Dear courageous reader, welcome to a boring wall of text that, if also related to ED, is not specific to it. It's not even about games themselves, but about the way games are evaluated by the gaming community. Sounds boring? Well, it probably is, so only read on if you're really bored, or, like me, you have this stupid feeling that even though you're far from perfectly objective, you still arrogantly believe that you're able to see things with a better perspective than most. Many. Well, better than some people at least. Ah sod it, let's get on with it, if you're still reading, you're a weirdo and you'll probably fit right into this pseudo-intellectual debate. Alternatively, you're just thinking I'm going to post a lot of drivel you can abuse me for, and you're probably right. But I suspect you're better than that since you're reading another section of the forums than Dangerous Discussions.
We're now past the disclaimer and we can get on to the thread's actual topic. It's something that appears a lot in various threads, and an argument I find myself attempting to make many times over. But each thread being its own ecosystem, it's difficult to make the case without being sidetracked by the specifics of the local debate, and the argument quickly gets lost or often wrongly reused for what it's not. But it is so recurrent that I believe it to deserve its own thread. "So what the &"£$ is it already?" I hear you ask. Well there it is:
The perception that depth and complexity are fundamental metrics with regards to the entertainment value of a game.
This is a common perception as illustrated in ED by the vigorous apparently life-depending debates over whether ED is a deep or shallow game, whether it is a rather simple game or a very complex simulation. While in itself this could be an interesting debate (in theory at least, as personally, bias disclosure ahead, I'm firmly in the shallow/simple camp and am yet to read anything pushing me towards the opposite perception), it often props up not as a debate, but as an exposed fact in the higher level debate which often starts as or degenerates into: "Is ED a good game?".
And I, ladies, gentlemen, and other gender identities, believe that this is a complete non-issue in that context. A game can be simple, it can be complex, it can be deep, it can be rather shallow, yet be good or bad irrespective of these properties. When the question is whether ED (on any other game if you participate in too many game forum debates) is good or bad, calling it deep/simple/shallow/complex doesn't answer the question. It is a statement about a game property, which you might have to elaborate on to be taken seriously, which in itself doesn't say much about the quality or entertainment value of said game.
Here are some examples of simple/shallow games which are very highly rated by lots of people:
Now, for the sake of the debate, let's look at the flip side of the coin, as there are some deep, complex games, that derive direct benefits from these attributes and would be lesser games without them:
That said... Is DCS a better game than ETS2? Is Dwarf Fortress more entertaining than Tetris? Is it the other way around? Well, that's the thing. While depth and complexity can be argued in semi-objective fashion, it's far more nebulous to make a sweeping statement about a game quality. And if one was to make it, depth/complexity should probably not be the only metrics driving that evaluation. They might be useful to it, within a design context. But this is not what's happening here most of the time. The debate too often falls down into "ED is shallow therefore it's bad" and its flipside of "no, it's actually great because it's incredibly complex". This. Has. Very. Limited. Relevance. In. Isolation. And it drives me a bit nuts, hence the wall of text. Am I silly? Yes, I am, but still, I've got some time to waste, so how about I finish with a note on ED itself? "Yawn." Ah, I can hear the enthusiasm already, so here it is: ED, imho, can be demonstrated to be rather simple (limited amount of actual interactions, is being played by many people who don't even know the game actually comes with a manual, things like mining, exploring, data scanning have very little to them), and isn't very deep as although it offers a breadth of activities, their interactions are mostly limited to a positive/negative effect on a faction's influence. You may or may not agree with that assessment, and of course, if you disagree, then, well, you are wrong. Duh. But here's the kicker: as much as I'd like to see some (ok, a lot of) changes, I do believe that, in its current state, it is a very entertaining game in a very similar fashion to ETS2. It excels at providing me with some evasion, to the point where, I'll say it, I actually enjoy mining in ED. Is ED simple? Yes, I believe it is. Is it shallow? Well, that's a bit of a negative way to express it, but yeah, I don't believe there isn't much depth to be found (with the notable exception of the PowerPlay/BGS intersection that a tiny amount of players get to appreciate). But I don't believe these attributes make it a bad game, or are mortal insults to FD.
And I believe, a bit arrogantly, that this is not an unreasonable position to take, and that the debates around this game (and others, I'm not looking only at you SC, but...) would probably be more informative if this perception of depth and complexity as inherent quality metrics was to be ditched.
And here, dear reader, is where we part. For the time being at least. Maybe I'll be back if someone reads this and finds it worth discussing, who knows? At any rate, thanks for reading, and apologies for the ranting you had to suffer. From my end, it was liberating, in a weird kind of way.
edit: and of course I forgot the bit where I wanted to argue that though complexity is easy enough to define as a metric, depth is a bit more of a nebulous concept as it is, imho, the product of interesting interactions of different systems the player gets to interact with. But ah, forget it, maybe later if one wants to debate over a better definition.
TL;DR: Too bad, I can't be bothered summarising. Read it up or downvote and see if I care. Oh, one can't downvote here, I WIN!
We're now past the disclaimer and we can get on to the thread's actual topic. It's something that appears a lot in various threads, and an argument I find myself attempting to make many times over. But each thread being its own ecosystem, it's difficult to make the case without being sidetracked by the specifics of the local debate, and the argument quickly gets lost or often wrongly reused for what it's not. But it is so recurrent that I believe it to deserve its own thread. "So what the &"£$ is it already?" I hear you ask. Well there it is:
The perception that depth and complexity are fundamental metrics with regards to the entertainment value of a game.
This is a common perception as illustrated in ED by the vigorous apparently life-depending debates over whether ED is a deep or shallow game, whether it is a rather simple game or a very complex simulation. While in itself this could be an interesting debate (in theory at least, as personally, bias disclosure ahead, I'm firmly in the shallow/simple camp and am yet to read anything pushing me towards the opposite perception), it often props up not as a debate, but as an exposed fact in the higher level debate which often starts as or degenerates into: "Is ED a good game?".
And I, ladies, gentlemen, and other gender identities, believe that this is a complete non-issue in that context. A game can be simple, it can be complex, it can be deep, it can be rather shallow, yet be good or bad irrespective of these properties. When the question is whether ED (on any other game if you participate in too many game forum debates) is good or bad, calling it deep/simple/shallow/complex doesn't answer the question. It is a statement about a game property, which you might have to elaborate on to be taken seriously, which in itself doesn't say much about the quality or entertainment value of said game.
Here are some examples of simple/shallow games which are very highly rated by lots of people:
- Tetris: the only game I can think of that I'd call perfect. There is nothing I'd change to the design. It is incredibly simple, asking you to drop falling blocks of only seven different shapes in a box and make lines with them. As you make more lines, they fall down more rapidly until they fill the box to the top, in which case you have lost. The mechanics are incredibly simple, and there's only so much depth one can find in, say, placement strategies. Yet it is an incredibly engrossing game that seems to have barely aged, and whose successors have had an incredibly hard time improving on. Many deeper, more complex approaches to Tetris have been attempted (Welltris, Blockout, various 5 or 6 square block variants, colour coded restrictions...), but very few have had the same longevity. Because the joy of Tetris isn't in complexity. In fact, its simplicity is a large part of its appeal. It is immediately obvious what you're supposed to do, and how to do it better grows on you very quickly until you simply play it by instinct and it becomes about seeing how far you can push your hand-eye coordination and reaction time.
- Euro Truck Simulator 2: drive a pretend truck across Europe, increasing progress bars as you complete deliveries. Pimp your truck, make screenshots and look at them. No, there isn't much more to it. So is it complex? No. there are very few controls required, you get to drive almost instantly, and in-game navigation is omnipresent. As for the management part is, errr, well, it has the merit to be there I guess, for people that like to watch progress bars. Is it deep? Err, no. The driving is trivial (my kids can drive that truck and I'm not suicidal enough to let them drive my car irl), and in a neat parallel with ED, the only mechanically challenging part of the cruise is the "docking" of the trailer (and like ED, there's an "autopilot" if you can't be bothered). So you won't find yourself devling too deep in the intricacies of manoeuvering. Same for the management, where there's barely anything to do apart from buying more stuff to earn more automatically. Yet... The atmosphere is spot-on. The game provides an amazing evasion experience, throwing you on large motorways and small mountain roads all across the continent, watching the tarmac under your wheels and the landscape around, while listening to (integrated) internet radios of the country you're driving through. It's just great. You'd think it has no right to be that entertaining, but it just is. Oh, not for everybody of course, but the sheer amount of people that saw it as a joke before getting totally engrossed by the experience is something to behold. Would more hardcore driving or economic management improve the experience? For some people (possibly me, but I'm not even sure), probably. For most of the player base? I don't think so. The game is at the perfect spot of simple, completely accessible mechanics that drive an experience. A large part of this experience would be lost if additional complexity constantly distracted one from appreciating the rolling landscape.
- Farmville: errr... right... I won't even go there or I'll lose the little faith I have left in humanity...
Now, for the sake of the debate, let's look at the flip side of the coin, as there are some deep, complex games, that derive direct benefits from these attributes and would be lesser games without them:
- Dwarf Fortress: well, that's the epitome of it isn't it? Take DF and make it simple enough that you no longer need a tutorial or a manual. Depending on what bits you took away, you've just made Simcity: Dwarf Edition or Command and Conquer with mithril instead of tiberium. It's not DF anymore. DF is what it is because of the silly amount of detailed mechanics whose interconnections create a mind-boggling amount of possibilities. The depth of the game couldn't be there without the complexity. Take Rimworld as a case in point: it is, in many ways, a DF-lite. It is an absolutely exceptional game (and I tend to prefer it to DF), but it is, in many ways, much simpler. And as a result, not as deep. Although here, we're dealing with the extreme part of the spectrum, of course.
- DCS: "realistic" (quoted before it's pointed out it's not perfect) military flight sim. The whole point of DCS is to provide as much of the experience of flying the airplanes/helicopters as possible. The whole experience, not just the moving of the stick and throttle. The complexity here is not a byproduct, it's pretty much a requirement. The game's experience is lessened by simplifications, as illustrated by the vast amount of full advanced models compared to the simpler Flaming Cliffs ones. The simpler models do have their fans of course, but they're not the core audience, this is not the experience the game is aiming for anymore. As for depth, the sandbox allows for a vast amount of experimentation with fancy military hardware on multiple sides of a conflict, in wide what-if scenarios.
That said... Is DCS a better game than ETS2? Is Dwarf Fortress more entertaining than Tetris? Is it the other way around? Well, that's the thing. While depth and complexity can be argued in semi-objective fashion, it's far more nebulous to make a sweeping statement about a game quality. And if one was to make it, depth/complexity should probably not be the only metrics driving that evaluation. They might be useful to it, within a design context. But this is not what's happening here most of the time. The debate too often falls down into "ED is shallow therefore it's bad" and its flipside of "no, it's actually great because it's incredibly complex". This. Has. Very. Limited. Relevance. In. Isolation. And it drives me a bit nuts, hence the wall of text. Am I silly? Yes, I am, but still, I've got some time to waste, so how about I finish with a note on ED itself? "Yawn." Ah, I can hear the enthusiasm already, so here it is: ED, imho, can be demonstrated to be rather simple (limited amount of actual interactions, is being played by many people who don't even know the game actually comes with a manual, things like mining, exploring, data scanning have very little to them), and isn't very deep as although it offers a breadth of activities, their interactions are mostly limited to a positive/negative effect on a faction's influence. You may or may not agree with that assessment, and of course, if you disagree, then, well, you are wrong. Duh. But here's the kicker: as much as I'd like to see some (ok, a lot of) changes, I do believe that, in its current state, it is a very entertaining game in a very similar fashion to ETS2. It excels at providing me with some evasion, to the point where, I'll say it, I actually enjoy mining in ED. Is ED simple? Yes, I believe it is. Is it shallow? Well, that's a bit of a negative way to express it, but yeah, I don't believe there isn't much depth to be found (with the notable exception of the PowerPlay/BGS intersection that a tiny amount of players get to appreciate). But I don't believe these attributes make it a bad game, or are mortal insults to FD.
And I believe, a bit arrogantly, that this is not an unreasonable position to take, and that the debates around this game (and others, I'm not looking only at you SC, but...) would probably be more informative if this perception of depth and complexity as inherent quality metrics was to be ditched.
And here, dear reader, is where we part. For the time being at least. Maybe I'll be back if someone reads this and finds it worth discussing, who knows? At any rate, thanks for reading, and apologies for the ranting you had to suffer. From my end, it was liberating, in a weird kind of way.
edit: and of course I forgot the bit where I wanted to argue that though complexity is easy enough to define as a metric, depth is a bit more of a nebulous concept as it is, imho, the product of interesting interactions of different systems the player gets to interact with. But ah, forget it, maybe later if one wants to debate over a better definition.
TL;DR: Too bad, I can't be bothered summarising. Read it up or downvote and see if I care. Oh, one can't downvote here, I WIN!
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