer is very hard. Not many games do it well. I cannot tell you how to do this well in two sentences. Or paragraphs. Or years.

Adding complexity to a game as a designer is easier. The problem is that it puts a burden on the player and it runs the risk of making the game feel unfamiliar or frustrating. Both of these are serious problems. When adding complexity to a game, it is important to put in scaffolding for the players to experience new mechanics or game elements in order to get comfortable with them. It is also important to control the flow of complexity into the game. If you add too many elements too quickly, then players will stop having fun and find something else to do.

This also translates into product design. I am launching a product soon and the first version of my MVP (minimum viable product) was slightly too complex for a first time user. 

I had to sit down and carefully go through the feedback of my first ten test users and revamp it to reduce that complexity. The early feedback suggests that the changes I made were helpful there.

If you are in the business of creating software for consumers, I would highly recommend spending some time playing successful games and thinking about depth and complexity. It will transform your craftsmanship.