An Approach to Complexity

I'm not going to try to be comprehensive here. This post is about my general philosophy of complexity in game mechanics. 

You have probably heard the phrase 'complexity budget.' The term refers to the amount of complexity your design can tolerate based on your intended audience. You can stretch that budget by relying on players' existing knowledge and by well-developed game logic. You have to take into account rules complexity and strategic complexity. Too much complexity makes a game incomprehensible or too difficult. 

For my money, rules complexity is a bigger issue than strategic complexity. I can tolerate being bad at a game because I am not a good strategist, but I am frustrated when I am bad at a game because I don't understand what I am supposed to be doing. Often, rules complexity is artificially increased by poorly-written manuals or bad graphic design. 

However, there is one aspect of rules complexity that designers can miss: the ratio of complex systems to complex actions. I don't think I'm the first person to point this out, but it deserves more attention. The more complex the systems in the game, the less those systems can tolerate complex actions. The simpler the systems, the more the actions can be complex. 

So, in a game with one mechanism, that mechanism can be fairly complex without exceeding the complexity budget. There is a reason 'I cut; you choose' games are generally filler games: the action mechanism is surprisingly strategically complex. It involves assessing your play state and that of other players, then attempting to predict what arrangement of resources will tempt other players without making any lot too good. Add this mechanism to a complex game and it would grind gameplay to a halt. In complex Euros, players already have a tendency to stretch out their turns by calculating their various options. Adding a mechanism that has that sort of calculation built in could create a snowball effect. 

If you look at published heavy games, you typically find they are made up of simple actions—lots and lots of simple actions that interact and affect each other. Certain mechanisms, like deck building, are actually a molecule of simple action atoms. Most of the strategic complexity of deck building comes from choosing which cards to buy—which is no different from any other card market mechanism. Mid-to-heavy games will often have one complex action supported by simpler actions. The action might be strategically complex, like an auction, or rules complex, like a unit in a war game that has a lot of stats. 

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule, but it's important to pay attention to the balance of systems complexity versus action complexity. 

While I'm on the topic, let's talk about other things that can use up your complexity budget. 

In-turn Calculation: Look. Some people just have a hard time with math, ok? I would much rather a game has me doing simple math than clever math, unless the cleverness is that the math doesn't feel like math. Having to calculate as a part of my turn limits what other information I can absorb because my brain is busy. 

Out-of-turn Calculation: I'm actually more forgiving of this because it is usually optional. I can choose to do some strategic calculation when it's not my turn if I feel like it. Doing math during downtime is also easier because I'm not trying to do multiple things at once. 

Spatial reasoning: There appear to be two types of people: those who don't like math and those who don't like spatial puzzles. Mentally manipulating images is challenging even for people who like spatial puzzles and impossible for some other people. There was an era where number-crunchy games were seen as inherently heavier than (and thus superior to) spatial puzzle games. Spatial puzzle games often opt for strategic complexity over rules complexity, but that doesn't make them inherently lighter. Games like Calico have done a lot to push back against this notion. 

Memory: No, not that kind of memory game. When a game has a lot of rules exceptions and corner cases, a lot of distinct actions and resources, and not a lot of thematic logic to help lighten the load, you can exceed your budget just through overtaxing the players' memories. I do want to be clear that while this section includes rules overhead, it is more than just that. The rules could be perfectly straightforward, but the graphic design doesn't help guide you through play. Or the rules are simple, but there are a lot of steps and no player aids. If memory isn't an intended mechanism, you may want to minimize it in your design. 

Hopefully, this post has got you thinking about complexity in a new way and/or reminded you to review the complexity budget of your designs. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.